Barnett does not explain how a man who never made a good decision dominated Europe for two decades. If Napoleon prevailed time and again despite his bad decisions, what was the quality of his opponents?

Barnett's Napoleon comes across as an American neoconservative who seeks hegemony via violence and not diplomacy.  Napoleon's diplomatic incapacity lost Spain and Portugal to the English and tied down a huge French army in Spain to no effect.

The British do not like Napoleon because he, like Hitler, constituted a grave threat to Britain's hegemony over the European continent.  But Barnett goes to such length  in exposing myths of Napoleon's capabilities that it removes all the glory of Wellington's victory at Waterloo.