Book Review: ‘Autocracy, Inc.,’ by Anne Applebaum

AUTOCRACY, INC.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, by Anne Applebaum

Something new is happening in the world of oppression. Or so says the historian Anne Applebaum. Whereas the twilight struggle of the 20th century was waged between formal “blocs” of ideologically aligned allies, today’s autocrats are more diverse — a mix of self-described Marxists, illiberal demagogues, kleptocratic mafiosi, old-school tyrants and new-school theocrats.

Of course, they do share ideas if not ideologies, among them that liberal internationalism is an alibi for imperialism, the means by which Washington and Brussels impose their interests and decadent cultural mores (especially L.G.B.T.Q. tolerance) on the rest of the world. But today’s autocrats principally cement their bonds, Applebaum argues, “not through ideals but through deals.” Thanks in large part to the opacity of global finance, they enjoy a vibrant trade in surveillance technologies, weapons and precious minerals, laundering one another’s dirty money and colluding to evade American sanctions. This venal compact of convenience she calls “Autocracy, Inc.”

In the past decade or so, Applebaum has followed a not-unfamiliar trajectory from neoconservative Atlanticist to anti-populist Jeremiah. Her previous book, “Twilight of Democracy,” looked at why so many of her former allies on the right — Thatcher and Reaganite activists and journalists in London, Washington, Budapest and Warsaw — had abandoned classical liberalism for some species of reactionary nationalism. Why was John O’Sullivan, a former Margaret Thatcher speechwriter, propagandizing for the Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orban? Why was the formerly center-right sociologist Rafael Bardají working for Spain’s far-right Vox party? Applebaum’s demeanor in that volume was befuddled outrage: Why had her friends abandoned the values (“pro-European, pro-rule-of-law, pro-market”) she thought they shared? Perhaps they were always just wounded narcissists and fame-hungry liars, channeling the “authoritarian predispositions” of the masses.

To her credit, Applebaum’s new book risks a more sophisticated, and less flattering, answer: Globalization did work, only not how she and her friends assumed it would. Autocracies became more integrated with one another, while American and European trade dependence on the autocratic world — on Chinese manufacturing and Russian oil, for instance — became a weapon to be used against the West. “Everyone assumed that in a more open, interconnected world, democracy and liberal ideas would spread to the autocratic states,” Applebaum writes. Nobody imagined that autocratic and illiberal ideas “would spread to the democratic world instead.”