To be clearer then: Wars today are different from wars then. The positive effects of conflicting states is clear enough from history, but lately the side-effects have started to reach into the unacceptable range. Ideally, Europe and Asia would be filled with active jostling competing states so we get the benefits of whatever Renaissance or Industrial Revolution or 100 Schools of Thought would happen in our era, but with enough of an international structure to prevent actual military operations (and particularly use of nukes or worse); the EU seems to me to have gone well beyond the salutary conflict-prevention point, and into stifling-Imperial-China territory.