This insight looms large today. Russia’s neo-imperial onslaught on Ukraine reminds us that force is still central to world affairs. But Ukraine’s inspiring resistance shows why strategy is a many-faceted thing.

Ukraine has survived not simply through feats of military skill, but also through adept diplomacy that has secured international solidarity and the shrewd use of information to rally its population and tell its story to the world. The most impressive strategist of this war may be President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who was initially an amateur when it came to military operations but was, critically, a virtuoso at using rhetoric and fortitude as weapons in their own right.

The war’s worst strategist, surely, is Putin. In blundering into this conflict, he gave his Western enemies a chance to use economic sanctions, export controls, intelligence sharing, military assistance and other tools to make the costs of Russia’s war as high as possible. He largely nullified forms of leverage, namely energy exports, that Moscow had previously used to suborn Europe; he condemned his country to economic and technological servitude to Beijing.

If strategy encompasses all the things that shape a country’s global position, Putin’s performance has been a master class in strategic self-harm.

[This is outside the paywall at Bloomberg and worth reading in full. The key to this analysis isn’t so much that strategy beats power, but skillful strategy *finds* power where it has not been seen or used before. That certainly applies in Ukraine. — Ed]