It’s a truism in the halls of professional military education schoolhouses that the enemy gets a vote in the success or failure of our strategy, just as we get a vote in the success or failure of the enemy’s strategy. Each casts its vote in favor of stymieing the other, in multiple rounds of balloting. That’s the nature of armed competition or warfare. Each contestant tries to one-up and outdo the other until one prevails, they strike a compromise settlement of some sort, or the competition deadlocks.
