The recent ascendance of global authoritarianism has produced many studies of strongmen, their cults of personality, and the way they use propaganda, violence and other tools of iron rule. Historian and journalist Anne Applebaum has long chronicled the devastation of past authoritarian regimes as well as the threats we face in the present, in books such as the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Gulag” (2003) and “Twilight of Democracy” (2020). Her new book, “Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World,” takes a different approach than most, looking at the connections among authoritarian regimes that “opportunistically work together toward their common goal: damaging democracies and democratic values, inside their own countries and around the world.”
Applebaum argues that dictators like those in Iran, Venezuela, China and Russia differ from despots of earlier ages because their partnerships are born less from ideological commonalities than from “a ruthless, single-minded determination to preserve their personal wealth and power.” Applebaum rightly places kleptocratic institutionalized thievery at the center of her analysis. “To stay in power, modern autocrats need to be able to take money and hide it without being bothered by political institutions that encourage transparency, accountability, or public debate,” she writes. “The money, in turn, helps them shore up the instruments of repression.”
The “Inc.” in her title gestures at those financial priorities. “Governance” becomes a source of illicit wealth for ruling elites (as when Putin plunders Gazprom, the state-owned gas giant, and other entities and exfiltrates the money to offshore accounts), and “foreign policy” prioritizes the deals that keep that wealth flowing. In “mafia states” like North Korea and Russia, organized crime — here meaning crime organized by the government — is the primary activity.
The book explores the many ways autocrats collaborate to keep themselves collectively in power. Repression, indoctrination and thievery are the focus of their joint ventures. They often arm one another (Venezuela gets weapons from China, and Russia gets weapons from Iran and Turkey) and collaborate on acts of violence against exiled dissidents. Regimes also work together through mutual propaganda, whether it is China offering a boost to the state-controlled Russia Today or Russian troll farms amplifying the messages of far-right governments and parties abroad. Such networks have resulted in the standardization of talking points about demographic threats from non-White immigrants and Muslims, and the threat posed to tradition by LGBTQ+ individuals. “Antidemocratic rhetoric has gone global,” Applebaum writes.
These intertwined autocratic enterprises collectively aspire to take down the democratic international order, which levies punishments against them that include economic sanctions, anti-corruption legislation, embargoes and International Criminal Court rulings. These practices can restrict state theft, curb trade and travel, and freeze external funding, potentially causing popular unrest at home. Applebaum discusses how China and Russia, in particular, seek to “rewrite the rules of the international system” to discredit threatening ideas promoting human rights and political rights, along with democratic notions of accountability, transparency and solidarity.
These autocrats have adopted the buzzword “multipolarity” to frame the emerging autocratic international order, and the term pervades earnest-seeming talk by Chinese, Venezuelans, Iranians and Russians about “the right to development,” “mutual respect,” “sovereignty” and “self-determination.” Multipolarity positions these murderous regimes — even Russia, despite its war of occupation in Ukraine — as crusaders for justice against globalist manipulations and democratic imperialism, with America the ringleader to be defeated.
Applebaum might overstate the novelty of autocrats colluding for profit rather than ideology. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, hundreds of Italian fascists traveled to Russia to learn from the communists about Stalin’s Five-Year Plan. And the Holocaust was one of the biggest multinational criminal operations in history; it attracted profiteer-collaborators who may not have cared about “the Jewish question” but wanted to make money.
Applebaum also contends that it is myopic and dated to focus on “a bad man at the top” — a strongman — because today’s autocracies are run by networks and infrastructures of transnational reach. Yet Putinism and other personalist regimes show that when dictators achieve a certain level of power, they are the ones who determine who gets to participate in and profit from those networks. And it can be difficult to dislodge the “bad man at the top,” as Putin’s lasting power demonstrates.
“Autocracy, Inc.” is a valuable book for many reasons, but the focus on illicit wealth creation and on those in democracies who enable it is especially timely. So is Applebaum’s recommendation that we wage war on autocratic behaviors wherever they occur. That requires a united front among democratic countries to stop “lawless violence,” enforce sanctions and debunk propaganda — including inside their borders.
These are tall orders in our current environment, and particularly urgent recommendations for America in particular, because we are also part of the problem. The wealth managers, international lawyers and accountants whom dictators employ live in democracies — principally in Britain and the United States — as do the public relations firms and lobbyists who whitewash their crimes. Many Americans probably do not know that South Dakota, Wyoming and other U.S. states are now important hubs of kleptocratic activities.
Trump is not a protagonist of this book, but he has probably long been part of the illicit capital flows that Applebaum examines. Autocracies funneled millions to Trump’s businesses while he was president, with China alone providing more than $5 million. Trump also shares the mentality of those transactional tyrants. “Dictators? It’s okay. Come on in. Whatever’s good for the United States,” he declared in 2019. Trump may have worn a MAGA hat at his Virginia rally, but his belief that a “smart president” could help China, North Korea and Russia “do great” implies that the forces Applebaum describes would expand to include America during a second Trump term.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat is professor of history at New York University. She is the author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present” and publishes Lucid, a newsletter about threats to democracy.
Autocracy, Inc.
The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
Read More
