I'm wondering what the geopolitical situation looks like. Is this *Poland, with enemies on all sides? Or is it *Canada, with a big, strong, frinedly neighbor & membership in a big, strong, friendly commonwealth (or empire)? Is it *Turkey, with a fairly hostile neighbor & (potentially) rebellious minorities? Is it *China, with no real desire for conquest?
Yeah, that's not really answering the OP, is it...?
So let me throw in my $0.05: I agree, it could go either way. Which can't your country get? Israel started building jet fighters in part because of embargoed purchases. So...
Edit:
Four other things cross my mind. First, what happens when a foreign country can't build weapons? Like after WW1, when Germany was banned from building fighters & U-boats. Can your "home' country attract them? (Yes, building smallarms &/or cannon is a bit different, but...where do people with those skills go?) Same applies in the middle of a Depression.
Two, & following that: can your "home" country afford to hire such expertise? Or even "poach" it?
Three, do your own universities & technical institutes produce people with enough bright ideas to make "poaching" unnecessary? (Is your population large enough?) So, do you need to hire Kalashnikov or Browning or Armstrong, or does he already exist?
Four, following from three: does your country have the industrial & engineering base to exploit the ideas? If you can't produce the tooling to build smallarms... And, as Japan learned the hard way, if you don't have the "depth" of engineering skill, building copies may serve the immediate need, but can't cope with an enemy able to out-design you...