Raphaël P.P. Dosson
Winston Churchill famously said, “those who do not learn history are condemned to repeat it.” The truth is, even when we do learn history, we often remain trapped in its repetition. Worse still, attempts to act on historical lessons—such as after World War I—often end up creating new conditions for history to repeat itself. And when we choose passivity or forget history altogether, as seems to be the case today, history turns us into its next lesson. This captivity to historical cycles appears methodologically inescapable. Worse, it suggests a kind of universal curse: one that plays out at both the level of individual human nature, as Morgenthau explored, and at the level of interstate dynamics, as seen in Mearsheimer’s analysis. Power—and its corrupting influence—remains the defining feature of both human and international relations.
Power returns, war resurfaces, and crisis deepens—all of which we are collectively experiencing today. Analogously, whether we look at: 50–60 year Kondratieff cycles of economic growth and contraction; 80–100 year Power Transition Theory (Organski and Kugler); 80–120 year Modelski Long Cycle Theory of global power; 100–150 year Gilpinian hegemonic cycles; the World-Systems Theory of Wallerstein (center-periphery expansion); the 200–300 year secular Malthusian cycles of population and resource pressure; or even Toynbee’s 500–800-year civilizational cycles of east-west transitions – they all appear to converge in our current historical moment.
A better framework for studying these recurring cycles in international relations may be found in the evolution of the discipline of International Relations (IR) itself: at the intersection of theory (knowledge, agents, discourses) and practice (interstate relations, wars, trade, power distribution, international system configuration). The frictions between theory and practice are not separate—they are co-constitutive. Reality shapes theory, and theory shapes reality. IR moves through recurring cycles aligned with the rise and decline of structural power. These cycles manifest in theory—through oscillations between realism/rationalism and liberalism/reflectivism—and in practice—through the alternation between periods of peace and moments of war. Their co-constitutive relation make that the state of intellectual realm is directly associated (or inversely related) to the state of the system’s power distribution (i.e., war/peace). The closer to war the more realist and the further from conflict the more idealist. The undulating patterns of theory and practice converge at critical inflection points, resulting in paroxysms: major wars or profound ideological transformations.
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