Until around 2015, I tended to be moderately positive about the world. There were far more democracies than when I started at the BBC in 1966, I would tell myself, and markedly fewer dictatorships. Africa and Latin America, once host to so many military dictatorships, were now mostly run by elected leaders. The terrible threat of nuclear war had receded. A billion people were being lifted out of poverty. Yes, what Vladimir Putin had done in Crimea in 2014 was worrying, and Xi Jinping was starting to make disturbing speeches about Muslims and Uyghurs; but given that I’d seen Soviet communism melt away across eastern Europe and in Russia itself, I still felt there was reason for optimism.
That pretty much ended in 2016. Brexit damaged the European project, and Donald Trump shook the columns of American leadership. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, based on the completely false assumption that most Ukrainians would welcome the return of Russian domination, and China’s ruthless suppression of political freedom in Hong Kong have darkened the 2020s much as German, Italian and Japanese intervention darkened the 1930s. And the tide of democracy has turned. Elections have so often become shams. Corruption in government has turned into a major global industry. Well-intentioned but indigent governments welcome Chinese cash because no one else will supply it, and pretend not to notice the strings attached – or even welcome them. Populist movements well up in countries that have traditionally been moderate and calm.
And so the kind of neo-Whig version of history, which taught that trade would bring us all closer together and economics would make war impossible, has collapsed. China, you might have thought, would see peace as essential for its brand of capitalist-Marxism-Leninism to thrive. Yet you only have to read Bill Clinton, speaking in 2000, to realise how very unrealistic that idea has become: “Growing interdependence will have a liberating effect in China … Computers and the internet, fax machines and photocopiers, modems and satellites all increase the exposure to people, ideas and the world beyond China’s borders.” It would be as hard for governments to control the internet, he famously added, as it would be to nail Jell-O to a wall.
But instead of the technology mastering the autocrats, the autocrats have learned to master the technology. In this new age of autocracy, men like Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Narendra Modi and Viktor Orbán run entire countries according to their own personal political interest, recharged from time to time by carefully manipulated elections; though last month the voters of India unexpectedly refused to give Modi the majority he needed. Meanwhile the US, whose opinion used to matter just about everywhere on Earth, suddenly seems as intimidating as a scarecrow in a beet field.
Anne Applebaum, as anyone familiar with her writing will know, is well-positioned to catalogue this new age of autocracy. Like her, Autocracy, Inc. is clear-sighted and fearless. I remember disagreeing with her genteelly at editorial meetings in the early 1990s, when she was writing about the danger that Russia’s post-communist implosion would one day present for the west, after Boris Yeltsin left office. She talked even then about the need for Nato to build up its defences against the time when Russia would be resurgent; while I, having spent so much time in the economic devastation of Moscow and St Petersburg, thought the best way for the west to protect itself was by being far more generous and welcoming towards Russia. Events have shown which of us was right, and it wasn’t me.
Autocracy, Inc. is deeply disturbing; it couldn’t be anything else. But Applebaum’s research is as always thoroughgoing, which makes it a lively pleasure to read. When she writes about Zimbabwe, for instance, she uncovers a weird and shocking cast of characters to explain the degree to which a potentially wealthy country has been devastated by unthinkably bad government; including the presidential envoy and ambassador-at-large Uebert Angel. Angel, a British-Zimbabwean and evangelical pastor, teaches “the fundamental aspects of becoming a millionaire”; his personal assistant, another Brit called Pastor Rikki, can allegedly get you a face-to-face meeting with President Mnangagwa for a couple of hundred thou. Rikki was shown on camera promising this to an undercover reporter for Al Jazeera, though he states that the resulting documentary was “brutally edited to portray a false narrative”. Skilfully, Applebaum shows how important a financial entrepôt like Dubai is in promoting the interests of governments such as Zimbabwe, and how it facilitates China’s growing financial control over countries which, left alone by the west, are available for sale or hire.
This is more in the nature of an extended essay about the way the world is going than a major study, but it is a masterclass in the marriage of dodgy government to international criminality. Applebaum is particularly good on information-laundering outfits, “typosquatters” which have the appearance of real, dependable outfits (Reuters.cfd instead of Reuters.com, Spiegel.pr not Spiegel.de). These pump out savagely pro-Russian material, which people read on social media and pass on: for instance the fake press release last year which announced that Nato was going to use Ukrainian troops in France to deal with pension protesters. Obviously false, but it still led to smashed windows and broken bones. The Jell-O is firmly stuck to the wall.
It’s a disturbing world we live in, but understanding its ways, keeping our own counsel, and knowing who to trust have never been so important. Anne Applebaum, who 30 years ago foresaw the way we were going, is one of those we can trust.
• John Simpson is the BBC’s world affairs editor. His BBC Two programme, Unspun World, will return in the autumn. Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World is published by Allen Lane (£20). To support the Guardian and the Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
