I think it’s less important what we think and more important how contemporary Roman leaders would have thought about it. Are there any writings on how they saw it?
There are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est describes the most famous position. And the somewhat less famous position of Cato the Elder's opponent, Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Corculum.
"Carthago delenda est" was being said more than 50 years after the battle of Zama. Nobody alive at that point in Rome had any personal memory of a time when Carthage was a danger to Rome.
