While the rest of the world wastes precious mindshare on the latest 'kiss and tell', self-help, and 'Asian Century' books, those of us in contact with the real world can enjoy some excellent summer reading with two new entrants in the Global Guerrillas genre. Both will provide great ideation.

REINVENTING COLLAPSE by Dmitry Orlov

NOTE: Dmitry graciously sent me a PDF of his book's early manuscript so I was able to provide some feedback. Thanks!

Reinventing Collapse makes three points:

The similarities between the US and the USSR, as countries that distorted their political and economic systems to become global superpowers, were/are greater than the differences. The implication is that the US will suffer a fate similar to the USSR: economic, political, and social collapse.



A comparison of the US and USSR's economic and social systems reveals that at a deep level, the US is much less resilient than the USSR. This implies that a collapse of the US will be substantially worse than the experience of the Soviet Union.



A series of insights on how to survive the collapse of a superpower (this is my favorite section).



McMAFIA by Misha Glenny

Glenny dutifully documents, in exquisite detail, the rise of transnational criminal organizations in every global region. Simple formula: morally neutral global economic platform + economic/social distress = the rapid proliferation and unabated growth of transnational criminal organizations. The book is an excellent read and a natural compliment/backgrounder to Brave New War's analysis. Without a fundamental revision of global governance (not very likely), we will soon become very familiar with local variants of the stories he documents.