This would be that of grand strategy, both from a military and political standpoint. Prussia in many ways was the underdog of Europe in his time, small of size, resources, and manpower and while Frederick recognized this, he did not fully appreciate it nor take appropriate action to remedy it. Frederick was aggressive in taking the military initiative and implementing his tactical innovations to win over a dozen major engagements, but he failed to decisively beat the states’ whose armies they belonged to, thus setting up a never-ending sequence of battles and war. By the end of the Seven Year’s War for instance, nearly half of Prussia’s 4.5 million subjects had died, it had cost the Prussians hundreds of millions of dollars, destroyed many cities, and saw the burning of countless villages.
In Frederick not securing binding alliances and treaties that protected his people and Prussia for the long-term, they were only a power for as long as he was in power. His failure to see the larger, strategic picture for both Prussia and Europe only led to Prussia being overrun by its enemies after his death and suffering a great number of hardships that could have likely been prevented by a wider and more robust understanding of grand strategy in both a military and political sense.
