I recently finished Anne Applebaum’s “Autocracy Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World”. It was recommended by one of the Books of the Year by The Economist. An Autocracy is a government in which a head of state and government hold absolute power. The autocratic governments featured in the book are Russia (Vladimir Putin), China (Xi Jinping), Venezuela (Nicolas Maduro), the Islamic Republic of Iran (Ali Khamenei), and North Korea (Kim Jong Un), and the basic premise is they cooperate to help them hold onto power and wealth in their respective countries and undermine democratic and liberal countries.
The book made an impression on me. I knew most of what she wrote about. I have lived in autocratic countries for almost 12 years of my life and I understand them well. Applebaum framed it into a conceptual framework that helped me see the big picture. It is not a long book, but it changed my lens on how I view global politics. I highly recommend it. Below are some of the ideas I will be taking away from the book.
I like how she put it that even though these countries do not have much in common, they are bound by a “single-minded determination to preserve their personal wealth and power.” They are together against “the West”, the USA, NATO, EU and “their own internal democratic opponents and the liberal ideas that inspire all of them” She defines the West as having the following characteristics:
- the notion that the law is a neutral force, not subject to the whims of politics;
- that courts and judges should be independent;
- that political opposition is legitimate;
- that the rights to speech and assembly can be guaranteed;
- that there can be independent journalists, writers, and thinkers who are capable of being critical of the ruling party or leader while at the same time remaining loyal to the state.
- there is a set of universal human rights and in practice, a collection of documents and treaties collectively known as the “rules-based order” on how the world ought to work.
It was shocking to read that when Russia invaded Ukraine, they arrested “public officials and civic leaders; mayors, police officers, civil servants, school directors (me), journalists, artists, museum curators, etc. Those are the kind of people in a society that champion the ideas above.
“Everyone assumed that in a more open, interconnected world, democracy, and liberal ideas would spread to the autocratic states. Nobody imagined that autocracy and illiberalism would spread to the democratic world instead.”
Autocratic governments use the dark global financial system to hide assets and launder money. For example, three-quarters of the $80 billion value of Rosneft, a Russian petroleum company, was built on stolen assets from the state. Western financial organizations earn profits from the sale of stocks in these types of companies.
“One in five condos in Trump-owned or Trump-branded buildings is owned anonymously.”
She reminded me that China absorbed all of the technology of Western companies, before banning them and pushing them out. Google left in 2010, Facebook was banned in 2009, Instagram in 2014. Even Tik Tok is banned in China!
China, Russia and other autocratic governments use internet trolls to disseminate misinformation and weaken democratic governments. They will use any ideology and things like medical conspiracies, moral panic, etc. in hopes to rewrite the international system itself. Autocratic governments use smear campaigns to defeat internal liberal opponents.
China is trying to remove the language of human rights and democracy from the international institutions that were formed in the aftermath of World War II. China prefers language like “the right to development” and they rely heavily on the word “sovereignty”. This basically means leave our autocracy alone so we can rule how we please. The President of Iran visited Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to show the world to stand up to “imperialism and unilateralism” but what he meant, according to Applebaum, was “to solidify their opposition to democracy and universal rights.”
Applebaum in the last chapter gives advice on how people can fight back against illiberalism. It is not a fight against any of these individual countries or governments, but a fight against autocratic behaviors. Networks of lawyers and public officials inside our own countries are needed to cooperate with democratic activists who understand kleptocracy the best.
“You have bad roads and bad health care, Navalny told Russians, because they have vineyards and oyster farms.”
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