The Long Cycle of Global Politics

and the Nation-State

GEORGE MODELSKI

Universityof Washington

I. THE LONG CYCLE: BASIC CONCEPTS1

Let us define a cycle as a recurrentpattern in the life (or functioning) of a
system. The concept implies that over a certain period of time the system, in
some meaningful sense, returns to its starting point, that it regains a state
occupied at an earlier stage. If such behavior is demonstrably regular and if
recurrence takes place in a pattern that is potentially predictable, such
behavior may appropriately be called cyclical or periodic. Cycles are
commonly distinguished from trends.2
The system whose life or functioning we are observing is the global
political system.3 This may be defined as the institutions and arrangements
for the management of global problems or relations, or alternatively as the
structure for the management of global interdependence. This system was
'born' (or constructed) about the year 1500, and it is still with us;4 thus
temporally it covers the earth as one political unit and directs our attention
away from habitual and exclusive preoccupation with European affairs
and events to patterns of interdependence that are intercontinental, oceanic
and of global reach. Politically, it needs to be analyzed separately from

Revised version of paper presented at the Tenth World Congress of the International
Political Science Association in Edinburgh, Scotland, 21 August 1976. (Section 21: The
Future of World Politics: Functionalism or Territoriality?)Based on researchfirst undertaken
at the Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, in 1973-74.
1 On political fluctuations and periodicity in international affairs see Quincy Wright, A
Study of War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942), pp. 1271-76.
2 For clear definitions see
Joseph A. Schumpeter, Business Cycles (New York: McGraw-
Hill Co. 1939), vol. I, p. 200.
3 For the
concept of global political system see George Modelski, Principles of World
Politics (New York: The Free Press, 1972), ch. 13. T2.e basic point to bear in mind is that the
global political system concerns questions of allocation of authority (who governs?) and the
production of public services (to what purpose?) with respect to global, but not national or
local, processes.
4
This date is widely accepted as a turning point, as, e.g., in William McNeill's The Rise of
the West(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), Part III; Ludwig Dehio The Precarious
Balance (New York: Knopf, 1962).

214
 GLOBAL POLITICS AND THE NATION-STATE 2I5
political systems that are created for the management of interdependence at
levels (or in layers) other than global: that is, from the local political
systems of cities, villages or provinces; from state-wide (or 'national')
political systems of such countries as France, Japan, or Ethiopia; or from
regional political systems of various emphases (on security, religion, etc.)
like those of Europe or the Moslem world. Functionally, it must be
distinguished from other global structures, such as world trade (that is,
long-distance commerce) or culture. Inasmuch as the whole world is its
province, the global system has no special territorial concerns and is
essentially nonterritorial; inasmuch as it relates to, and regulates the
arteries and the mechanisms of, long-range transactions, it is predom-
inantly maritime and, more contemporaneously, aerial and extraterres-
trial.
The global political system (or, for short, the global system) that is our
basic point of reference and whose behavior is the object of this analysis
has, ever since its inception, lacked a strong central authority that would
dominate the world. It never was and is not today a world state (or an
imperial structure on the Roman model) whose center authoritatively and
administratively oversees all the other world political systems, which not
only manages interdependence at the global level but also rules over the
other national, local and regional systems that are found on this planet in
such profusion. In that special sense the world as a whole has remained to
this day a decentralized polity lacking an overriding authority.
This state of affairs--the evident nonexistence of a world state-has led
some observers to conclude that the world has been totally lacking in global
political organization and that the true elements of cohesion and order in
modern times owe nothing to politics and everything to economics. Im-
manuel Wallerstein put the matter clearly in the opening paragraph of his
recent study, The Modern World-System:5
In the late fifteenthand earlysixteenthcentury,therecameinto existencewhatwe
may call a Europeanworld-economy.It was not an empire ... it was a kind of
social systemthe world has not reallyknownbeforeand whichis the distinctive
featureof themodernworldsystem.It is an economicbutnot a politicalunity... it
is a world-economy becausethe basic linkagebetweenthe parts of the systemis
economic....
For Wallerstein, the concept most crucial to the understanding of the
formation of this'world-economy' is capitalism. For him 'capitalism and a
world-economy (that is, a single division of labor but multiple polities and
cultures) are obverse sides of the same coin.'6 It is no oversimplification of
5 I. Wallerstein, The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the
European WorldEconomy in the 16th Century(New York: Academic Press, 1974), p. 15.
6 I. Wallerstein, 'The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for
Comparative Analysis,' ComparativeStudies in Society and History, 16:4 (Sept. 1974), 391.
216 GEORGE MODELSKI
his argument to say that it might be encapsulated in the historical generali-
zation that 'capitalism created the world system.'
Yet a political scientist finds it difficult to accept the argument that,
because a system lacks a world state or an empire, it therefore has no
political organization of any kind or that such political linkages as may be
found within it therefore cannot be regarded as 'basic.' Absence of a world
state does not at all connote an absence of all politics but rather suggests the
presence of some other, possibly less obvious but surely also more interest-
ing, forms of political structuring. Quite possibly it might mean an intensi-
fication of political activities and concerns (taking, for instance, the form of
wars). Absence of world empire is entirely compatible with political ar-
rangements that at certain times leave the management of global interde-
pendence almost entirely in the keeping of a single unit, while at other times
management might either be more widely shared or fall into a state of
disarray.
Entities uniquely dominant in the global system will be called world
powers.7 An example of a historical world power is Britain: in the nine-
teenth century Britain maintained a structureof world order that at the end
of that period came to be called Pax Britannica. More technically we might
define world powers as those units monopolizing (that is, controlling more
than one half of) the market for (or the supply of) order-keeping in the
global layer of interdependence. In the case of Britain, this would refer to
the command of the sea and a related capacity to shape global affairs. To
anticipate the argument to come in a manner that will establish a clear
contrast with Wallerstein's conception, we argue that in modern times 'a
succession of world powers shaped the global system.'
To argue that world powers created and maintained the global system is
not to gainsay the role of economics, commerce, banking and finance in the
same period and in the same areas of global interdependence. Nor is it to
engage in the potentially sterile argument as to the relative importance of
economic and political factors. In the origins and functioning of the global
system, trade, finance and ultimately industry have undoubtedly played
important and at times possibly even excessive roles, but they have never
been the only basic linkages within it. For if we look at the politics of these
matters, the dominant fact would seem to be that the active focus for global
organization so far has always been a world power and that the identity,
values and resources of that power have shaped long stretches of modern
world experience.
Let us now return to the concept of cycles as recurrent patterns of

7 That is, world (or global) powers control (or substantially control) the global political

system and hence also have the capacity to regulate other global processes (such as long-dis-
tance travel). But they do not control national, or local, political systems or processes.
 GLOBAL POLITICS AND THE NATION-STATE 217
behavior and identify the property of the global system undergoing recur-
rent change as the occupancy of its management role. We observe that, as
we shall show presently in greater detail, since 1500 four states have in turn
played a dominant role in the management of global interdependence and
therefore fit the description of a world power: Portugal, the Netherlands,
Britain, and the United States. In a fairly regular and yet well spaced-out
pattern each world power has been succeeded by another in a process that
recalls, though it is not to be confused with, the long-term succession of
political regimes in a political system lacking regularized elections. One
long cycle corresponds to each global power, except in the case of Britain,
who has experienced two such cycles.
Each cycle known so far comprises and may be said to originate in a
period of weak organization (sometimes verging on near anarchy) that
ultimately transforms or dissolves into a global war. Global wars are
'conflicts that determine the constitution of the global political system';8
wide-ranging and far-reaching in their consequences, they may last over a
period of a generation, and in the end they give birth to a new world order.
One world power emerges from that conflict in an advantageous position
and organizes the world even as the struggle still goes on and then forma-
lizes its position in the global layer in the peace settlement. For the space of
another generation that new power maintains basic order and is the
mainspring of world institutions, often taking transnational forms. But the
time comes when the energy that built this order begins to run down, as all
order runs down in the absence of sturdy mechanisms of self-replenish-
ment. The prominent role of world power attracts competitors (other great
powers) and its previously preeminent if largely customary (rather than
legal) authority begins to wear out; the system moves into multipolarity.
Rivalries among the major powers grow fiercer and assume the character-
istics of oligopolistic competition. Gradually, as order dissolves, the system
moves toward its original point of departure, that of minimal order and a
Babel of conflicting and mutually unintelligible voices.
This, in brief, is an endogenous model of periodicity in the global system;
explicating how cycles in effect are the product of the structure and
properties of the system itself rather than of the environment within which
it operates. In this model environmental or exogenous influences would
have the effect of random shocks or disturbances and could account for
occasional irregularity. But since 1500 there have been four completed
cycles and the fifth is now in progress. An average cycle period of just over a
hundred years is suggested by historical experience (even though the second
British cycle seems the longest to date-130 years-as 1815 has to be
'matched' with 1945), and it is a period that might justifiably be termed

8
Modelski, Principles, p. 291.
218 GEORGE MODELSKI
'long.'9 Let us now review the historical evidence that permits us to make
the generalizations that are embodied in this model.

II. LONG CYCLES: A DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT

At the close of the fifteenth century the global system was a dispersed one.
Without being totally devoid of organization--a regular if limited stream
of goods and people did pass from Asia to Europe along a number of land
and sea routes-it lacked provision for self-maintenance and defence
against interlopers. Dispersal went hand in hand with inability even to
perceive widely, let alone to cooperate in a sustained fashion for, common
interests.
This intercontinental system of long-distance trade linked up China,
India, Persia, Egypt, and points in between with Western Europe. While
basically dispersed in organization and with much of the trafficin the hands
of Moslems, it was controlled at the western end by Venice, which by the
fifteenth century had established a monopoly on trade with Alexandria.
Venice also became, in the eastern Mediterranean if not in Europe, the
leading power and has since served as the model for later world powers.
The kings of Portugal determined to break into that system and to take
over the Venetians' highly profitable monopoly. After more than a gene-
ration of investigation and preliminary exploration in the Atlantic and
along the coasts of West Africa, and finally spurred on by news of the
discoveries of Columbus, they succeeded in 1498. In that year, Vasco da
Gama, after sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, reached Calicut in
India, one of the centers of the Moslem commercial network in the Indian
Ocean. In the series of swift naval campaigns that followed, a string of
bases was established and rival fleets were wiped off the oceans. By 1515 a
new order had been established whose backbone was the Carreirade India,
the Lisbon-Goa shipping route around Southern Africa, its mainstay the
spice trade, and its outposts well positioned for forming the basis of a new
global system. The condition of Portugal's swift success was a series of
major wars focused on Italy, and its immediate result was the drastic
curtailment of the power of Venice. Under heavy pressure at its own
doorstep the government of the city could not help the Egyptian and
Gujerati fleets in the Indian Ocean to maintain their positions against the
intruders. Portugal rose to global status in circumstances of severe conflict
of global dimensions.
9 So far as can be ascertained the
concept of a long cycle of global politics, some hundred
years in length, is new to the literature. Wright (A Study of War, p. 1272) notes 'a longer
political cycle of from forty to sixty years' suggested, inter alia, by 'the periodicity of general
wars during epochs dominated by an expanding economy and a balance of power system' (see
also pp. 227 ff.). Nikolai Kondratieffs 'long wave' of economic activity and Schumpeter's
long cycle (which he called the Kondratieff) are also about 50 years in length (Schumpeter,
Business Cycles, pp. 164, 170 ff).
 GLOBAL POLITICS AND THE NATION-STATE 2I9
The first half of the sixteenth century saw a splendid burst of Portuguese
energy. While the Spaniards were still conquering Mexico and Peru, Portu-
gal conducted trade between Asia and Europe and also monopolized
inter-Asian commerce (and knowledge about it); Portugal maintained
contacts with China and Japan, and explored Africa and Brazil. But
gradually this activity fell off; in the second half of the century only half as
many ships sailed from Lisbon as had in the first. The traditional routes
recouped some of their earlier vigor, and Portugal itself was feeling the
strain of maintaining this far-flung system on a rather slender home base,
with a population not much more than a million and a Royal House as the
principal agency of globalization. Pressure mounted from her powerful
neighbor to the east, and in 1580 Philip II of Spain finally seized Portugal.
While the union was personal rather than administrative and the Portu-
guese navies and possessions retained their separate identity, for practical
political purposes the Portuguese global system was merged with the
domains of the Spanish Hapsburgs. For a short time (but in truth only for a
fleeting moment) the union seemed to be raising an intercontinental struc-
ture of towering proportions, but the defeat of the Great Armada (1588)
soon punctured this illusion.
Some scholars would regard the sixteenth century as essentially 'Spanish'
despite the admitted Portuguese role in early exploration and discovery.
Wallerstein' ? does not consider 'the Indian Ocean trading area to be part of
the European world-economy despite the fact that it was completely
dominated by a European power' (i.e., Portugal), and he judges Spain's
Atlantic trade (in bullion) with Mexico and Peru to have been more
significant. Indeed there is something to be said for describing the system as
bipolar because by the Treaty of Tordesillas the whole world was divided
among those two powers; while Portugal had the East and Brazil, Spain
held rich colonies in the Americas. But arguments against regarding
Spain's world position as equal to Portugal's, or superior to it, are such
major considerations as the fact that it was Portugal that first seized the
heart of the preexisting world system and thus drastically altered its
structure. Spain operated on the fringes and never developed a truly global
outlook because of exhausting territorial involvements and long-standing
Hapsburg commitments (both under Charles V and Philip II) in continen-
tal Europe. The Atlantic bullion did not become significant until late into
the century; it was only upon the merger with Portugal (in 1580) that Spain
entered a global role, and then it was too late.
Absorption into the Hapsburg domain, instead of strengthening the
Portuguese global system, in fact sounded its death knell. For a number of
years before his annexation of Portugal Philip II had been engaged in
fighting his rebellious subjects in the low countries. These wealthy prov-
10 Wallerstein, The Modern World
System, p. 328.
220 GEORGE MODELSKI
inces derived much of their income from trade with Lisbon, and Antwerp
had until a short time before served as the banking and distribution center
of the Portuguese system. But when the King of Spain, some years after his
success in Portugal, banned all rebel trade, the Dutch took matters into
their own hands, sailed to the East and proceeded to capture the spice trade
from the Portuguese. The founding of the United East India Company in
1602 marked the consolidation of several earlier efforts, and by 1609, when
the United Provinces signed the Twelve Years' Truce with the new King of
Spain and Portugal, the essentials of the Dutch global system were in place.
In some ways the Netherlands were as slender a platform for a global
system as Portugal had been. The population was no greater than Portu-
gal's, and the global exertions of the United Provinces also suffered from
internal divisions; the influence of Amsterdam and Zeeland was increas-
ingly offset by the interests of the more land-oriented provinces and of the
Orangists. But for years the Provinces also enjoyed the support of England
and France, antagonistic to Spain and its pretensions of universal
monarchy. So for about a century of its 'Golden Age,' in part through the
default of others, they maintained a pattern of global activity as intricate
and possibly even more daring than that of their predecessors. Their navy
had early established clear superiority over their Iberian rivals and, forti-
fied by the Grotian doctrine of the freedom of the seas, became the basis of
their global power. Writing about their position as of 1660 Alfred Mahan
noted: 'This State... had now reached the summit of its influence and
power-a power... based wholly upon the sea and upon the use of that
element by the great maritime and commercial genius of the Dutch peo-
ple .... "The Dutch had made themselves" to use a contemporary phrase,
"the wagoners of all seas"."' About that time, three-quarters of the
seagoing merchant ships of Europe sailed under the Dutch flag. Control of
the Baltic trade and a near monopoly of the carrying trade in Europe was
combined with influence in Venice, a firm hold over the spice trade of the
Indies and substantial interests in Africa and the Americas. After 1570,
through indirect control at Seville, Amsterdam 'drew the huge prize of
Spanish America into her net' and a similar position might have been
secured at Lisbon.12 New Amsterdam (1625) in North America, Curacao
(1634) in the Caribbean, Fort Nassau (1612) in Guinea, Capetown (1652)
in Southern Africa, Batavia, Malacca and Ceylon in Southeast Asia and
exclusive access to Japan (1639); these were some of the nodes of the Dutch
network. The Bank of Amsterdam and the Bourse (1609), the Marine
Assurance Chamber (1598) and the Grain Exchange (1616) were other
11 Alfred Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History 1660-1783 (New York: Hill-
Wang, 1957, reprinted from the 1890 ed.), p. 83; the last sentence quoted from Lefevre-Por-
talis.
12 F.
Braudel, The Mediterranean(New York: Harper & Row, 1972), vol. I, pp. 636-42.
 GLOBAL POLITICS AND THE NATION-STATE 221
central institutions of that system. Dutch universities, their arts and letters,
and their printing establishments-the basic 'media' of the time-were also
institutions of universal significance.
The Dutch position deteriorated in the latter part of the seventeenth
century as rivalries and trade wars developed with England and as France
emerged in strength from the Thirty Years War in Europe. French pressure
developed first against the Spanish Netherlands and then against the
United Provinces. A situation similar to that of the Portuguese in 1580
could have arisen whereby a stronger land neighbor was taking over the
home base of the world power, but in a hard-fought war (1672-78) Louis
XIV was thwarted by Stadholder William III. Yet as fears of French
intentions continued to be fueled by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes
William decided on a daring cross-channel expedition to seize the English
throne. Brilliantly successful in this enterprise in 1688-89, he forged the
Anglo-Dutch alliance as the core of the European (and Protestant) resis-
tance to the aspirations of the Sun King.
The great wars against Louis XIV took the best part of a generation,
were fought all over the world and finally came to an end in the Treaty of
Utrecht in 1713. The Dutch had held their own against the French, but the
price was the effective transfer of global power to what had just become
Great Britain. As the English navy took over the chief burden of fighting
the French on the high seas and the Dutch concentrated on the land
campaigns, the Dutch navy lost the impetus of its expansion and began to
suffer neglect. The basic institutions of the British global system emerged in
the struggle against the French: the dominant Parliament as the focus of the
political system; the Navy, now England's largest growth industry and
employer, in firm control of the Narrow Seas, the Atlantic, and the
Mediterranean (through Gibraltar); and the Bank of England and the
National Debt (1694) as instruments of economic mobilization and con-
trol.
This 'first' British global system, sometimes referred to by historians as
the 'first British empire,' was firmly anchored in the control of world trade.
'It was evident in 1713' writes John B. Wolf, 'that the commercial advan-
tages secured by England would assure her a paramount position in world
trade.' 3 This position comprised two main elements, the first of which was
the successful exploitation by the British of the established advantages of
earlier world powers. The Netherlands, partners in the long war against
France, remained tied in with the British system; even while Amsterdam
retained its position as the center of investment finance Dutch maritime
strength and trade failed to keep up with the British and began to fall
behind. Portugal, now again her ally, and soon her client, had by the
13 John
B. Wolf, The Emergenceof the Great Powers 1665-1715 (New York: Harper, 1951),
p. 91.
222 GEORGE MODELSKI
Methuen treaties of 1703 granted important privileges to English mer-
chants; the Lisbon-London trade that soon prospered became a method
for siphoning off gold and diamonds from Brazil and from other Portu-
guese possessions as well as for contraband trade with Spanish America.
Spain, finally, in the Treaty of Utrecht, had for the first time formally
opened her Latin American kingdoms to a small measure of English trade
(one ship per year, but including the contract for slave trade). Thus without
assuming direct control over the colonial territoriesof earlierworld powers
England put in place the superstructure whereby the cream might be
skimmed off the top and the whole fitted into a global economic pattern.
Second, in addition to this measure of indirect control, the British position
also gained strength steadily in Asia and the Americas, in both areas in
direct conflict with France. By 1763, France's role in Canada, in the
Caribbean, and in India was close to finished and the English East India
Company had become a great Asian power.
Ascendancy in world trade was combined with a European policy that
was beginning to be defined as that of 'balancer.' This meant that, while
territorial annexations on the European mainland and permanent alliances
with the major powers were avoided, Britain's new weight could be thrown
on the side of the opponents of a power aspiring to continental supremacy.
As France and other European great states continued to be embroiled in
expensive and time-consuming continental affairs they were less and less in
a position to act effectively outside Europe. A European balance was
meant to make sure that they would not. Britain, itself newly united, had
become the secure home base from which economic change was slowly
shaping the forces of the Industrial Revolution that in the next century
would sweep Europe and then the world.
The first British system lacked something of a clear definition because the
Treaty of Utrecht was a compromise settlement with France and Spain
rather than the decisive victory that subsequent global settlements turned
out to be. By 1763, nevertheless, France's global aspirations had been
successfully circumscribed, as noted above. Yet the American War of
Independence, an early war of national liberation, and the opportunity it
afforded for France to get even with Britain threw the system into serious
disarray. The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire that followed
put to the test one of the system's basic premises, the European balance of
power established in 1713. Another generation of global warfare was
required before a global order was reestablished and reaffirmed by the
settlements of 1814-15.
The second British system repeated some of the essential properties of
the first: the European balance, now in the keeping of the Concert of Great
Powers; the command of the sea, and a controlling position in extra-Euro-
pean and world trade, the latter two firmly reestablished in the early years
 GLOBAL POLITICS AND THE NATION-STATE 223
of the Napoleonic conflict by Nelson's naval victories. Territorial posses-
sions, both in Europe and extra-European, continued to be disdained.
Despite some common elements, however, this was essentially a whole new
cycle of global politics; the positions lost in the critical 70s and 80s of
eighteenth century were regained in two decades of war against French
Revolution and Napoleon, and the result was a new world order. Its novel
elements were the development of London into the center of world banking
and shipping; newly emerging industrial and technological superiority,
making Britain the 'Industrial Workshop of the World,' and the notable
sway of its political and economic doctrines including free trade as a
legitimization of the new economic system.
The second system began to lose vigor in Europe at first, as early as the
decade of the sixties. Britain's industrial monopoly was successfully
breached by European and American challengers; predominance in ship-
ping and the importance of the control of sea communications were put
into serious question by the growth of railways (British-developed, too).
When the world economy settled into a phase of persistent depression after
1873, commercial competition grew fierce and put British traders on the
defensive for the first time in two centuries. Britain's industrial mainstays,
coal and cotton, ceased to be world growth leaders. Bismarck's empire,
fueled by German nationalism, put into question the stability of the
European balance, in much the same way that it had been threatened
earlier by France and Spain. In an undignified scramble of imperialism, all
the European powers hurried to maximize their colonial possessions.
By 1900 it had become clear to many that Pax Britannicawas well past its
prime and that the world system was swiftly losing its ordering capacities.
The thought that the United States (and Russia) were the powers of the
future had been a familiar one in Europe at least since de Tocqueville, and it
seemed even more convincing after 1865. But the bridge between an untried
future and a familiar present was as difficult to cross as ever. Forms of
world organization that might dispense with the role of global power were
never seriously contemplated. The world was once again moving into a
period of great wars to settle the question of world power.
The first German war gave a provisional answer, and its outcome seemed
to assure the United States a leading role in the settlement of the peace and
in the laying of the foundations of the new international order. But
President Wilson was repudiated at home, and the United States neither
took up the position that was its own for the taking nor proffered an
alternative scheme for world order. The resulting vacuum of authority
attracted another challenge and another cataclysmic clash.
The two great wars of the twentieth century (called the First and Second
World Wars confusingly because, as we have shown, the world has known
world wars in several earlier cycles too) may be seen as one generation-long
224 GEORGE MODELSKI

period of global conflict forming the world order that emerged in 1945.
They were German wars, similar in structure and operation to earlier
French and Spanish wars. This century's wars brought the position of
world power to the United States. The United States earned that role
through its decisive contribution to the anti-German coalition in the two
wars, and Britain quietly and voluntarily transferredto it the responsibili-
ties for world order. The final step in the drawn-out process of succession
occurred in 1947 when in the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan
American leaders declared their willingness to step into Britain's place also
on a peacetime basis.
The global system is now well into its fifth long cycle. The experience of
the four earlier cycles tells us something about the shape the current cycle
might assume in the not so distant future, even though past experience need
not necessarily be the last word on this subject. The future is not predeter-
mined but open-ended; the present, too, has a part in making it. Let us
examine the mechanisms and the inner workings of the cycles whose
empirical existence we have now verified and whose essential features are
summarized in Table I.

III. THE MECHANISMS OF THE LONG CYCLE AND THE NATION-STATE

The long cycle of global politics is the product of two conditions: the urge to
make a global order; and the special properties and the necessary weak-
nesses of the global systems the world has experienced to date. In the most
elementary sense long cycles occur because there is a global system suscep-
tible to such fluctuations. Were there no such institutional arrangement
then there could be no recurrent patterns characterizing it. And once the
knowledge about the nature of the globe had become current in the
mid-fifteenth century and once the capacity and organization were created
that were capable of spanning that globe and regulating its processes in a
deliberate manner, then roughly at the same time the desire to create a
global order emerged. This urge might have been the property of only a
very few and, as is common in such pioneering enterprises, could have been
properly envisaged only by even fewer minds. Once its practicability had
been demonstrated it may have been understood fully by a still small and
restricted number. But once acted upon and implemented, it began drasti-
cally to shape human affairs on a global scale and may have responded to
the unarticulated needs of many. Ever since the sixteenth century the urge
to shape world order might be taken as given, and it needs to be guarded
against as much as it needs to be acted upon. In its raw form it is an
expression of a will to power, the urge to control and to dominate, to
imprint a pattern on events. The real question then becomes not whether
there might be global order but who is organizing it and for whose benefit.
 GLOBAL POLITICS AND THE NATION-STATE 225
The question becomes 'who gets what, when and how' in the operation of
that order, a question commonly recognized as quintessentially political.
We may also take it as given that all order deteriorates. In every known
system order is continually lost. Structures run down and need to be
maintained. Since the processes of maintenance and of new construction

TABLE I
The long cycle: Basic Facts

Formativeglobal Legitimizing Institutional Landmarksof

Worldpower conflict settlement innovations descent

Portugal Italian wars Treaty of Organization of exploration Spanish annexation

(1494-1517) Tordesillas (1494) and discovery (1580)
Global network of bases Wars of Religion
Carreira de India 'Sovereignty (1576)
Antwerp entrepot

United Provinces of Spanish wars 1609. Twelve-year 'Mare librum,' Free trade Wars with England
the Netherlands (1579-1609) Truce with Spain Amsterdam Bank, Bourse, War with France
(War of Dutch Grain Exchange (1672-78)
Independence) United East India company The English Revolution

Great Britain (first) French wars 1713. Treaty of Command of the sea (Navy)
(1688-1713) Utrecht European Balance of Power
(Louis XIV) Indirect control of world
trade
Bank of England, National
Debt
Independence of
the United States
Partitions of
Poland
French Revolution

Great Britain French wars 1814-15. Paris, Vienna Naval command: antislavery Anglo-German naval
(second) (1792-1815) Free trade: gold standard race
Industrial Revolution Imperialism
Independence of Latin Russian Revolution
America Great Depression
'Opening' of China and Japan

United States of German wars 1919. Versailles United Nations

America (1914-18, 1945. Yalta, San Francisco, Strategic nuclear
1939-45) Potsdam deterrence
Multinational corporations
Decolonization
Space exploration

cannot be perfectly coordinated with the postulated loss of order, the

progress of every system is bound to be uneven and to pass through
successive stages of decline and then of restoration and recuperation. The
underlying logic of this argument is identical with familiar explanations of
periodicity in economic activity. Long-term business cycles in particular
are commonly seen as prompted by fluctuations in the rate of capital
accumulation. The structure of a world order may be regarded as a form of
226 GEORGE MODELSKI
capital asset and as the product of innovation and investment; if so,
changes in the rate of build-up and decay in structures of world order may
be seen to lead to (possibly accelerated) changes in the rate of political
activity.
But despite such general considerations and even though historical
experience is limited, we need not conclude that all global systems must
inherently be subject to pronounced fluctuations of the type we have
identified here as the long cycle, that is, a pattern of events that includes
severe global war. On more theoretical grounds we would in fact argue that
certain types of dispersed order might be less liable to such significant
instability.'4 The operative questions then become those pertaining to the
properties of global systems; long cycles are the result of certain crucial
characteristics of those systems.
Let us take note in detail of the properties of the five global orders we
have just described: their origin and formative experience in global war; the
power monopoly they originally rested upon; the functional specificity they
represented; and the drift into territoriality that they seemed unable to
avoid.
The systems of world order we have known each originated in a great
outburst of activity that was both creative and destructive and that was
closely linked to conditions of global conflict and large-scale violence. Each
had its origins and derives its identity from a world war. Each sprang from
institutions and arrangements forged either during or in the immediate
aftermath of such wars. Each of these wars, in turn, was a conflict of large
geographical extent, long duration and considerable ferocity linked to
substantial casualties. In the past two hundred years, such global conflicts
have accounted for about three-quartersof all war-related casualties. In an
important sense, moreover, these wars have also had the character of civil
and internecine warfare, notorious for its deadly character. The Italian
wars that inaugurated modem history could be seen, with a little imagina-
tion, as the continuation of some centuries of rivalry between Venice and
Genoa. The Dutch war of Independence was clearly a civil war. The French
and the German wars of more recent experience were also fought among
ruling groups and populations bound by close relationships. (We might
recall inter alia that William III was a cousin of Louis XIV, and Wilhelm II
was a grandson of Queen Victoria.) Hence their impact upon human

14 Cf. G. Modelski, 'World Order-keeping,' in Geoffrey Goodwin and Andrew Linklater,

eds., New Dimensions of World Politics (London: Halsted Press, 1975, pp. 54-72); John K.
Galbraith argues that 'the market system, like the classical combination of competitive firms
and small-scale monopoly of which it is the moder prototype, is broadly stable. Fluctuations
. . .are self-limiting and eventually, self-correcting. The planning system [of large corpora-
tions]... is inherently unstable.' Economics and the Public Purpose (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1973), p. 179.
 GLOBAL POLITICS AND THE NATION-STATE 227
consciousness and the human spirit, ready to cope with only so many
disasters, was clearly profound.
Global wars are not ideal breeding grounds for world order. In the most
simple formulation, world wars produced an order that generated more
world wars and, in that unusual but important sense, perpetuated itself.
General political analysis suggests that national political systems whose
path to the present leads through violent civil strife (e.g., the French
Revolution, the American Civil War) do not easily shake off the burdens of
such heritage.15 Such political systems are marked by polarities and clea-
vages, expectations of more violence, lack of participation in decision-mak-
ing and lack of consideration for the interests of large segments of the
population. They tend to be short on features that encourage smooth
self-maintenance and early renewal. The great wars and the prodigious
energy discharges they generated have been the catalysts of global systems;
but, once that energy spent itself, these systems had few mechanisms for
recharging their batteries and on the contrary still labored under the
burden of earlier disasters. Inevitably they drifted into decay.
The structural-maintenance problems of a world order are inextricably
linked with its second basic property, the monopoly of global power upon
which this power is at first based. Originating in extensive global conflict,
ensuing world orders have tended to rest substantially upon a distribution
of military power that evinced high degrees of concentration in military
capacity for global reach. For the first four global systems this meant, in
essence, a preponderance of naval power and the capacity to organize and,
when necessary, to interdict maritime communications. The British ele-
vated this requirement to the status of a high art, devising a doctrine of
'command of the sea' which Mahan later rediscovered as sea power, and
they made it a decision rule always to outbuild rival navies by a substantial
margin (the 'two-power standard').16 In the contemporary global system
the United States' control of ocean, air and electromagnetic space was until
recently uniquely preponderant.17
Monopoly (which is never absolute but requires a substantial control
over the relevant system) creates rents. This means that to its holders accrue
benefits larger than they otherwise would be, e.g., in a more dispersed
system. In the past these benefits have revolved around greater than
average security (which can be reinvested in capacity for higher organiza-
tion and productivity); preferential access to, better knowledge of, and

15
Robert A. Dahl, Modern Political Analysis, 3rd ed., (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice
Hall, 1976), pp. 88-89.
16
For the two-power standard as a British decision rule see Kendall Moll, The Influenceof
History upon Seapower 1865-1914 (Stanford: Stanford Research Institute, 1969), pp. 11 ff.
17 Data on
post-1945 trends in power concentration may be found in G. Modelski, World
Power Concentrations(Morristown, N.J.: General Learning Press, 1974).
228 GEORGE MODELSKI
superior bargaining power in global transactions and communications
(bringing additional wealth through trade and services) and a capacity to
'set the rules' in world affairs. In each cycle, such benefits helped to create a
'golden age' for the world power, making it an object of respect, acclaim
and imitation: a 'model of development.'18
But monopoly rents also attract rivalry and competition. Hence in its
time each world power also faces the necessity of confronting other great
powers willing and ready to reach out for global status. From initial
unipolarity, the global system moves into bipolarity and multipolarity. The
initial preponderance gained in world conflicts cannot and does not last
because it inevitably attracts rival power centers. The global system that is
past its prime becomes the arena of 'oligopolistic rivalry,' wherein a
number of major powers strive to maximize their (usually short-run)
advantages and long-term considerations of world interests become in-
creasingly secondary. In the latter stages of the second British system this
phase came to be known as one of'imperialism' but parallel processes may
also be observed in others. Interspersed with periods of collusion, rivalry
drifts into increasing animosity and cutthroat competition and may even-
tually deteriorate into anarchy.
Moreover, the elements legitimizing monopoly in world arrangements
have steadily declined. The King of Portugal lost little time in proclaiming
himself 'lord of conquest, navigation and commerce of Ethiopia, India,
Arabia and Persia.' He proceeded to exclude all other powers and their
ships from the major part of the world ocean and to require licenses for all
ships trading in the East; he rested his authority on Papal Bulls (Romanus
Pontifex 1455, later reconfirmed) and on treaties with Spain (Tordesillas
1494). But each of the succeeding global powers was less exclusive in its
claims, the Dutch and English monopolistic trading companies of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries being in the nineteenth century suc-
ceeded by the universalist doctrine of Free Trade. Thus the legitimacy of
competition was rising even as the opportunities for monopoly were nar-
rowing.
The third important characteristic of past world orders concerns their
functional specificity, that is, their narrowly specialized base. This had to
do in part with the important role economic motives and policies played in
all global systems. The early explorers frantically and purposefully
searched and ransacked large parts of the world for gold; then they carried
off spices and other valuables. In the nineteenth century they went on to
18
Monopoly in the global system was not incompatible with a European balance of power
which in its later form was a form of oligopoly: competition among the few. Such a balance
could be a way of sharing in the gains of global monopoly. The concept of monopoly is
analytically more versatile and preferable to those of core and periphery. A classic analysis of
the advantages accruing to a 'dominant economy' is Francois Perraux, 'Esquisse d'une thiorie
de l'economie dominante,' Economie Appliquee, I: 2-3 (April-Sept. 1948), 243-300.
 GLOBAL POLITICS AND THE NATION-STATE 229
make the world a safe market for Manchester cottons or for the oil to light
the lamps of China. A heavy emphasis on economic matters went in tandem
with the establishment of monopolistic practices by force and the extrac-
tion of advantages through superior power; it was also the reverse side of
lack of emphasis on the other necessary elements of stable political systems,
development of links of sympathy and solidarity and of a cultural con-
sensus. Absence of broad political institutions in turn meant that areas of
inflexibility and incapacity for adjustment obtained, and a predisposition
to sharp swings rather than smooth evolution. Narrow specificity fostered
inequalities and on such counts brought added fragility, brittleness and
instability.
Finally, there is the drift into territoriality. In its pure conception, global
power concerns global functions and the desire and ability to solve global
problems. In its concrete aspects, this means a capacity for mobilizing large
resources, ensuring mobility over long distances and operating complex
networks of communication. While all such activities require 'pointsd'ap-
pui,' that is nodes, or bases, and some headquarters areas, they do not call
for extensive territorial control in the imperial mode.
The essence of global power, therefore, is functional network control. It
is the accomplishment of maximum global functions with minimal terri-
torial burdens. Its negative aspect is that policies are explicitly designed to
minimize territorial entanglements. Early in the modern period English
statecraft (possibly relying on Venetian experience) developed the rule of
avoiding continental acquisitions, and this, more than anything else, made
possible the role of European balancer and consequently also of global
power. An island state found it easier to adopt such policies. In a positive
sense the Portuguese at once grasped the possibilities of network control;
the system of bases created by Albuquerque on instructions from Lisbon
served them well. But even they tried to hold too many bases and drained
away scarce manpower and ships in vain attempts to hold on to them. The
Spaniards launched straight into territorial conquest, and while the land
they seized served them well it did not leave them quite free to launch into
global programs (that is, their ability to control global interaction c. 1600
proved quite inadequate). The Dutch and the English East India
Companies slowly but inexorably grew into mechanisms of territorial rule.
Britain profoundly strained her first system through the futile attempt to
hold on to the American colonies. When her second global system came
under pressure after 1870, she once again sought refuge in territorialityand
for a while took heart in seizing large chunks of unspoken-for land in
Africa and elsewhere. The British Empire looked good on the map, but the
fading spirit of world order could not be recaptured through such irrele-
vancies.
Territoriality is the final nemesis of global power. It is a defensive
230 GEORGE MODELSKI
response to the challenge of oligopolistic rivalry. It preservesforms and the
illusion of control, land or cities, where the substance can no longer serve a
useful purpose. Defence of fixed positions and other distant frontiers
consumes disproportionate resources and drains vitality from the global
network. It leads back into layer fusion,19 the con-fusion of global with
national or local tasks, invites conflict with national and local leaders and
adds to the general climate of animosity and disorder.
The Role of the Nation-State. In the known systems of world order the
nation-state has consistently filled the key position in two ways: all world
powers have also been nation-states; and, in the functioning of global
systems, nation-states have played the main roles.
As we have seen, successive world orders have each been created by a
world power. The world powers in turn have all been nation-states. Portu-
gal was 'the first of the modern European nation-states.'20 She had attained
her national boundaries by 1249, had consolidated her national identity in
wars with the Moors and Castile (1383-1411), considerably earlier than
Spain, for example, who did not reach that condition until the sixteenth
century. The Dutch state, forged in civil war with the Spanish monarchy,
launched into a global role soon after the formation of its basic national
institutions. England, too, formed her identity in the Elizabethan struggle
against Philip, although Britannia did not emerge full-fledged until she was
ready to rule the waves early in the eighteenth century. The United States is
among the world's oldest and most successful nation-states. Thus nation-
states defined the identity of successive global systems.
This is the empirical evidence for positing a basic association between
nation-states and world power. Further analysis suggests that the associ-
ation has been a two-way one. Nation-state led to world power; that is,
successful establishment of an effective national political system, as in the
cases of Portugal, the Netherlands and Britain, has been the precondition
for successful global action. The nation-state proved to be the only organi-
zation capable of spearheading and then sustaining large operations at long
distances and on a global scale. Papal coordination was tried but generally
found wanting in the organization of crusades;city-states alone, like Venice
(quite successful in the eastern Mediterranean), powerful continental
empires, such as those of the Hapsburgs, the Ming dynasty or the Mughals,
did not or could not make it. The nation-state mobilized the resources and
also supplied the coherence, motivation and strength of purpose required
for such extraordinarily ambitious and far-flung enterprises. While both
the Dutch and the English in their earlier phases relied in some of their
efforts on trading companies, these too had clear national identities, were
19 Modelski,
Principles, pp. 173 ff, 284-85.
20 C. R. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire 1415-1825 (New York: A. A. Knopf,
1969), p. 4.
 GLOBAL POLITICS AND THE NATION-STATE 23I
closely coordinated and were only one of a set of elements deployed, naval
and military efforts as well as administrative organizations being quite
inseparable from them.
But the association also ran the other way. Global power, in its turn,
strengthened those states that attained it relatively to all other political and
other organizations. What is more, other states competing in the global
power game developed similar organizational forms and similar hardiness:
they too became nation-states-in a defensive reaction, because forced to
take issue with or to confront a global power, as France confronted Spain
and later Britain, or in imitation of its obvious success and effectiveness, as
Germany followed the example of Britain into Weltmacht, or as earlier
Peter the Great had rebuilt Russia on Dutch precepts and examples. Thus
not only Portugal, the Netherlands, Britain and the United States became
nation-states, but also Spain, France, Germany, Russia and Japan. The
short, and the most parsimonious, answer to the question of why these
succeeded where 'most of the European efforts to build states failed'21 is
that they were either global powers or successfully fought with or against
them.
A process of diffusion was thus initiated, and its third stage (after
globalization and contestation) was the universalization of this form of
political organization as the most viable and most obviously desirable at
the intermediate level. Not only were those major powers who competed
among themselves selected out as nation-states, but they also became
models for the whole world to imitate, irrespective of needs, special condi-
tions or requirements.
In direct and indirect (feedback) causation this process of political
formation has over the past half-millenium produced the most vital of all
secular trends of politics: the emergence of the nation-state as the dominant
organization in world politics.22 Gradually but at a steadily rising rate, the
number of nation-states and their relative weight in society have been
climbing until in the past hundred years nearly the entire world has come to
be covered with them; and so the process must soon come to a halt. It is a
process that can best be described as an exponential growth curve, now
flattening out, within which there is room for ups and downs and random
fluctuations but which as a whole is to be explained as a basic product of the
operation of the global system.
So much for the secular trend. If we look closely at the properties of the
global system that account for its periodicity (and that we reviewed above)
we note that they too all crucially depend on global powers being nation-
21 Charles
Tilly, TheFormationof National States in WesternEurope(Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1975), p. 38; a question to which Tilly provides a complex answer, the most
important part of it being 'success in war,' or as we would say, success in global warfare.
22 Modelski,
Principles, ch. 7.
232 GEORGE MODELSKI
states. In other words strong cycles are attributable to the fact that the units
accounting for cycles are nation-states. Nation-states have proved the most
effective units for fighting global war; other competing organizations have
been selected out. The basic unit of world order has become one best fitted
to survive a world conflict.
The monopoly rents earned by world powers accrue to members of a
nation-state, and nonmembers are excluded. This exclusion and the struc-
tural inability to redistributeeffectively the proceeds of global status are the
major incentives for rivals to enter the competition.
The national identity of a global power severely circumscribes the bonds
of solidarity it can extend to nonnationals as well as the links of communi-
cation, education and culture it can establish to lend strength and flexibility
to the global system. Hence specialization on political and economic ques-
tions makes even mutually advantageous deals appear oppressive or
exploitative.
For nation-states the confusion between territorialcontrol and national
safety is particularly easy to fall into. Global powers have a tendency to
decline into colonialist states, yet as nation-states they have great difficulty
in assimilating colonial domains and are liable to continual anti-colonial
pressure. States with world missions that fall to defending some remote
frontier become stagnant empires vainly trying to keep the barbariansfrom
the gates. The maintenance of bases (Singapore for Britain or the protec-
tion of the route to India) comes to be seen as an irreducible priority after
their most useful life has passed. In the tension between functionality and
territorialitya nation-state, aptly described by Stein Rokkan as 'essentially
an agency for real estate management,' is peculiarly liable to succumb to
the temptation of clinging to the land.

IV. PHASES OF THE LONG CYCLE

The average duration of known historical cycles has been something over a
hundred years. Moreover, for some reason not now evident the cycles have
coincided quite closely with historical centuries, so that to each recent
century (e.g., the nineteenth) roughly corresponds a distinct cycle (the
second British). A century is the life of about three generations, and if we
were to look within each cycle for evidence of a Buddenbrooks syndrome
we might say that one generation builds, the next consolidates and the third
loses control.
For our own analytical purposes the long cycle will be divided into two
phases: the ascending phase and the descending phase. The ascending
phase has its sources in the disorder and disintegration from which a global
war originates. The creative and constructive elements of that war-its
solidarity and coalition building, the definition of common goals and
 GLOBAL POLITICS AND THE NATION-STATE 233
global purposes that emerges and its projects and accomplishments in goal
attainment-also belong to the ascending phase.
A great postwar settlement (such as Vienna) for the most part ratifies
what has already happened, but it also marks the formal ending of a period
of sustained warfare. The ascending phase continues for a time, on past
record for a generation, only to experience a gradual exhaustion of energy.
Global problems arise that remain unattended to or are taken up by rising
new leaders and competitors; conflicts are generated that do not seem to
yield to solutions. At some point the curve turns and begins to descend until
such time as the disintegration of authority and the unrestrained assertion
of narrow interests lead to a new global conflagration. The destructive
aspects of this process mark the lowest point of a long descending phase.
The nation-state plays distinct, and contrasting, roles in the two phases
of the long cycle. In the ascending phase the global power responds to
global problems, creates new national-governmental or transnational
institutions and meets the most important needs of the constituents of the
global system. In consequence there is little pressure on other states to
address these problems. Moreover the conditions of turmoil and dis-
integration characteristic of the preceding phase of descent have demon-
strated the inadequacies and weaknesses of smaller states, especially their
inability to withstand the ill winds of world insecurity and the titanic
pressures of great wars. Such conditions lead directly to what E. H. Carr
has called the crisis of self-determination: doubts about the basic viability
of nation-states. Or as John Herz put it, writing fifteen years later, 'as a
matter of fact, the meaning and function of the basic protective unit, the
"sovereign" nation-state itself... become doubtful.' The positive and the
wise response to global disorder then becomes, as Walter Lippman saw it
(writing at the same time as E. H. Carr), a solidary alliance of Great
Powers.23
But the process holds within itself the seeds of its own dissolution. While
nation-states in general seem for a time to appear irrelevant, possibly even
destructive to world order (do not great wars start out as quarrels among
the small?), the powers that are constructing and upholding this order also
are nation-states. In fact the global power is itself the 'most perfect'
nation-state of them all and the most imitated; hence nation-states never in
fact become completely irrelevant. Global power moreover is basically
tenuous because it is weakly institutionalized; nation-states, even as global
powers, are not devices best suited for attacking the complex problems of a
world system (but only the most simple among them, that of waging war).
23 E. H. Carr, Conditions
of Peace (London: Macmillan, 1942), ch. 3; also his Nationalism
and After (London: Macmillan, 1945); John H. Herz, 'Rise and Demise of the Territorial
State,' World Politics, 9:4 (July 1957), 473-93; W. Lippman, U.S. Foreign Policy (Boston:
Little Brown, 1943), ch. X.
234 GEORGE MODELSKI
Global power, finally, 'carried by a ruling nation cannot in the long run be
supported solely by the powers of the people of that nation,' as commen-
tators on the Spanish universal monarchy noted early in the seventeenth
century: in its relations with other peoples such a power must 'satisfy them
and give them an interest in the continuance and stability of the whole.'
As the capacity of global powers to meet world problems declines in a
period of general peace and increasing complexity of relationships,
demands mount on other nation-states, and they begin to assume new
functions and increasing responsibilities. They regain their hold on popular
loyalty; they become the chief problem-solvers, and at times of rising
security their ability to maintain peace appears quite adequate. Secondly,
as the monopoly position of the global power gradually erodes, competi-
tion sets in from other nation-states for global status and regional leader-
ship (for are they too not nation-states, with as much right...). The
appeals invoked on behalf of opponents to global power are varieties of
nationalism and forms of counternationalism. Competition of major
powers for support among minor powers, too, takes the form of mutual
'nation-building'-foreign aid schemes develop into schemes for buildup
of national political systems. Thus oligopolistic rivalry leads directly to the
strengthening of all nation-states and to an all-round intensification of
nationalism.
Our model, therefore, predicts that the role and salience of the nation-
state in the global system will differ according to the phase of the long cycle.
In the ascending phase that role will tend to diminish, and in the phase of
descent it will tend to rise. This proposition has the status of a theoretical
hypothesis and requires added validation before it can be fully accepted as
an empirical generalization about earlier cycles or as a firm prediction for
the future.

V. THE FUTURE OF WORLD POLITICS

It remains to examine the implications of this analysis for the future of

world politics. The future that is relevant here is the next quarter-century,
the twenty-five years until the year 2000. The future of the nation-state, on
our analysis, is the product of two processes, a secular historical trend, and
the long cycle; in their turn both these processes might be seen as modes of
the functioning of the global system.
The secular historical trend of world-wide proliferation of nation-states
is reaching the quantitative limits of its geographical setting. If that trend
were to be described by a logistic growth curve then the twentieth century is
now seeing the leveling-off portion of that curve. Qualitative and intensive
growth might yet continue, but physical coverage of the globe's surface is
setting obvious limits to the process. For the historical trend, therefore, the
stage of rapid growth is over. If, as we have argued, the formation of
 GLOBAL POLITICS AND THE NATION-STATE 235
nation-states has been the product of the functioning of the global system,
just as the functioning of that system has depended upon nation-states,
then the approaching completion of that process, in some respects at least,
must also have repercussions on the global system.
But in the present paper our chief object of inquiry has been the long
cycle as another possible determinant of the role of nation-states in world
politics. We have shown that the nation-state is crucial to the operation and
characteristics of the long cycle, and we have outlined the argument
according to which the phase of that cycle determines the relative position
of the nation-state. If we accept the model of the long cycle and are
comfortable with its empirical referent then we must conclude that at the
present time the global system has passed or is about to pass the ascending
phase and may already have entered the phase of descent. If that were so,
then our model would predict for the next quarter-century increasing
salience for the nation-state and rising nationalisms linked to major power
confrontations and animosities. Attempts to meet global problems would
be made primarily by relying on national solutions. Given the limitations
that national action faces at the global level, the prospects for substantial
solutions would not appear to be especially bright; hence the likelihood of
rising shortfalls in the global order balance.
That much could be predicted from our model. But this theoretical
model is no more than an explication of the functioning of the global
system we have known and experienced over the past few centuries. That is
why we cannot exclude the possibility, however small we might judge it to
be, of changes in that system sufficiently thoroughgoing to alter its basic
modusoperandi.We might remark in parenthesis that the point at which the
system changes from the ascending to the descending phase might also be
one peculiarly favorable to structuralreconstruction because it is a moment
when contending forces are about evenly balanced. The system could then
be most easily propelled in a new direction.
We have no means of predicting what the new direction might be except
that it could be moved away from the present system that relies too heavily
on the steady, if long-spaced-out, progression of global wars and finds it
difficult to settle into more stable patterns of development. But such a
restructuring would also affect the role of the nation-state and might
possibly diminish it quite significantly. All in all our prediction is open-
ended. On past form, the nation-state will gain strength in the near future,
but we could also be in for a surprise.