Hegemonic Transition and the Third World War: A Comparative Analysis of Cyclical Patterns in Global Conflict, Imperial Decline, and the Emerging Multipolar Disorder (2022–2026)

This paper argues that the period 2022–2026 constitutes the early phase of a systemic global conflict functionally equivalent to a Third World War, though its dispersed, multi-theater, and hybrid character defies the conventional framing of its twentieth-century predecessors. Drawing on long-cycle hegemonic transition theory (Modelski, Goldstein), the Thucydides Trap framework (Allison), and comparative analysis of five centuries of power transitions, it demonstrates that the current constellation of simultaneous armed conflicts - spanning Ukraine, the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa - is an interconnected system of violence driven by the decline of American hegemony and the rise of China as a peer competitor. The analysis proceeds through five stages: theoretical framing of hegemonic cycles, structural analogies with WWI and WWII preconditions, the cascade escalation mechanism, accelerating variables (AI, dollar fragility, elite corruption), and geographic risk distribution across the Indo-Pacific and Middle East.