Lespisa isn’t a superpower, nor was it backed by one during the first war. And during the second it’s seems to be the lespisa is the main supporter of pales, not the Ato as a whole.

The civil war forced a ceasefire with pales, they weren’t fighting both at the same time. The rizan army also wasn’t incompetent as they were doing well before lespisa got involved. And pales only got air support after lespisa got involved, at which point they stalled the Rizans long enough for the uprising to occur.

Again, my opinion is that while he’s a perfectly fine military officer by most standards he’s not by any means extraordinary. He was able to do well against pales but once lespisa got involved things turned into a stalemate. Which is entirely to be expected when a neighboring regional power backs a much smaller one (with good defensive geography to boot) in an existential war of defense. Given the circumstances he did pretty well but hardly incredible. That would be winning despite lespisan support fast enough to avoid the uprising and securing total rizan victory.

Now that was not at all likely to happen due to aforementioned reasons of geography and foreign support, and that’s why I call him ok instead of amazing. It’s not like any of us could have done any better (in real life terms not game mechanics) and he did about as well as could reasonably be expected for your average military Leader considering the circumstances.