The Interaction of Competitive Macrosocieties

Present world politics are dominated by the fact that (at least) two competitive macrosocieties have emerged in the course of recent historical development. These rivalling macrosocieties compete on almost all levels, in particular on the ideological, scientific, economic and military levels military progress has reached the point that a capacity for the self-destruction of mankind has been achieved. 

History shows us that in the majority of cases competing macrosocieties (states, or groups of states united by common interests and/or ideologies) have undergone phase transitions between three main phases peace , tension and war . The present state of macrosociety relations - lying somewhere between peace and tension - could be denoted as coexistence . 

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The description of competitive macrosocieties given in Sect. 6.2 is certainly a minimal one. Nevertheless the model is of considerable complexity. It contains 30 trend parameters, 15 for each society, and two time scaling factors v and , where v is absorbed in the definition (6.36) of the scaled time. The trend parameters in (6.28, 37, 39), which have to be specified for a complete model description of the interaction of the societies ifi and follows ... 

Avoiding sudden external transitions and adverse interactions between macrosocieties amounts to building-up at least a minimal degree of cooperation and mutual trust in order to reach a safe, instead of escalatory modus of competition and therefore a state of coexistence on all material and ideological levels. Certainly frank mutual criticism could still occur but the idea of destabilizing the very substance of the competing system not only for preliminary tactical reasons but permanently must be renounced. 

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