Review of Dmitry Orlov’s Reinventing Collapse

Dmitry Orlov’s new book, Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects, was published very recently. I pre-ordered a copy because Dmitry has had first hand experience with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and he believes, as I do, that economic collapse is likely to come first, if a society is on an unsustainable course. The great mystery to me is what lies on the other side of an economic collapse.

In this book, Dmitry gives his view of what may be on the other side, and how one might prepare for it. Dmitry starts with a recipe for collapse of a modern military-industrial power

The ingredients I like to put in my superpower collapse soup are: a severe and chronic shortage in the production of crude oil (the magic elixir of industrial economies), a severe and worsening trade deficit, a runaway military budget and ballooning foreign debt. The heat and agitation can be provided most efficaciously by a humiliating military defeat and widespread fear of a looming catastrophe.

He then goes on to explain how the Soviet Union followed this recipe in the late 1980s, leading to its collapse, and how the United States, with its conflict in Iraq, may be following a similar course.

The Oil Drum