It's pretty interesting to look at from a different point of view. Though they're not canon anymore, the Yuuzhan Vong were a threat that the New Republic was woefully unprepared to meet; I believe at one point in the Legends canon it was said that Palpatine had learned of the Vong threat a few decades before the overthrow of the Empire and one of his goals was to counter this threat with a strong military force.
There's a pretty interested read at
this link that theorizes how the galaxy would have looked after a Vong invasion against the Empire.