Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most likely not. The price to pay people to get them to do something must exceed the opportunity cost of them not doing that something. Raising an army from your people, if they don't fight alongside you they are probably facing a pretty suboptimal situation - their crops burned, their cities looted, their wives and daughters raped, foreign oppression, etc. This risk may be small, while stepping onto the battlefield…
If I understand it, Brett's central point is that early states lacked free capital to actually "pay" anyone and so levee-en-mass was compulsion for food, or forage/pillage and obligations driven not cash driven. England was an early progenitor of paid soldiers and had an effect on the conduct 0f European wars, not entirely beneficial. But that's long after ancient times. My point is that history records ancient state…
History is littered with examples of states choosing to pay off their would-be attackers, and seeing it as success or failure depends on your priors.
Byzantium was especially adept at this, for centuries, and they did fine for a millenium, but more often than not it was seen as a temporary, last resort measure, with large downsides, and generally to avoid creating a new front while a more critical war was being waged elsewhere.
By paying off your enemies, you strengthen their armies, you give them an incentive to ask for more and more each year (because they know you wouldn't have paid if you weren't weak), as a rule they will regularly pillage your countryside to encourage you to pay, and they will mostly use the money you pay them as investment to launch attacks against you at the first opportunity.
For Byzantium, this was the case with Arabs, Bulgarians, Crusaders, etc., and over time it led to ruin. Though it also led to overall great outcomes with Armenians and Iberians, who became vassal states.