<Snipped quote by Foster>
Inevitably each of their strategies proved to be inferior in the end, as both the Khan's and Rommel's overall missions failed, seeing as the Mongolians fell to a power-hungry feud, and Rommel ultimately failed his duty in both Normandy and Africa.
Tactics might be a better way to put it. Undoubtedly, the Khan ran into a lot of logistics issues, but he still managed to form the largest land empire. His early military campaigns relied a lot on Chinese cavalry, catapults and siege-based warfare, which wasn't always the perfect method of battle for certain terrain. Best example of this would probably be seen in the Mongol's terror within Eastern Iran. At Urgench the city was built along a river with a marshy terrain that had a lack of rocks to use for these catapults which sort of put the Khan at a stalemate. Even with this, he still managed to conquer Urgench, but with much higher casualties than usual.
As for Rommel, I would agree his tactics out weighed that of his military strategy, even if it was long term. That being said, Rommel really didn't always have a problem with a lack of supplies or units under his control. In my opinion, Rommel's prime lasted until early 1943, where the rapid fall of Nazi Germany began.
Technically in a sense the Mongolian Empire was rather successful in its goals of creating a unified state and what brought it down wasn't any sort of military incompetence but Mongol law and tradition really, which was as successful as any Mongol would imagine. The thing with this post is that you're trying to frame Genghis Khan's ultimate goal in a modern or even a theory of a modern complex framework, even if "own the world" is an inevitably simple one. But I doubt the real goal of Temujin's conquest was really to do that. The mission of Genghis Khan was likely more along the lines of forming a unified Mongol state through finding and fighting external enemies, as they did. And then taking the people they subjugated and finding a common enemy for them and the Mongols and pitting the combined armies against them. Rinse, wash, and repeat until the Great Khan dies and succession dictates his sons get equal territories and powers.
The other strength of the Mongols was their practice of conscripting their subjugated states into their armies with more-or-less the same equal standing in its structure. Being tribal they didn't really bother with trying to justify any sort of religious morality under Tengrism as most people so they weren't as persecutory as the peoples they rolled in under their banner. So they were much more flexible than any other armies.
Plus it was the classical medieval era anyways, so modern nationalism didn't exist so there wasn't as rigid a definition of who you were in relation to your neighbors and your exact practices.
But in any case, I wouldn't call Genghis Khan a military failure since the division of the Empire went about as would be expected by Mongols at the time. And their Empires likewise.
But in the framework of the thread that is not "best Empire" but "best leader" the question of the Empire's health isn't really a factor since it occurred only after his death. If because he wanted to avoid his family beating the shit out of itself over who claims the entire thing so declared it all would be divided equally with each son being Great Khan in their own right. He was a by-gone factor by the time legal division happened.
It's a similar deal you find in other Empires. The Carloingian Empire didn't so much "collapse" as we might think but just sort of lapsed out of existence, because also fuck having French sons kill French sons. Or holding multiple titles of the same strength.
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