Thanks for this comment. To repeat what I said below, I would shy away from discussing rise and decline in purely geopolitical terms. I'm more referring to int

Thanks for this comment. To repeat what I said below, 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. Austria-Hungary between 1866 and 1914, and I wouldn't say they were in decline then. Some countries (or at least their governments) are also starting to reject the Western secular cultural template -- Turkey, Pakistan, Hungary, and Poland.