NOURNEWS - The issue of the decline of the United States' power and position in the international system and why and how it has long been discussed among professors and analysts of international relations. However, there are still ambiguities and misconceptions in this regard to the extent that some equate the decline of the United States with its "collapse" or "disintegration" due to a misunderstanding of power transitions in international relations and the failure to use a theory. It is a suitable explanatory.
George Modelsky's theory of long cycles is one of the theories that can help understand the decline of the United States and the transition of power in the current international system.
In the framework of the theory of long cycles, George Modelsky and William Thompson try to provide general models for analyzing why and how great powers emerged and declined in the position of global leadership or hegemony by studying the history of developments in international relations. In their view, the global hegemon is an actor who has the sole task of regulating the international system and has the ability to innovate and move forward in the public interest, and this is the ability to legitimize its behavior and actions in the eyes of other actors. He does. According to Medelsky and Thompson, the history of international relations shows that there are recurring cycles of large-scale wars and global leadership that are repeated every hundred years, and as a result of these centennial cycles, we see the transfer of hegemony between the great powers. They see this replacement in the leadership position of the powers as shaping the world system.
The theory of long cycles considers four stages for each process of the rise and fall of a hundred years: The first stage (world power) is when a superior power emerges after a world war and sits in a position of global leadership or hegemony and then its superior status. Relies on its sources of power, especially naval power (and today air power). In the second stage (delegitimization), the excessive expansion of the hegemonic leadership and its high costs and the inability of the hegemon to provide one of these costs gradually lead to the beginning of the decline of the hegemony. In the third stage (decentralization), the power of the hegemon is weakened and new competitors emerge, which challenge its declining position and conflicts arise. Finally, in the fourth stage (the world war of the great powers), a new war takes place between the rivals and the hundred-year cycle is repeated until a new world leader and hegemon takes the place of the fallen leader. Among these four stages, the period of hegemonic domination is relatively peaceful, in contrast to the period of relative equality between hegemony and its challengers, which we see tensions and challenges.
First, the decline of the United States means the end of energy and its capacity for individual planning and regulation of world affairs and the financing of public goods, or the function of hegemony, and therefore should not be equated with the collapse or disintegration of the United States. Declines have not necessarily collapsed. Secondly, why the decline of US hegemony should be attributed to its declining competitiveness following the emergence of new competitors and the extraordinary complexity of global multilevel equations, which, on the one hand, force the United States to protectionism and focus on national interests, and on the other hand, intervention. And it has made the cooperation of other great powers to manage and resolve international crises in the form of a unipolar order and board model inevitable.
Third, on how the US hegemony is declining, the application of international facts to the four-stage division of the Modelsky theory over a hundred-year cycle has shown that the US is now in the third phase of decentralization due to the emergence of new rivals. Is able to balance American power by the end of America's 100-year cycle, by 2045. Of course, it was said that, firstly, China's replacement is never definitive, but depends on many conditions and considerations, and secondly, due to the fundamental changes in the world over the phenomenon of war, a full-scale world war between the US and China over future leadership is very unlikely. Power will be exercised peacefully or we will eventually see limited regional and proxy conflicts.
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