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anne applebaum's


AUTOCRACY, INC.: THE DICTATORS WHO WANT TO RUN THE WORLD


reviewed by



PETER MCMILLAN

_______________________________________________________________

 

Peter McMillan teaches English part-time and writes part-time. Several books (fiction and non-fiction) published under his name and a pen name (Adam Mac) are licensed under the Creative Commons and available for free download as PDF books.

 

In its brevity (slightly over 200 pages), Anne Applebaum’s Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, published in 2024, takes aim at the world of autocratic nation-states for whom ideology is secondary and concentrated state power is turned to the service of a kleptocratic elite. Applebaum, who also wrote Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism (a political memoir) in 2020, writes in the tradition of Hannah Arendt, author of On the Origins of Totalitarianism, and recently penned an introduction to that work. However, while Arendt focused on the ideology-driven totalitarian regimes in Germany and the U.S.S.R., Applebaum, though a recognized journalist/historian on Soviet communism, is in this book primarily concerned with those autocracies—be they “communists, monarchists, nationalists, [or] theocrats—that seek to undermine democracy and the world order and share “a ruthless single-minded determination to preserve their personal wealth and power.”

Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Angola, Myanmar, Cuba, Syria, Zimbabwe, Mali, Belarus, Sudan, Azerbaijan, and perhaps three dozen others share a determination to deprive their citizens of any real influence or public voice, to push back against all forms of transparency or accountability, and to repress anyone, at home or abroad, who challenges them.

On the other hand, according to Applebaum, the Saudi and Emirate monarchies, the authoritarian communist regime in Vietnam and the illiberal democracies of Turkey, Singapore, India, the Philippines, and Hungary are not imminent threats to the international order.

Applebaum views the nation-state as the locus of the international struggle between democracies and autocracies. She recognizes the somewhat fluid boundaries as nation-states are subject to change, either from democracy to autocracy (Hungary) or from autocracy to democracy (South Korea), though the latter has been less frequent of late. She also acknowledges that within nation-states there are contrary movements, as for example in the U.S. Since the book was published in July, it was still uncertain who the next U.S. president would be. However, Applebaum did make it a point to assert that “If [Trump] ever succeeds in directing federal courts and law enforcement at his enemies, in combination with a mass trolling campaign, then the blending of the autocratic and democratic worlds will be complete.” An ominous and odious outcome for a former leader of the free world.

There are three significant shortcomings in an otherwise excellent overview of the state of the world’s autocracies. First, the classification of states as democratic, autocratic or somewhere in-between is oversimplified. Characterizing the countries of the West as democratic is problematic given their plutocratic and corporatist tendencies—tendencies that are inherently anti-democratic. In addition, this categorization whitewashes a lot of Western wrongs from the past, which is by no means to say that there is a moral equivalence with the crimes of Stalin, Hitler and Mao. Notwithstanding arguments from countries like Russia and China, there is a great gulf between the degree of freedom enjoyed in the U.S. vis-à-vis Russia or China. Applebaum concedes as much yet concludes,

They [liberal democracies] are hardly perfect. Those that exist have deep flaws, profound divisions, and terrible historical scars. But that’s all the more reason to defend and protect them. So few of them have existed across human history; so many have existed for a short time and then failed.

Yet, it is unfortunate that Applebaum does not call out the anti-democratic forces operating within the liberal democracies, e.g., the increasing inequality of income and wealth, the deliberate disenfranchisement of voters, the obvious connection between war and profits, etc. Ukraine offers the best example of how fundamental economic policy is to war. Post-war Ukraine promises to be an exemplar of Schumpeterian creative-destruction, and many billions of dollars in profit will be made rebuilding the country and, of course, restocking the world’s arms supplies. Last year at the two-year mark in the Russia-Ukraine War, the World Bank, the United Nations and the European Commission estimated the cost of reconstruction and recovery to be nearly half a trillion dollars.

A second shortcoming has to do with the conduct of war. Applebaum barely mentions Israel's outrageous total war against all of Gaza in retaliation for Hamas’ unpardonable October 7th massacre of civilians in southern Israel. Equally ignored is the effectively unconditional military and diplomatic support of the U.S. for Israel’s prosecution of the war, the examples set by the U.S. with its abysmal failures in nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan, and its record of war crimes against civilians in Vietnam and World War II. (U.S. Air Force General Curtis Lemay reportedly said about the fire-bombing of civilians in Tokyo and other Japanese cities in 1945, “I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.” Lemay was the inspiration for the Air Force General in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 classic satire, "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb"). That the U.S. remains preferable to Russia, Iran, North Korea or China doesn't excuse America from submitting to the authority of international jurisprudence if there is to be anything called law among nations. As Antony Anghie writes in Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law, there is a school of thought in international relations, traceable back to John Austin, the early 19th century British jurist, that maintains that "international law [is] not law properly so called because it [does] not emanate from a single, global sovereign." Instead, what one has is a code of international morality. If the great powers and their close allies are essentially lawgivers unto themselves in international affairs, then Austin is correct.

A third shortcoming is that the book does not address the worldwide phenomenon of the ever expanding role of the government to meet the ever increasing demands for public assistance, e.g. favourable tax treatment, corporate subsidies, investment opportunities, jobs, home ownership and the much-maligned welfare assistance for the poor. Satisfying these demands gives rise to greater concentrations of government authority, and this becomes problematic when not all of those expectations can be realized. What has happened in the U.S. is that the citizenry look to the president to make things right and to do so quickly when Congress and the courts disappoint. In foreign affairs and on the economy, Americans are inclined to a strong CEO model, which invests the presidency with enormous power through the vast bureaucracy of the executive branch. It is that concentrated power that different constituencies seek as the prize to be won, but it is that power that is subject to extraordinary abuses, especially when the legislature and the courts serve the president and not the constitution, i.e., when they fail to check the exercise of presidential power.

Despite these criticisms, the book is recommended because Appleby is doing her part to keep alive the spirit of resistance in an age when the fear and anger of the public in many societies has turned again to the strongman (a variation of der Übermensch). This figure, unrestrained and unconstrained, is perfectly positioned to disregard the accepted norms and legal guardrails in responding to the voice of the people. And once in power, the objectives are twofold: to stay in power and to profit from that power. This is not the nightmare that Appleby envisions. It is the reality that she describes.

Nevertheless, Applebaum is optimistic enough to conclude with a challenge.

[T]the democracies of North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, together with the leaders of the democratic opposition in Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Belarus, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, and other autocratic states, should think about the struggle for freedom not as a competition with specific autocratic states, and certainly not as “war with China,” but as a war against autocratic behaviors, wherever they are found: in Russia, in China, in Europe, in the United States. Toward this end, we need networks of lawyers and public officials to fight corruption inside our own countries and around the world, in cooperation with the democratic activists who understand kleptocracy best. We need military and intelligence coalitions that can anticipate and halt lawless violence. We need economic warriors in multiple countries who can track the impact of sanctions in real time, understand who is breaking them, and take steps to stop them. We need people willing to organize online and coordinate campaigns to identify and debunk dehumanizing propaganda. The autocracies want to create a global system that benefits thieves, criminals, dictators, and the perpetrators of mass murder. We can stop them.

* * * * * * *


A worthwhile introduction to Anne Applebaum’s views can be found in an interview with Ezra Klein on November 19, 2024. The audio and audio transcript are available at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/19/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-anne-applebaum.html under the title ‘Trump Kicks Down the Guardrails.’ At the end of the interview, Applebaum shares the following three book recommendations for those interested in reading more about “the secret world of money laundering and kleptocracy:”

Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World (2019) by Oliver Bullough

American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World's Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History (2021) by Casey Michel and

Offshore: Stealth, Wealth and the New Colonialism (2024) by Brooke Harrington.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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