Here I would like to start a broad discussion on the topic of the possibility of the global long-term cycles. And this introductory note is just a broad sketch of the types of cycles that the global economy, individual countries, and civilizational clusters go through.
I would broadly divide these cycles into three groups based on their length.

Long-Term Cycles

These cycles can last for several centuries. They typically have distinct phases and they do change the position of any country or any civilizational cluster on the global map or in the world economy. Within this category several sub-types of cycles can be distinguished:

• technological cycles are connected to the scientific and technological advances, the interaction between technologies, and introduction of various technologies into use on the global scale;
• great economic cycles - sometimes referred to as supercycles or Kondratiev waves - are the types of economic changes, especially related to the position of a country on the global scale, that take hundreds of years to happen;
• demographic cycles are related to the demographics and population changes, as well as to the composition of countries or civilizational clusters and their population growth (as an example, India is expected to overtake China as the world's most populous country next year - a change that took centuries to happen);
• territorial gain cycles are global expansions of a country's area, they are usually engendered by exploration, conquests, migration and are significantly connected to the demographic cycles.

Medium-Term Cycles

They can last for several decades which can be construed as middle-term for this discussion. World trade flows and globalization surges are the major examples of this type of cycles. For example, it is common knowledge that there were two bouts of globalization in arecent couple of centuries:

• the first one starting in the second half of the XIXth century and ending with WWI;
• the second one started starting in the 1970s and generally going on till today.

Short-Term Cycles

The final type of cycles described here are much shorter occurrences that typically last for 5-10 years. They are mostly connected to the world capital flows or investment movements between countries and civilizational clusters. As we understand the global finances in the current globalized world, these financial cycles can last for several years and are generally influenced by the central banks' interest rates.

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In conclusion, these are just my first ideas on this topic. Further analysis will be based on them. All in all, there are many types of cycles and many more can be named. But these three broad groups listed above can be considered the major ones. Subsequently, they can be analyzed in a broader context of civilizational clusters development.