Bernhard of MoA Did A Good Write Up.

On "strategy" of brainiacs in D.C. 

The U.S. strategy to 'fix' Russia in Europe by imposing 'crushing sanctions' on it to then attack China is failing. That is because it was completely misconceived.

Strategy is a buzz word among politicos and journos because it is "loaded" and it gives an impression of something really mysterious and cool. I will be talking about it in my next video. Strategy as a "plan" of achieving political aims in anything, however, in the field of practical geopolitics of the second half of the 20th and the 21st centuries is a bit more than a "plan". As in military campaigns, one cannot become a "strategist" without having tactical and operational background and that is why all advanced military education in the world is structured around taking an officer from the tactical, to operational to strategic level of thinking, thus providing a pivot around which all strategic decisions, with inputs form tactical and operational levels, will revolve. This is not how modern political "science" and what passes for "strategic decision making" in the West works. 

Modern geopolitics as primarily the realm of raw power of the states projected against the geographic background is unknown to Western governing class. It cannot be known due to a radical lack of comprehension of instruments which dictate geopolitical reality--physical economy and military. These ARE very complex fields and at some point of time West's "intellectual elite", which is grown and brought up primarily within the confines of "humanities" departments of the US Ivy League and UK's old educational institutions, simply ran out of expertise which already was lacking even by the end of 19th century. In the 21st century--explaining to Vicky Nuland or Jake Sullivan what is combat networks' topology (granted basic course in the Graph Theory is taught) and how it is no less important than raw firepower--this is a fool's errand and an exercise in futility. 

But this is just one small segment out of very many of modern day reality which is more important to practical geopolitics and global power balance than what comes down to personal opinions of incompetent people with zero backgrounds in real strategy development and governance. And it is this and many other factors, not some abstract political concepts, which drive modern real strategies. US "elites" don't do strategies, they do strategy and doctrine-mongering which exist in a virtual world of illiterate personal passions, vendettas and ambitions and results of such "strategies" are telling--the country, the US is being run into the ground by people who literally do not know how the world works. Read Bernhard's excellent piece. It explains how those "strategies" fail. The US needs better "strategists", not political hacks operating on a white board "strategies" which fail time after time because they are detached from reality. But then again, that brings us to a larger question of US "political elites" being adequate to the task. The answer is obvious--they are not.