Yes, but not every war forever for whichever nation the player is piloting.

And you don’t have to (and often you are unable to), but least you have an opportunity to do so. A choice.

Micro-managing individual battalions doesn’t fit very cleanly into a game about geopolitics.

Battalions? Not necessarily. Divisions (like in V1) or brigades (V2) very much so. If you want to make a ridiculous strawman argument at least try to stay accurate.