Three decades ago, many liberals proclaimed victory for democracy and a “rules-based international order”. But today the majority of the world’s population live in countries that are only partially free, or are under one form or another of autocratic rule.
Why are autocracies on the rise? In her new book, Autocracy, Inc., Pulitzer prize-winner Anne Applebaum provides an answer: there is a “network” among the world’s autocrats, who use the clandestine routes of our interconnected world to further their aims and undermine democracy.
Autocracy Inc. is a club of dictators and their states, Applebaum writes. Like the concept of “autocracy” itself, this incorporation is loose and fluid. The club’s members are not bound by any ideological kinship or constitutional structure. Among them are hard dictatorships (like Belarus, China, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation), and hybrid illiberal democracies or softer autocracies (like Turkey, Singapore, India, the Philippines and Hungary).
For some reason, Applebaum does not pay a comparable share of attention to the Arab monarchies (which do not seek the end of democracy), nor to the hybrid regimes.
Deals, not ideals, drive the autocrats together, according to Applebaum. Their collaboration is based on a common obsession with power and money. They face off against a dwindling group of democracies, which they try to undermine by all available means.
At times, this confrontation leads to war, as in Ukraine. To Applebaum, Russia’s war against Ukraine is the first battle in a larger war. It is part of “a conscious plan to undermine the network of ideas, rules, and treaties” that have defined the now nearly extinct liberal world order.
Are they really all in cahoots?
Unfortunately, though stylishly written, this book hardly lives up to the high standards Applebaum’s readers have come to expect. She does not provide tangible evidence of the autocrats nurturing master plans or consistently coordinating their actions. Her sources are frequently media reports, around which she drafts plausible assumptions.
In Applebaum’s narrative, the autocrats exchange visits, covet power, hate liberal principles and democracy, help each other survive through media manipulation, and teach each other the “dark art of sanctions evasion”.
For example, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela could not be more different from the Islamic Republic of Iran, yet these two members of Autocracy Inc. find common ground in anti-Americanism, “shared grievance”, and “a shared interest in clandestine petroleum sales”.
By extension, it seems like all the other members are in cahoots too. But are they? The autocrats’ unity is muddled by their own constantly clashing interests. Their malfeasance is limited by their incompetence.
The key issue with Applebaum’s analysis is that contradictions in her theory fail to appear. Too much of the book proceeds via omission and conflation. It often patches up observed plausibilities with the author’s own idealism, presenting them as certainties.
The autocracies, says Applebaum, not only keep tabs on the progress of the club members, but also time “their own moves to create maximum chaos”.
In the autumn of 2023, additional aid to Ukraine stumbled in the European Union and the United States, due to the opposing efforts of “minorities with deep Russian ties, led respectively by Viktor Orbán in Hungary and by a handful of MAGA Republicans in Congress”. At the same time, Applebaum writes, Iranian-backed Hamas conducted a terrorist attack against Israel.
To me, it is not clear who the “minorities” were, nor the nature of their alleged ties to Russia. More importantly, Applebaum does not tell us why Iran would attempt to aid the anti-Ukrainian efforts of these minorities.
Applebaum clearly knows her theory is not as clear-cut as it might seem. She admits “there are no ‘blocs’ to join and no Berlin Walls marking neat geographic divides”.
Yet bloc thinking persists. Applebaum never asks whether the autocrats have the capacity — logistical, psychological, military or otherwise — to mount a coordinated attack on “the West”. After all, autocracies continue to develop strategic cooperation with the same countries they deplore. The global West depends on China for a lion’s share of production and the Russian Federation continues selling natural resources that are re-sold later.
Autocracies remain transactional. They respond to any incursion into their own perceived sphere of power, whichever political camp or movement it is coming from — not just from the “liberals”.
An exposé of the ‘grey zone’
For a non-specialist audience, Autocracy Inc. presents an intriguing, if morbid, exposé of the “grey zone” autocrats operate in. At times, Applebaum makes an interesting point, only to drop it later on.
Discussing the post-1991 era of business expansion in Eastern Europe, Applebaum spends some time on the future Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who was then deputy mayor of Saint Petersburg. According to her, even then, Putin had a “close-knit cabal” around him, biding his time to restore an authoritarian regime.
During the 1990s, the future autocrat was exposed to the double standards of Western democracies. As long as there was money, those democracies were only too happy to provide help for establishing illiberal regimes abroad.
The fruitful idea of the foundational influence of Western hypocrisy fizzles out on the next page, however. What remains unanswered is the question of whether Putin is an idealist, a cynic, a pragmatist, or all of these. For those readers who want to know more, Philip Short’s meticulous account of Putin’s career comes to the rescue: there have been many “Putins”, as the man has changed and adapted to the power constellations around him.
Applebaum’s book places a strong emphasis on how autocracies seem to be exchanging media tropes and supporting each other. This is the most substantial part of the book. China’s media and satellite television provider StarTimes, for example, helped satellite network Russia Today circumvent its widespread expulsion after the Ukraine war, continuing to make it available to customers. Autocracies also echo each other’s thematic presentation of events, what Applebaum calls “information-laundering”.
Although certainly interesting in content, the chapters do not go further than asking how the propaganda antennae transmit their message far and wide. Applebaum does not address how — and most importantly, why — autocratic media manage to convince people in Latin America, the Middle East or Africa of their anti-Western (and in every sense anti-democratic) views.
Clearly, the “great movement for democracy” and grassroots activism — which Applebaum is fond of — are not inspiring enough for those people. Potentially, their lack of inspiration is a byproduct of the autocratic propaganda that instils cynicism and nihilism in those countries, an effect Applebaum illuminates.
The Russian media’s audience, for example, is bombarded by a range of false versions of major events, one so wide it is impossible to grasp. The cacophony leads to hopelessness, says Applebaum. But young people in liberal democracies, too, display a palpable hopelessness and disbelief in a better future, and even in the system itself.
A war against authoritarian behaviours
The war against autocracy is not a war against a particular country or a bloc, says Applebaum. Rather, it is a war against authoritarian behaviours.
Applebaum calls for solidarity, unity and coalition building, along with sanctions against offending countries. A network of lawyers and anti-corruption activists should help, she says. “Economic warriors” who can track sanctions in real time should set the record straight. This certainly means more exposure of autocracies, and probably more sanctions.
Applebaum never questions the efficacy of sanctions, their contribution to autocrats’ propaganda messages and, most importantly, their human cost. Autocrats can exempt themselves from the effects of sanctions regimes. Their beleaguered citizens, though, often cannot. Propaganda apparatchiks never fail to capitalise on this. For example, in late 2023, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov put his own spin on a statement by Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen, saying she “minced no words describing the purpose of the sanctions which is to hurt ordinary people”.
I share Applebaum’s preference for liberal democracy and its renewed defence, which she articulates well in her book’s final pages. The world is a visibly smaller place due to the policies of the past three decades. Globalisation worked only too well, tying everybody — good, bad and neutral — into one interconnected whole.
Reading Applebaum’s book, it might seem as if “they” are winning. But this is almost certainly an overstatement. Migrants are not storming the borders of autocratic states in hopes of getting a Venezuelan or Iranian passport. Instead, there is mass migration to Australia, America, Canada and Europe. There is a reason the discussions around the numbers coming to the US through its southern border are a political hot potato, carrying decisive electoral weight.
The West clearly has a competitive product that continues to hold its own. Autocracies will not go extinct, but neither will they win at large. In some places in the world, “democracy” will remain a slur.
This piece was first published in The Conversation.
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