if you don't have hegemony, you have the balance of powers: if you don't have the balance of powers, you have hegemony. if we're getting out from hegemony we'll go into the balance of powers (you can sort of see this in the everyone-surrounding-the-prc's reaction to the prc: everyone gangs up together to balance out the putative new hegemon)

you need total consensus down to the last man for pacifism to work. works great in groups of 10 people, not so much with groups of 2 billion: you need to credibly threaten the insane yelling person while making sure you're not the insane yelling person yourself