Hey Justin!
I'm glad you're enjoying your stay so far! I think fearing larger players is natural. When I first started, I thought computer countries could attack and kill me haha! (Spoiler alert, they will not attack you!)
In order to be in a fight with any other player at all or ever, you yourself must choose to reach war level 3 and execute the required steps first. This requires defeating 3 successively more challenging computer countries in war. I made that bold because many if not most players don't realize they have permanent protection from player war unless they actively remove it by winning 3 wars against the computer first. All players who engage in player vs. player warfare have chosen to do this.
If you do not do that, the game will prevent you from attacking anyone else or being attacked by anyone else. It's each players' choice whether or not they want to experience the possibility of player vs. player war. If not, they can just stay low war level and avoid it entirely. This is what the majority of players do.