Tell me, how badly would the main plot of TFA been affected if they’d established that the conflict with the First Order had started before the film?
Isn’t the whole point of the Resistance that the New Republic won’t go to outright war? If anything, TFA didn’t take that far enough. Honestly that whole situation was a favor to expanded material writers, who now have the chance to write more interesting stories than just another civil war. I love the whole cold war angle.