The Victory of Peace:
an Exit from Kondratiev Cycles

Historical periodization of wars, crises, and turning points of the world order through the logic of Kondratiev long waves, by centuries — starting from 1618 (the Thirty Years’ War) up to the present.

This is an analytical model of systems, not a mechanical chronology: wars here function as symptoms of exhaustion of technological-economic and institutional waves.

Kondratiev World Cycles and Major Wars
(17th–21st Centuries)

17th Century

1618–1648 — Thirty Years’ War
End of the first long wave

• Collapse of medieval Christian universality
• Wars of religion and dynasties
• Demographic catastrophe in Europe

Result:

• Peace of Westphalia (1648)
• Birth of state sovereignty
• Beginning of a state-centric world order

→ The first modern world order

18th Century

1701–1714 — War of the Spanish Succession
1756–1763 — Seven Years’ War
End of the manufactory-mercantilist wave

• Globalization of warfare (Europe, America, India)
• Colonial competition
• Financial overextension of empires

Result:

• Rise of the British Empire
• Decline of France and Spain
• Crisis of absolutism

→ Preparation for revolutionary restructuring

Late 18th – Early 19th Century

1789–1815 — French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars
End of the agrarian-absolutist wave

• Collapse of monarchical legitimacy
• Mass armies
• Ideological warfare (nation, citizen)

Result:

• Congress of Vienna (1815)
• “Concert of Great Powers”
• Attempted restoration of order

→ Entry into the industrial era

19th Century

1848 — European Revolutions
1870–1871 — Franco-Prussian War
End of the first industrial wave

• Nationalism
• Mass politics
• Industrial armies

Result:

• Unification of Germany and Italy
• Disruption of the balance of power
• Arms race

→ The mine planted under the 20th century

20th Century

The Terminal Phase of the Industrial Cycle: War as the Limit of Development

1914–1918 — World War I
1939–1945 — World War II
End of the heavy-industrial and energy wave

The twentieth century became the culmination of the state-centric logic of development and, at the same time, revealed its historical limit. Industrial power, science, and the mass organization of society were, for the first time, fully integrated into the mechanism of total war.

Key characteristics of the period:

• total mobilization of economies and populations;
• industrialization of destruction;
• ideological absolutization of conflict;
• the emergence of weapons of mass destruction.

War ceased to be an instrument of politics and became an existential threat to civilization.

Outcomes:

• the collapse of imperial systems;
• attempts to create a global institutional order (the League of Nations, the United Nations);
• the formation of a bipolar world;
• nuclear deterrence as the foundation of peace.

→ Peace in the twentieth century was based not on development, but on mutual fear.

The Cold War (1947–1991)

Stability Without Transition

After the Second World War, humanity for the first time realized that any further war would mean self-destruction, yet it proved unable to exit the logic of confrontation at the institutional level. The world entered a phase of controlled instability.

Systemic limitations of the twentieth century:

• global institutions were designed to contain war, not to enable a transition of development;
• security remained a monopoly of states;
• the human being did not become a subject of the world order;
• technologies outpaced ethical and legal mechanisms.

→ The twentieth century demonstrated the limit of war as a mechanism of renewal, but failed to create a peaceful alternative for exiting the cycles.

Late 20th – Early 21st Century

2001–2021 — War on Terror / Global Instability
End of the industrial-financial wave

• Asymmetric wars
• Erosion of international law
• Digital technologies without institutions

Result:

• Crisis of the UN
• Crisis of NATO
• Growth of authoritarianism

→ The old order no longer works

21st Century — Turning Phase

2022 – … — War in Europe / Global Confrontation
End of the state-centric wave

• Return of large-scale war
• Hybrid, information, and cyber threats
• Risk of nuclear escalation
• Climate and biospheric factors

Current state:

• A world without a common order
• Institutional vacuum
• Technologies stronger than law

→ A civilizational point of choice

General Logic

Each Kondratiev cycle ends with:

1. Systemic crisis
2. A major war or a series of wars
3. An attempt to create a new world order

But:

• All previous orders were state-centric
• Each next order became more expensive and dangerous
• Now the stake is the survival of civilization

Key Conclusion

We are not merely at the end of another Kondratiev cycle. We are at the end of the state as a monopolistic institution of security.

This is where the New International Security System and the Digital Society propose, for the first time:

• a break with the historical repetition of wars;
• a transition from power cycles → to institutional evolution;
• a shift from “war = renewal” → to a digital civilizational order.

Not a “mistake of leaders”, but a limitation of the historical architecture of human development itself.

Historical Limitations of Development Architecture

At the beginning of each new cycle, it was impossible to avoid major wars, because humanity entered a new technological cycle with old institutions, the old anthropology of power, and without mechanisms of global legitimacy.

1. Kondratiev cycles began faster than institutions could change

Structural asymmetry of development

In every cycle we observe the same pattern:

➡ War became a “synchronization mechanism” between new capabilities and old structures.
Humanity lacked instruments of peaceful synchronization.

2. Absence of a universal entity of global development

Historically, there was NO:
• global subject of responsibility;
• supranational institution with real legitimacy;
• recognized mechanism for limiting sovereignty.

The world consisted of:
• empires;
• dynasties;
• states;
• ideologies.

Each actor considered itself the “center of history.”

Without a common subject:
• transition → only through conflict;
• balance → only through force;
• order → only after catastrophe.

3. Sovereignty as an absolute (the main trap)

In all previous cycles:
Sovereignty was inviolable, even when it threatened the survival of humanity.

Consequences:
• it was impossible to create preventive global institutions;
• any attempt to limit sovereignty = war;
• international law acted after, not before, catastrophe.

The UN, the League of Nations, alliances — reactive, not proactive.

4. War as the only "reset mechanism"

Until the 21st century, war performed a systemic function:
• destroyed obsolete empires;
• redistributed resources;
• created new borders;
• legitimized a new order.

Historically, no other way existed to "cleanse the system."
Revolutions, wars, collapses were analog forms of system updates.

5. Absence of institutional thinking on a global scale

Humanity thought in terms of:
• territories, not systems;
• power, not algorithms;
• force, not architecture.

No one asked:
• how to design a world order;
• how to prevent war institutionally, not diplomatically.

Only after nuclear weapons did the realization emerge that the next war could be the last.
But an institutional solution still did not appear.

The Missed Opportunity of the 20th Century: the ZDAS Project (the National Automated Economic Management System)

As early as the 1960s, in Ukraine,
at the Institute of Cybernetics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR,
under the leadership of Academician Viktor Glushkov,
the project of the National Automated Management System (ZDAS / OGAS) was developed.

This project was far ahead of its time and, in essence, already included:

• the idea of a unified digital governance space;
• a distributed network architecture;
• algorithmic coordination of the economy;
• automated managerial decision-making;
• a transition from administrative control to a systemic architecture.

ZDAS was the first attempt to institutionalize technology
and to replace governance through power
with governance through algorithms and systems.

The project was not implemented not because of technological incapacity,
but due to institutional resistance, fear of losing manual control,
and the incompatibility of algorithmic transparency
with an authoritarian model of sovereignty.

6. The human being was not a subject of security

In all previous cycles:
• the human = a resource;
• population = a mobilization base;
• human rights = an internal affair of the state.

➡ State security ≠ human security
➡ A state could “win” even while destroying millions.

Therefore, war remained an acceptable instrument.

7. Why TODAY the situation is different

For the first time in history, all constraints are lifted simultaneously:

1. Technologies enable:
   • global coordination;
   • digital law;
   • automatic enforcement of norms;
   • transparency of decisions.
2. The nuclear and technological threshold:
   • war = self-destruction;
   • there are no winners.
3. The human has become a digital subject:
   • digital identity;
   • digital property;
   • transnational participation.
4. Sovereignty is no longer absolute de facto:
   • cyberspace;
   • finance;
   • climate;
   • information.

8. The main historical paradox

Humanity could not avoid major wars before —
but now it cannot afford to repeat this path.

Before:
• war was "costly, but it worked."

Now:
• war = the end of the system.

9. Key Conclusion

Humanity did not transition peacefully between cycles because it:

1. lacked instruments of global design;
2. did not recognize the human as a subject of security;
3. absolutized sovereignty;
4. failed to institutionalize technologies;
5. used war as a systemic update.

The New International Security System, which forms the foundation for building a Digital Society, is a conceptual and technological continuation of the National Automated Management System (ZDAS) project developed by the Institute of Cybernetics of Ukraine — the first attempt in history to institutionalize the governance of complex socio-economic processes through systems analysis and automated decision-making.


In this sense, the New International Security System is a contemporary project intended to make peace what war was in previous historical cycles: not a destructive act, but a governed mechanism of transition between stages of civilizational development through institutional, digital, and value-based evolution.