That comment didn’t age well, did it!
I’ve been following the thread, and of course the events outside of here. I had a long post planned referencing Gibbons’ The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and how he identified one of the issues being that there wasn’t really room for great emperors and generals to coincide. One of the many issues with autocratic rule, regardless of its comparative efficiency in making decisions when compared to representative democracy.
When there was a weak emperor and strong military leadership, the leadership would replace the emperor. When there was a strong emperor he made sure to eliminate strong generals who were potential threats. Only rarely could a strong emperor stomach potential rivalries from strong generals, which is when you get someone like Justinian.
In any case, this is an issue with both the Russian and the Chinese militaries. Competency is not only not rewarded, it is often discouraged to the point of elimination. So even the most competent military leadership learn to hide their competency.
In fairness I first read this in the Foundation trilogy by Asimov when I was a pre teen, but later realized he copied some of his ideas from Gibbons. Not in a bad way,
The French election is interesting. I can’t imagine Le Pen winning, but she’s apparently very close. I’m not making the same mistakes I did with Trump and Brexit where I didn’t take seriously the votes going the way they did until they did. That would be a huge wrinkle, and not in a good way.