ABSTRACT
Transitional wars are a shorthand way of designating the most serious type of major power war, the periodic showdowns over which major power(s) will make policy and rules to govern the global political economy. They are wars of transition because an essential precondition for their occurrence is uneven growth and positional movements up and down the pecking order. This chapter reviews the logic of various endism arguments to see whether they make a strong case for substantially modifying our expectations about the future of transitional war. For the purposes of the analysis, the theory of transitional warfare upon which is based on leadership long-cycle theory and can be restricted to two sets of dynamics, one global and the other regional. Transitional wars also sealed their fates as declining global system leaders. War costs are frequently indexed in terms of lives lost, property destroyed, and resources consumed.
