Literally the only demand made by the dominion was they stop going through the wormhole and making incursions into.their sovereign space. The federation has a neutral zone with the romulans that has lasted like 100 years or more by that point, but if there’s a wormhole it’s somehow their god given right to poke around someone else’s territory? Not even to mention the Cardassian/Romulan pre emptive attack on the Founders homeworld. Prior to that they just sent spies and harrased ships in the gamma quadrant. Seems like a more than reasonable cause for war to me.
Yes but I don’t think the show portrays this as a positive or even neutral thing. The Founders’ rule is brutal and even the slightest resistance is put down with an iron fist. The Founders have this almost almost irrational fear based on this history - or at least, even if it’s rational, they are recreating their own trauma on a thousand (or whatever) other worlds.