Foundational Statement of Systemic Collapse Theory (SCT)
A New School of Thought in International Relations
Foundational Statement
The international system is not moving towards a renewed global order nor stabilising into a multipolar equilibrium. Instead, it is entering a long phase of systemic, managed breakdown, in which major powers no longer construct architectures of order but actively prevent alternative architectures from emerging. This is the core premise of Systemic Collapse Theory (SCT).
SCT is founded on the recognition that the classical assumptions of International Relations — order, stability, balance, polarity — no longer describe the operative dynamics of the 21st century. Power today is exercised primarily through systems, not states; through infrastructures, not institutions; and through strategic denial, not hegemonic design.
The world has become a fragmented network of overlapping, uneven, and structurally interdependent systems which collectively generate a condition of controlled collapse. This collapse is not spontaneous. It is produced, maintained, and exploited by the deliberate actions of major powers that benefit from keeping the international environment in a partially disordered state.
Core Principles
1. Power is Relational, Not Territorial
The value of territory has diminished relative to the value of the systems that give territory meaning:
Semiconductor supply chains
Energy corridors
Maritime chokepoints
Cyber architectures
Data infrastructures
Mineral ecosystems
Sovereignty is increasingly expressed through infrastructural command, not borders.
2. Major Powers No Longer Build Orders — They Block Alternatives
The United States has shifted from global architect to global veto power, preventing the rise of any coherent counter-order.
China expands in scale but remains constrained by technological chokepoints.
Russia has transitioned into a disruptor-state, leveraging escalation and ambiguity rather than restoration.
This marks a new era: the age of strategic denial.
3. The System Operates Through Vacuums, Not Poles
Regions such as the Red Sea, Sahel, Horn of Africa, and Caucasus are not arenas of contestation because they are central — but because they are structurally undefinable.
SCT calls these spaces systemic vacuums:
zones where no actor can establish stable control, and where multiple powers compete to prevent others from doing so.
4. Africa Is the Material Core of the Emerging Century
The continent contains the mineral, demographic, and geographic foundations of 21st-century power. Africa is not peripheral; it is a structural pillar of the coming technological age.
5. Survival Belongs to the Systemically Adaptable
In an age defined by cyber vulnerability, technological dependency, and infrastructural fragility, the decisive variable is not strength, but anticipatory resilience — a state’s capacity to absorb shocks, diversify systems, control chokepoints, and adapt before collapse materialises.
Analytical Commitments
SCT rests on four methodological and epistemic commitments:
Ontological Shift
The world is not a coherent system but a fractured network of infrastructures and dependencies.
Methodological Shift
Analysis must prioritise systems over states:supply chains, digital networks, maritime corridors, mineral basins.
Normative Shift
The objective of contemporary power is not order but managed fragmentation.
Strategic Shift
Power moves through algorithms, logistics, and networks before it moves through armies.
Purpose of the Theory
The aim of SCT is not to describe the world as it should be, but to explain the world as it is becoming. It provides scholars, policymakers, and practitioners with a conceptual framework capable of interpreting:
Infrastructural conflict
Algorithmic sovereignty
Mineral determinism
Hybrid disruption
Systemic vulnerability
The emergence of hinge states
The geopolitics of global vacuums
in a way that existing IR paradigms cannot.
Closing Statement
Systemic Collapse Theory asserts a simple but decisive truth:
Power in the 21st century becomes visible only after it has already been exercised.
Those who learn to read its movement within systems — before its effects appear — will define the world that survives beyond 2030.
SCT is therefore not merely a theory of collapse, but a theory of anticipatory power in an age where order is no longer the organising principle of international life.