Estinien is more than familiar with this sort of thing - there's never truly a good time to take action, to begin a war. Time and time again he's seen nations hold out as long as possible before circumstances force their hand. His own home, Ishgard, had refused the call in the final days of the Calamity, and been gifted with an eternal winter for their indolence.

It's not so much that he doesn't understand the immediate logic of it all. Yes, Eifstide put them in the role of the aggressor for the time being, whether wrought by ignorance or otherwise. It would be a terrible time to act if peace was their long-term goal. What he doesn't understand is how Solvunn means to both stop what they perceive as a looming apocalypse while also retaining peaceful relations with the people causing it.

To him, it would seem they cannot have both. Yet, he knows that is probably not what they want to hear. All the same...

"Mayhap it would be," he says. It is not without weight. He fully understands the cost of war, having been fighting in one conflict or another since he was a child. "Yet, if it's merely a matter of timing, would it not be advised to lay plans while we still have the leisure to do so? With such a calamitous event on the Horizon, is open conflict with the other nations not an inevitability?"