Excellent point, but not the point. Rome went the same way and the British Empire is no more.
What I take from this is that they actually taught this stuff and thought about it. They had tools. That they could not always apply them well, because conditions moved beyond their control is another issue.
War and Warfare are incredibly complex and were just as complex back then.
....however, better rather than worse military approaches to warfare, and thus gaining the political state you want, are discernible and are not the product of luck. Where prediction falls down is how the new policy will effect all the other relevant conditions.
- Winning Gulf War 1 just set up conditions for Gulf War 2.
- Same with WW1 and 2.
- The US decided to give up in Vietnam and really lost nothing strategically.
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