Thanks for your comment. I'm agree with your second sentence. For the first, I would shy away from discussing rise and decline in purely geopolitical terms. I'

Thanks for your comment. I'm agree with your second sentence. For the first, I would shy away from discussing rise and decline in purely geopolitical terms. I'm more referring to internal aspects of decline -- social cohesion, creativity, quality of governance, and so on. It's possible to be in relative geopolitical decline but culturally and economically quite vibrant e.g. with Austria-Hungary between 1866 and 1914, and I wouldn't say they were in decline then.