Much as I dislike it, I’m having trouble too. Warfare will push the society to create better weapons (metallurgy, chariot making etc,), better logistics, solidify hierarchies etc. The spoils of war are extremely effective motivators at a very base human level (power, land, wealth, rape).
I doubt peaceful means could achieve what war can.
> I doubt peaceful means could achieve what war can.
It works the other way as well, I doubt war can achieve what peace can.
> Warfare will push the society to create better weapons (metallurgy, chariot making etc,), better logistics, solidify hierarchies etc.
In many historical examples this also involved the destruction of knowledge. The Roman empire set mathematics back a thousand years. The Greeks were very close to calculus.
Large hierarchies often stagnate societies.
The result of the Peloponnesian War was a diminished Athens and stagnant slowly dying Sparta.
Did WW1 help Europe by killing two generations of French and German Mathematicians? Königsberg was one of the top intellectual centers of the world for 300 years? How is it doing now? Can you even find it on a map?
Warfare isn't just on thing that we isolate and ask, "is it beneficial?" The impact of a war on a society depends enormously on context and the chaos of history. Did WW2 result in massive advances in human science, I think so. How can we know what the world would have looked like if so many human lives had not be lost? The world got really good jet engines but what did it lose?
Did WW1 set science back, I also think that is true. WW1 also helped set in motion the end of European colonialism which is a long term good for the world.
There is no meaningful answer to this question when set at a scope as large as you have set it.
I doubt peaceful means could achieve what war can.