Preprocessors and CSS methodologies essentially solved that problem already. Container queries are nice, but :has() gives developers novel functionality to CSS that wasn't possible before without JavaScript and DOM traversal.
Is it possible you are confusing container queries with something else? I don't think preprocessors and/or CSS methodologies have anything to do with that. I don't see any way they could solve the problem that container queries are tackling. At least not without JavaScript. But I'm more than eager to learn that I'm wrong about that.
Functional classes with pre-established breakpoints solve a lot of the problem that container queries are tackling. It's a nice feature set, but it wasn't impossible to do before, unless I am misunderstanding something.
