For instance, I'm sure Platinum and Rento will agree that "no army has to stand guard" is a poor setting. But I can't predict if they will agree whether ME or British Raj is the better template. Subjective taste also hits in etc.
No, actually I will disagree. 'No army has to stand guard' might be a poor choice if you try to fit it into an existing, tried-out template like French Brawl. But I don't think it's impossible to build a good template around it.
I don't think any setting in isolation is strategic or not strategic. And trying to put that border right between Airlift and Emergency Blockade of all places is really strange, no offense.
The only exception could be Auto-Dist, since it can put you at a disadvantage even before your first click, before you even attempt to think about your strategy, so it could be argued that this setting is inherently not strategic.
Anyway, the community has been arguing for a decade on whether SR is more strategic than WR and even here we can't get a definite answer on that so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .
My final thoughts:
1. Settings exist in combinations. You say that gift is objectively more strategic than airlift? Good luck using a gift card on LD template. You likely won't help your teammate that much.
2. To be fair, airlifts pretty much make blockade cards worthless, which imo is the best argument you could make against them. I don't think anyone mentioned it?
Sorry for going offtopic, you can carry on with your chess discussion :)