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Anne Applebaum. Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. New York: Doubleday, 2024.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and historian Anne Applebaum has written a short but insightful book about the form that many undemocratic regimes are taking in the world today.

After the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended, many Western politicians and commentators became optimistic about the spread of democracy from West to East. Global communication and trade would lead more countries to adopt the political and economic institutions of the “free world.”

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.

Many countries have seen the rise of new autocrats who use international connections to strengthen their own positions. Unlike the autocrats of an earlier era, they are less ideologs than deal-makers, less interested in joining a bloc of nations than making self-serving connections wherever they can, even within more democratic countries. They seek wealth and power for themselves and their friends as much or more than for their own nations. “Autocracy, Inc.” refers to the networks of connections that support such leaders both within and among countries.

Often the cooperation among autocratic forces is economic, as when countries like the United Arab Emirates are available to launder or invest stolen wealth. Sometimes it is military, as when Russia and Iran helped Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad put down a popular uprising.

Applebaum encourages us to stop thinking of autocrats as local leaders, too isolated to pose much threat to the democratic West.

A world in which autocracies work together to stay in power, work together to promote their system, and work together to damage democracies is not some distant dystopia. That world is the one we are living in right now.

Kleptocracy

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Putin led Russia to create a new kind of government, which Applebaum calls an “autocratic kleptocracy.” It exists not just to govern but to siphon off national wealth for personal gain. Even when he was mayor of St. Petersburg, Putin was profiting from his authority to issue export licenses, diverting income from the sale of commodities “into the bank accounts of an obscure group of companies owned by Putin’s friends and colleagues.” After becoming president, Putin created an autocratic form of capitalism:

Russian “capitalism” was, from the very beginning, designed to favor insiders who knew how to extract and hide money abroad. No “level playing field” was ever created in Russia, and the power of competitive markets was never unleashed. Nobody became rich by building a better mousetrap. Those who succeeded did so thanks to favors granted by—or stolen from—the state. These were the true beneficiaries of this system: the oligarchs whose fortunes depended on their political connections.

Putin benefited from his background in intelligence, since the KGB was experienced in money laundering to cover up its funding of terrorists and agents in other countries. He also took advantage of the “amoral world of international finance,” in which Western banks and other institutions were happy to see money flowing in their direction, whatever the source. The interconnected world of the global economy provides many places to hide money. Some US states—Delaware, Nevada, South Dakota, and Wyoming—have made it especially easy for crooked autocrats and their cronies to invest anonymously.

In her chapter, “Kleptocracy Metastasizes,” Applebaum focuses on Venezuela and Zimbabwe as other examples of corrupt autocracies. She emphasizes how much their leaders—Chavez and Maduro in Venezuela, Mugabe and Mnangagwa in Zimbabwe—benefited from the assistance of other autocracies to remain in power, such as Russia, China, Iran, Cuba and Turkey. She says little about financial dealings elsewhere, so I was not entirely clear on whether she considers a leader like Xi Jinping of China a kleptocrat as well as an autocrat.

Anti-democracy

Today’s autocrats are less likely than Adolph Hitler or Joseph Stalin to embrace a particular ideology, whether right or left. They do, however, have an interest in undermining democratic thinking, both at home and abroad. They may offer no utopian vision, no promise of a better world just over the horizon. They are more likely to tear down the promise of democracy, depriving their people of any alternative to autocratic rule, with all its flaws. Applebaum gives the example of China after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989:

To prevent the democratic wave then sweeping across Western Europe from spreading to the East, China’s leaders set out to eliminate not just the people but the ideas that had motivated the protests: the rule of law, the separation of powers, the right to freedom of speech and assembly, and all the principles that they described as “spiritual pollution” coming from the democratic world.

Autocrats have learned how to use new information media to wage disinformation campaigns, exaggerating the problems of democratic countries and denying their accomplishments. A “fire hose of falsehoods” leaves people not knowing who to trust or what to believe. These campaigns are international as well as national. If autocrats can get media in other countries, especially more democratic countries, to spread their propaganda, so much the better. “Information laundering” is the analog of money laundering. Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russian agents posing as Americans have spread the idea that the war is none of America’s business, and some American right-wing media have reinforced the message.

When Putin helped Assad remain in power in Syria, he got the added benefit of creating a problem for European democracies. Syrian refugees flooded into Europe, aggravating domestic conflicts and encouraging isolationist sentiment. Russia then reinforced those trends by spreading anti-immigrant propaganda in European media.

Autocratic governments have also campaigned to change the language of international diplomacy, removing references to human rights. They accuse Western governments of an imperialist effort to impose their own values on the world. Instead they offer the ideal of “multipolarity.” Countries ought to respect one another’s sovereignty, even when a sovereign government is practicing autocratic kleptocracy at home and exporting it abroad.

Nonviolent warfare

In his 1993 book, Dictatorship to Democracy, Gene Sharp recommended a wide range of nonviolent tactics that people could use to fight authoritarian regimes. Unfortunately, autocratic governments also became more skilled in the use of nonviolent methods, especially propaganda campaigns to discredit opposition leaders. Governments accused of corruption confuse the public by leveling similar charges against their accusers. They use violence too, but not the mass violence associated with Nazis or communists. They find that “targeted violence is often enough to keep ordinary people away from politics altogether, convincing them that it’s a contest they can never win.” Sophisticated surveillance systems, often purchased from Western technology companies, help identify and target dissenters.

Smear campaigns cross borders more easily than armies. After Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke out against Russian human rights violations, Putin retaliated with an online smear campaign to help defeat her 2016 bid for the presidency. A casual reader of Facebook or Twitter would have little idea of where the attacks were coming from.

Countermeasures

In her Epilogue, Applebaum suggests a few ways that citizens of democracies can fight back. Again, she encourages us to bear in mind that this is not mainly a war between countries or blocs of countries. Autocratic movements cross national lines, and so must the countermeasures. We should “think about the struggle for freedom not as a competition with specific autocratic states, and certainly not as a “war with China,” but as a war against autocratic behaviors, wherever they are found.”

One goal is to fight international kleptocracy and money laundering by making property ownership more transparent. Foreign oligarchs should not be able to hide their ill-gotten gains by buying property in Wyoming.

To counter authoritarian ideas, advocates for democracy must do more than just compete with autocrats in the “marketplace of ideas.” That marketplace is too easily dominated by big spenders who finance massive disinformation campaigns, and by “social media companies whose algorithms promote emotional and divisive content.” Express an interest in one conspiracy theory about the “Biden crime family,” and you will be treated to a dozen more. Democratic governments and their supporters are starting to expose disinformation campaigns and call for more regulation of social media platforms.

Political leaders were naive to think that free trade with undemocratic countries would make those countries more democratic. For one thing, free trade carried the risk of becoming too dependent on autocrats for strategically important goods, such as European dependence on Russian oil before the invasion of Ukraine. Applebaum wants trade relationships to be more selective, avoiding dependence on “anything that could be weaponized in case of a crisis.”

Autocracy here?

The ultimate danger is that Autocracy, Inc. will extend its tentacles so far into democratic countries that they will become autocracies themselves. Writers like Levitsky and Ziblatt have observed that most breakdowns of democracy have occurred not through military coups, but through the democratic election of leaders who used the powers of their office to promote authoritarian rule. Applebaum’s book adds another dimension to this warning. The threat to democracy from would-be autocrats is only heightened when existing networks of accomplished autocrats and their enablers are available to assist them. I will relate that point to Donald Trump’s bid for another presidential term in my next post.