by Adele A. Wilby at 3 Quarks Daily: Renowned and respected for her scholarship, her history of authorship of many books on dictatorship and her political experience, is it any wonder that Anne Applebaum’s new book Autocracy, Inc. The Dictators Who Want to Run the World has been so critically received; she is an expert on her subject. This slim volume provides us with an incisive exposition and analysis of how autocrats function in the world today, securing their own personal power and wealth, and in Applebaum’s view, posing a threat to democracies.
For Applebaum, autocratic regimes clearly pose a threat to democracies, but about which states is she referring? The number of autocrats is, according to her, extensive and includes communists, monarchists, nationalists and theocrats. On Applebaum’s ‘list’ of autocracies are, predictably, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea – the well-known adversaries of the West – amongst many others. ‘Softer autocracies and hybrid democracies, sometimes called illiberal democracies’ such as Turkey, Singapore and India also come under her purview. It appears that autocracies and ‘softer autocracies’ outnumber the democracies in the world today and most of the world’s population lives under such regimes, and that is the problem for Applebaum.
We learn from Applebaum that the ‘art’ of autocracy in the modern world is very much up to speed, taking advantage of a globalised world, involving sophisticated networks of ‘financial structures, a complex of security services – military, paramilitary, police – and technological experts who provide surveillance, propaganda and disinformation’. The apparatus deployed by autocrats to achieve their political and financial objectives are probably used by most states across the globe; it is the purpose for which they are used that irks Applebaum. In her view a ‘ruthless, single-minded determination to preserve their personal wealth and power’ drives the autocrats in the world today.
The most notorious example of autocratic kleptocracy functioning today, in Applebaum’s view, is Russia under Vladamir Putin. In her analysis, following the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, the idea of ‘change through trade’ in Russia gained some traction and there was a confidence amongst the reformers in Russia that engagement with the outside world would pave the way to a new political and economic system. Vladamir Putin was one such optimist, but a nostalgia for the lost…
