Hello all. I’m glad to see a new community built on the ideals of the old Maw Installation. I hope we’ll have as many good debates and insightful viewpoints as we did back there.
So I was wondering who could be described as the greatest military strategist in legends (or canon). Thrawn is the knee jerk response, obviously, but I saw today that in 2013, Jason Fry put him third after Ackbar (somewhat understandable) and Tarkin (really?). I don’t know much about Tarkin to be honest, but I have a hard time understanding how he can be argued to be a greater strategist than Thrawn. A simple litmus test of “did they end up getting blown up in a space battle?” would come out in Thrawn favour at least. What are your thoughts on this debate?
Link to the list by Fry: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/10_Great_Military_Leaders
Full disclosure, I haven’t read the Tarkin novels, but from my reading, he seems to be portrayed as a rather awful strategist in all arenas except political infighting among the upper echelons of imperial leadership.
Even as a political leader he made a bad situation worse on the rim, and fully fit Leia’s assertion of “the more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers”.