The fall of empires is a much-studied subject, but also one where an agreement on the cause (or causes) of the fall seems to be extremely difficult to find. For, instance, in the case of the Roman Empire, Demandt [1] describes some 210 theories on why Rome fell, and this is probably an incomplete list. Overall, however, we can divide this domain into two main subsets: theories based on several independent causes acting together (concauses) and theories based on a single cause that generates a cascade of different effects. An example of the first approach – many concauses – is the recent study by Cline on the Bronze Age Civilization [2] . The other approach is probably best represented by John Tainter’s study “The Collapse of Complex Societies” [3] where he identifies a general factor in the decline and fall of civilizations and empires as the “diminishing returns of complexity.”

Douglas Reynolds’ book, “Cold War Energy” examines the most recent case of the fall of a large empire, that of the Soviet Union. It does so falling straight into the camp of the proponents of “single cause collapse.” In this case, Reynolds identifies this cause as the peak of oil production in the Soviet Union, in turn related to the increasing costs of production generated by progressive depletion.

With some exceptions [4] Reynolds’ interpretation is clearly minoritary. In Russia, today, the prevalent opinion seems to be that the Union’s fall was due to the mistakes, or the outright betrayal, of the secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev. In the West, a commonly reported opinion is that the fall of the Soviet Union was the result of a secret agreement between the leaders of the US, UK, and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis agreed to flood the market with cheap petroleum and this caused a loss of revenues for the Soviet Union that depended on petroleum exports for its economy. In general, the most common interpretations focus on shortcomings of the Soviet economic system, namely the lack of the incentives produced by the free market that prevented the Union from attaining the same efficiency of the West in resource exploitation.

Reynolds’ interpretation, instead, is original and interesting since it turns completely around the way the subject is normally discussed. Reynolds focuses on the Union’s strengths, rather than its shortcomings. Reynolds makes the bold step of trying to look for similarities – rather than for differences – between the Soviet Bloc and the Western Bloc.

Reynolds’ analysis leads us to follow the trajectories of the two superpowers of the 20th century, the USA and the USSR. Reynolds uses the modern concept of energy return on investment (EROI) to show that both countries faced increasing costs of extraction for the vital resource that was crude oil. Neither was able to allocate sufficient capital resources to continue the growing production trend and both went through a production peak. Reynolds makes a strong case for peak oil being a major factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union and he also notes the relevance that this interpretation may have on our modern globalized world which is facing a global peak in the oil production, right in this period. The ongoing social and political turmoil, notes Reynolds, can be seen as similar to the events that brought down the Soviet Union.

A weak point of the book is that it remains strongly focused on the Soviet Union but doesn’t make an in-depth comparison with how the peaking phenomenon played out in other regions of the world. There are other cases of states that collapsed or went into economic crisis and political turmoil in correspondence with their productive peak: one is Iran, which peaked around 1975, shortly thereafter experiencing the collapse of the ruling Pahlavi dynasty. Other, more recent, cases of peaking followed by turmoil are those of Egypt, Yemen, and Syria. None of these cases are discussed in the book, although an extensive comparison is made with the case of the United States, whose oil production peaked in 1970. Also here, however, we lack an explicit explanation of why the peaking of the internal energy production had such different effects on these two large producing regions. If peak oil is the underlying factor of the collapse of complex societies, why are we talking about the “Former Soviet Union” and not of the “Former United States of America?” (even though the latter term might become useful in a non-remote future).

Reynolds is very passionate about his peak oil hypothesis as the cause of the Soviet collapse that, helps him to further develop and enrich the macroeconomic analysis. On the other hand, we should all be wary of the old saying that goes as ‘when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail'. It is valid for peak oil as well.







