If one takes a historical prespective of Babylon 5, the Narn were the french. when the series started, they were aggressors, hitting the Centaauri colony at Ragesh something-or-other like Napoleon hit the germans and russians. But then as The Centauri, who were the Gernans in WW-II attacked, the NArn regime didn't last too long, merely resistance units were left.
The Minbari (england) and Earth (The US) stood by, watched and tsk-tsked a lot, but they had problems of their own until other events moved the show from a WW-II motif to a cold war scenario with the Shadows representing the communists.
the station was, of course the "league of nations".
Strazinsky was/is a genius in his analogy.
I corresponded with JMS on the old Compuserve SciFi forum way back when B5 was getting set to go. He shared a lot with all of us as he put together the plans, got the go ahead, cast it, etc. From day one he emphasized that he had a 5 year story arc pre-written (in broad terms) and that he was going to try to make every episode advance the main story elements toward that goal.
When the first show aired I posted a note to him complaining about the "obvious" cliches that he had set up with the reptilian bad-guy Narn and the comic relief Centauri. I emphasized how obvious the nature of the Centauri was by pointing to the casting of Stephen Furst as the Centauri Vir Cotto. I mean, c'mon, Flounder from Animal House? It was obvious.
JMS wrote back and straightened me out immediately. We were all supposed to fall into that particular trap, make those assumptions, because most of the rest of the series was based on reversing those stereotypes. And then he pointed out a key element of why the Centauri looked the way they did. The "comic opera" outfits were meant to provide the same "silly look" as most westerners had the first time anyone saw a Samurai warrior in full regalia. The first reports from Japan after it was opened always made fun of the way they dressed, but that was before they saw them cut off a head with one swipe of their sword, usually just because they wanted to test the sword.
He was trying to make us relearn that lesson. Don't make assumptions about good guys and bad guys based on things like "silly looking costumes." That set the tone for the rest of the series for me and I was hooked.