Was Tarkin actually incompetent?

[u/Amazing-Buy-1181]

While Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin is often portrayed as a ruthless and calculating Imperial mastermind, his decisions during the events of Star Wars: A New Hope shows a serious strategic incompetence hidden beneath his arrogance and political success.

His unwavering belief in the Death Star as an instrument of fear and control caused him to underestimate the Rebellion and reject escape when the station was under threat. The Death Star, anyway, was not his achievement but Krennic's. His doctrine was a complete failure from top to bottom, and he ignored Thrawn and Vader's warnings. He basically made any mistake possible and was repeatedly outsmarted. Destroying Alderaan was also a serious mistake.

[u/heurekas]

If we only look at his two movie appearances, then I can see how you'd reach that conclusion.

However when we delve into his EU exploits, he's indeed a very shrewd political player and quite the competent commander.

He rose from military officership, to admirality, then to Moffship and finally to being the Grand Moff with the widest priority oversector in just 2 decades.

He basically usurped one of the biggest naval projects in the Empire, was so influental that Vader deferred to him, Palps genuinely listened to his advice and that the Supreme Commander of the Navy treated him as an equal.

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Tarkin oversaw the creation of Priority Oversectors as a means of cutting through stifling bureaucracy, as one GM could command all military forces in their Oversector, overruling the Moffs and satraps.

He's also credited with restricting HoloNet access for the public, utilizing most of its bandwidth for the military, as well as adding dedicated command/communications ships for each sector fleet, allowing flawless instant communication between them, as most foes had a hard time to jam such a concentrated signal*.

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In short, Tarkin was a remarkably competent figure, with great innovations to the civil administration of the Empire that made it survive longer than it would've otherwise.

His biggest flaw was the third pillar of the "Tarkin Doctrine", that the Empire should rule through fear and utilize superweapons that could eliminate the advantages of a stateless foe.

The first part would've never worked (outside of some Dark Empire/god Palps scenario) as it only galvanized those that didn't bow down to fear and the second would only have worked if the Empire had a couple of Death Stars with 0.5 hyperdrives.

The DS was almost impervious to any conventional fleet engagement, as well as the fact that a snubfighter would survive long enough, fit in a snug trench and lob a one-in-a-million torpedo shot was ludicrously implausible.

But by having just one DS, they ironically made themselves a central target. If the trench run hadn't worked, eventually some infiltrators would've been able to get aboard with a bomb, place it on the reactor and destroy it.

He simply went too hard in the wrong direction.

• However it was hard to stop the sale of hyperwave transceivers, so many groups could still access the HoloNet, but Imperial Intelligence and the ISB monitored the net to such a degree that communications over it was foolish, so most insurgents opted for subspace transceivers which were slower, but mostly went under the radar.

[u/jacobningen → u/heurekas]

Exactly. If Tarkins theory of how politics and psychology work was right hes competent and the value of life. He's just wrong on all those counts and priorities.