But that's not the point: the point is "who's going to make me?" when our disagreements are significant.
And significant is minor details like "I believe I own this land" and "I have a right to exist".
EDIT: it's also worth noting that we resolve wars by simulation all the time - that's what diplomacy and it's supporting institutions are. Both sides present their objectives, tend to outline their military forces and escalation priorities to each other, and then go away and decide if they believe the outcome is substantially worse then what could be achieved by negotiation - which with war it usually is.
That’s not how that works. The nation that gets to impose its will is the one that can put boots on the ground and hold them there. Doesn’t matter if they’re cyborg or robot boots, but they have to physically be there. That’s a lesson as old as history.
I understand what you’re getting at, and maybe someday smaller powers will participate in “simulated warfare” (which means something else) in lieu of total destruction like some hunter-gatherer and monkey tribes do, but it will always be in the physical world and involve death or destruction.
Otherwise, why would anyone go to war even now? If any other mechanism other than physical violence would have worked, we wouldnt go to war.
If you don't invade, you haven't taken control.
Or putting it from other perspective, you could run the simulation between 2 parties, be the winner and "impose" your will. But I don't think that the other side will now leave their houses and leave their own city voluntarily, at that point you need to invade anyways.
The point is eventually all that matters is algorithms. If everything is automated, if a lot of war is cyber war etc, you know already that the best algorithms applied to physical stuff will win, so why not just pit them against each other virtually?
As for the argument of "why wouldn't they just go at it in the physical world next", well they could, but after 10 or 20 wars where you see the outcome is going to be aligned to the algorithmic winner anyway you see there's no point other than to kill your own population.
For what it's worth I don't think this happens in 10 or even 100 years - it's stretching it to a much longer timespan.