Strategically, I'm not sure how any plan deserves success if it doesn't take human idiocy (one's own and that of others) as a default.
You will fuck up. Your allies will fuck up. Everybody else will fuck up, too.
A plan that doesn't allow for that is just wishful thinking.
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this is a time-bound plan, one suited to our era and place.
There were period where some groups assumed and got competence, even genius. Genghis Khan's Mongols, for example.
Not to say there weren't some major fuckups, but they were unusual.
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like how Americans assume leadership is hard.
Yeah, it is if you want people to do evil shit in horrible jobs lead by assholes. It's really hard to lead people in that situation.
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Talking on a more fundamental level.
Part of what made some of those great civilizations Great, as far as I can tell, was failsafe mechanisms.
E.g. Republican Rome appointed new consuls on the regular, and the occasional dictator when the consuls couldn't get the job done.
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Fair.
And yes, they also designed things so that competence was far more likely. The cursus honorium, for example.
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Aye, and when institutional rot sets in, decline seems to follow that pretty consistently.
Sometimes not to the point of falling, but certainly to the point of crisis.