But it still didn’t affect the story going forward, so the effect is the same as if they had changed the past. Varian’s declaration of war was a giant nothingburger. I don’t care what word you use for it; they should IMO have had the guts to stick with that plot point and see it through, or else not introduce it at all.
Immediately undoing a plot point right after you introduce it is, in my opinion, practically the same thing as saying it didn’t happen in the first place. Getting hung up on the terminology is just semantics.