One general's "brilliant pincer movement" is another's disastrous "dividing his forces prematurely". Another's "overwhelming surprise attack" is another's "unsupported reckless advance". They tell you the importance of holding back your reserves, to use them neither too early or too late, but only at just the right moment. But no one can tell you what the right moment is, it is only obvious after the battle. If you actually read Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" carefully, you realize he doesn't really tell you anything you don't already know, and which your enemy probably is already aware of as well. It's a collection of aphorisms, the obvious and the unprovable. Ancient Chinese Secret. You must learn to read Clausewitz and and Mahan and Mackinder the same way. I suspect the old Chinaman knew this perfectly and wrote it as a good natured reminder to his contermporaries and countrymen, while we westerners have let it fly right over our heads.

What is better, the quick maneuver, the unexpected lightning assault; or the meticulously planned, mutually supported advance? Who has the advantage, the defender or the attacker, the defender or the beseiger? Should you prepare for a war of maneuver or one of attrition? The winners have all the answers. But in truth, it always depends on the circumstances. It always seems obviou--when its over, but at least one side gets it wrong every time. Sometimes both.

We're talking psychohistory, a la Asimov, except Mules are the rule, not the exception. The examples you chose make a valid contrast between macro and micro, between quantum and relativistic worlds. But don't forget Chaos Theory reigns even in Newtonian mechanics. The Butterfly Effect must be considered, and even classical dynamical systems like Saturn's rings exhibit delightfully unexpected resonances and bizarre behavior consistent with Newton but totally unanticipated in our first approximations. The slightest change in initial conditions can sometimes lead to totally different results. Life, and history may be purely classical, non-relativistic and non-quantum systems, but they are still non-linear.

American commanders planned the battle of Khe Sanh to mimic the conditions of Dien Bien Phu, hoping General Giap would take the bait and fight it the same way, except this time we'd know what he was up to and we'd be ready for him with technology and firepower not available to the French. Giap was a student of history too, but he knew better than to do the same thing twice just because it had worked once before. The result was a bloody stalemate, which was as good as a military victory for the Vietnamese, but a political setback for the Americans. In the real world, parallel campaigns like Napoleon's and Hitler's in Russia leading to similar results are the exception, not the rule.

And so it goes. We do need to study the book of history, but you have to remember, it is equally available to your adversary, too. And even though history repeats itself, it always does so with variations. And my original point, it all depends on who wrote the book, and who reads it as to what the final story is. Don't just study History, study metahistory, the history of historians and their work. You will see it is shot through with schools, methods, techniques, fads, feuds, styles, approaches, ideology and controversy and it evolves over time. History, is a discipline like economics, it has a history, and a geography and a psychology all its own.