I thought that point about the season finale was the whole point of the episode. Pike and his style weren't right for the situation. He was like a caricature of Picard without the tactical superiority to back it up.
It also might be another reason Enterprise was the ship kept out of the Klingon war.
With one barely mentioned planet, this episode reframed the plot originally designed to hold together TNG, DS9, and Voyager.
Federation authorities insisted the DMZ colonies were recent and had been warned they were disputed territory. They painted a picture like Israeli settlers in Gaza refusing to obey their own government and leave.
But now we have a Federation affiliated colony on Setlik 2 a century earlier.
The UFP's failure to stop the Maquis terrorists always seemed like command wanted the war restarted with plausible deniability. Now the Maquis arguments are stronger. Ceding long-held territory is much easier to call abandonment.