A blessing in disguise, perhaps.
If the English release of Nausicaa had been done well, Ghibli may have continued allowing foreign distributors to make major changes to their movies under the remit of "internationalisation"
But they screwed it up, which lead directly to the now-famous "no edits" policy.
In the long-term I think that fuck-up really helped Ghibli to cement their reputation in the west for making good stuff.