Why do autocrats survive?

Bronwen Maddox

Great. Is everyone sitting comfortably? Lights are coming down. We’re nearly there. We had a very big audience here and online for this event. So, just making sure that we get everyone in [pause]. Great, I think we’re ready to go. A very warm welcome. I’m Bronwen Maddox, Director of Chatham House, and I’m delighted to have you all here to discuss why autocrats survive. And we will tease apart the many angles of this question.

I’m delighted to have this terrific panel with me. Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize winning Author, Journalist, and we’ve just been recording a podcast about a book that is just out called Autocracy Inc, which could not be better for the subject of tonight’s discussion. Thanks very much, indeed, for joining us. John Jenkins, Sir John Jenkins, who is an Associate Fellow with our Middle East and North Africa Programme, and has a distinguished long Foreign Office career spanning the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, and we were just talking about some of that as we were coming in. And Ben Bland, who’s the Director of our Asia-Pacific Programme, and covers, with his terrific colleagues, many, many aspects of that.

Just before we kick off, to remind you that, if it is not obvious, this is being recorded and livestreamed, and please do post, take pictures, record comments using the #CH_Events and @ChathamHouse, and thank you. That will help us continue the conversation online. Well, with that, let’s dive into this subject of why autocrats survive, and indeed, what autocrats are, and whether there is a necessary rivalry between them and countries that organise themselves under a democracy and why all this matters. And this is the subject of your latest book, which I very much enjoyed reading. I don’t always give plugs for them, but I very much enjoyed reading this one.

Anne Applebaum

I’ll believe you. I’ll choose to believe you.

Bronwen Maddox

Which was absolutely to the moment, yeah, to the moment, and you describe “confederation, a collaboration, a conglomeration,” as you put it, “of autocracies,” not quite an organisation. I wondered if you could take us into what you were describing in your book.

Anne Applebaum

So, what I describe in my book is not, you’re right, it’s not an alliance or an axis in the traditional sense. It’s a group of countries who do not share an ideology. So, we’re talking about Communist China, nationalist Russia, theocratic Iran, Bolivarian Socialist Venezuela, and a handful of others. And it’s a group of countries whose leaders have absolute power, more or less, inside their countries. They have often captured the judiciary, they control the media and most of the information system, or they try to. They don’t necessarily meet in a secret room and plan things together, but they have begun to collaborate and co-operate opportunistically when they can, when it’s necessary, and particularly when it’s in the interests of the group. They’re very interested in the survival of one another.

Bronwen Maddox

So, let’s be clear from the start, we’re not talking about every autocracy or…?

Anne Applebaum

No, I don’t include every autocracy. I mean, we can – maybe there are some who play one side sometimes and one on the other, and some who – there are some illiberal democracies who sympathise with the group for various reasons. But there is a core group who – and actually to your point, you – in your introduction, you talked about whether it’s necessary that autocracies and democracies don’t get along, and the answer is, a decade or two, really, two decades ago, it seemed like maybe it wasn’t necessary. That there was a…

Bronwen Maddox

Just another way of organising everything.

Anne Applebaum

It was just a different way of – right. What this group of countries has decided over the last decade is that although, as I say, they don’t have a common ideology, they do have a common enemy, and the enemy is us. The enemy is the ideas of the rule of law, of rights, human rights, the idea of transparency and accountability. Those are the ideas used by their own internal opposition movements, whether it’s the Navalny movement in Russia, whether it’s the Hong Kong Democrat movement of a few years ago, or whether it’s the Iranian Women’s Movement. And those are the ideas they also hear coming from our societies, and that need to undermine those ideas and spoil them and encourage their population not to admire them or to want them, is now one of the things that motivates their information policy and some of their other policies, as well. So, that’s the argument of the book.

Bronwen Maddox

And we might come back to that point because I’d be interested, particularly when we come to questions, including questions online, you can keep them coming, whether people agree with that notion of they’re out to get us. Their enemy…

Anne Applebaum

No, no, it’s…

Bronwen Maddox

…is us.

Anne Applebaum

Out to get us is a little bit more – I mean, it’s…

Bronwen Maddox

You said that their enemy is us?

Anne Applebaum

It’s – they – we – the ideas that we use and take for granted are ideas that they find to be threatening.

Bronwen Maddox

Alright, okay.

Anne Applebaum

So – and so, they – again, it’s not…

Bronwen Maddox

But more or less, you’re saying…

Anne Applebaum

It’s not a…

Bronwen Maddox

…they want to undermine those ideas?

Anne Applebaum

They would like to undermine those ideas, yes, or discourage their populations from believing them.

Bronwen Maddox

So, I’d like a bit later, perhaps, to explore that a bit more, whether people share that, the oppositional view of it. But you spend quite a bit from the first pages of your book where you go, as I said to you on the podcast, straight for the money and where the money goes. You talk a lot about the techniques that these leaders use and the regimes behind them use to survive, which is the subject we’re here to talk about today, and I wondered if you could take us that – into that a bit, about the money and the technology and so on.

Anne Applebaum

So, the – yeah, I think the – I – the – I mean, the money differs a little bit from regime to regime, but one of the differences between the autocrats of our era and those of previous eras is that we are talking about billionaires. We are talking about very – in many cases, very, very wealthy people who have money and who store it and hide it in different parts of the world, whose children have – and families and colleagues have access to it, and protecting that money and protecting the secrecy of that money is also part – one of the things that they’re interested in, along with staying in power.

They also share a common interest in repressing the descent in their own populations, and to that extent, they share surveillance technology. They look at – they watch one another. Again, I don’t think this is co-ordinated process, but they watch what has been successfully used to control demonstrations in one country, and they – you can see their tactics being adopted in, you know, in the next country. So, they share – you know, they share that as well, and I would say they also have a common interest in changing the language of international politics, and you and I just spoke about this.

So, in most of the international institutions of the present day, many written in the – you know, it was just after the Second World War, or a decade or two later, the language of human rights is in the founding documents. So, sometimes it’s even – if you go back and read them and the human dignity and aspirational language like that. This language bothers them and they would like it gone, and they would either undermined or redefined so that, you know, human rights means something different from what it was originally meant to mean, or removed altogether.

So they would – they see themselves as people who control – who enjoy absolute power, or would like to enjoy absolute power at home, and they would also like to have some – that kind of power around the world. They don’t want to respect any – they don’t want to acknowledge or respect an idea about human rights or the Geneva Conventions, as – you know, in the case of Russia or, you know, the respect for, you know, this idea that in Europe after the Second World War, we don’t change borders by force. You know, the – Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was – in part, one of the purposes of it, was to show us that he doesn’t care about those norms. He doesn’t care about never again. He’s going to build concentration camps in occupied Ukraine and he’s daring us to defy him.

Bronwen Maddox

So, thanks for that. You set out very well what, in your view, is at stake in this, and it’s not just about how they run their own countries, but the threat to ours as you put it. And there’s one bit in the book, and remember, I’m going to paraphrase, I’m sure not anything like as well as you put it originally, but where you say, look, Fukuyama was a bit more nuanced than people sometimes give him credit for when going around talking about the end of history. But all the same, at that point, no-one thought – even if the spread of liberal democracy did not continue, no-one thought that actually autocracy might spread the other way, yeah.

Anne Applebaum

Yeah, and of course, the reason why Fukuyama was misinterpreted was because we wanted to believe that that was what he was saying. You know, that this was the end of history, and now we’d reached the final stage and we didn’t have to worry about politics anymore. We could just go and write books or paint paintings or make money and it didn’t matter, and politics was something that we could push aside because it was – everything was going to be fine. So, yes, there was that desire to have that be true.

Bronwen Maddox

Feels less so now.

Anne Applebaum

Yes.

Bronwen Maddox

John, and you are still very immersed for us and others, in these questions, what do you make of the rivalry and the challenge that Anne has described? Do you see it that way?

Sir John Jenkins KCMG LVO

I read the book over the weekend, and I thought it was great.

Anne Applebaum

It’s very short.

Sir John Jenkins KCMG LVO

It – which I love. It’s short and it’s punchy.

Anne Applebaum

You can read it in the weekend.

Sir John Jenkins KCMG LVO

It’s short and it’s punchy, and I liked that a lot, and actually, I was at another event somewhere else over the weekend, Cambridge actually, and we were talking about…

Bronwen Maddox

Sorry, I thought you were going to mention a competitor.

Sir John Jenkins KCMG LVO

About – no, no, no, no, I was at Cambridge – about these sort of issues. And this particular – I mean, there are different sorts of autocrats, and you can talk about Saudi Arabia and the rest, but no, I think they are actually very different. But you look at the, sort of, the three countries, the main countries we’re talking about, which is China, Russia and Iran, and I think the thing they share is exactly the sense of hostility to the international order. Now, you can argue about what the international order is, whether it really – etc. So, it’s a bit of a shorthand. The thing they want immediately is to prize the Americans out of the Middle East, they want to prize the Americans out of the South China Sea, and they want to prize the Americans out of parts of Europe, from the Russian point of view.

And this is interesting. I mean, we talk about opportunism. I mean, sometimes I think particularly in the Middle East, opportunism is about as strategic as you get, and you think of Iran in the 1980s. I mean, there, the great slogan over the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tehran, is “Neither East nor West,” and you remember Khamenei writing his letter to Gorbachev saying, you know, “You need to convert to Islam because you are a Godless Communist, and of course, the Iranians have historic memory of the Russians and us carving their country up in the 1940s.

I think this has changed partly because of the way that Khamenei institutionalised the revolution in the 1990s, particularly through establishing control over financial resources in Iran, which now basically go through his office. He controls all the Bonyads and this – it is this control, the centralised control of money, which enables the Praetorian regime defended by the IRGC to survive. It would – I think it would be very difficult to imagine a more ramshackle state, or more ramshackle Praetorian state, than Iran managing this.

And the links they had with Russia in particular, really began – well, they began a long time ago, but in particular, they were solidified from 2013, the Russian intervention in Syria. The failure to enforce the red lines or the rose lines, or the pink lines, or whatever you want to call them, in August 2013 when I was in Saudi Arabia, which brought the Russian – and I remember people at the time talking about the Russian presence in Syria as if it was temporary. “They do this and they move on.” Well, they haven’t moved on, actually. They’ve signed various agreements with Iran, and this increasingly looks structured to me, and there was a confluence of interest because they both want to damage the Americans. Now, whether this would survive an absent – the departure of the Americans from the Middle East, which would make the Middle East into an entirely different sort of place, I don’t know, but it’s becoming more and more – they’re becoming more and more embedded with each other.

With China, I mean, China – what China wants is to get hold of Iran’s gas resources, gas and oil resources. And if you look at what the Chinese are doing, building networks of pipelines through Central Asia, which are basically designed in the end, to secure Middle Eastern – which is not just Iran, but also Iraqi oil and gas supplies, they are constructing an alliance, which is economic, which is also ideological in the sense they’re all autocracies, and they all have an interest in combating the Americans. But it looks to me like an alliance, or a relationship or whatever you want to call it, that is designed to last for the ages.

There was another point to this. We talk about Venezuela, because I think this is also really important. You look at Iran. I suspect this is the case with Russia and maybe the case with China, as well. There are various things. They’re also part of a global criminal economy. You look at the narco. The links that the Iranians have with narco groups in South America, with the – with Maduro’s Government in Venezuela and narco groups throughout Central Asia – Central America, and this also is structural, which speaks to the point about money and resources.

Bronwen Maddox

Which is something Anne goes into quite a bit. I did read some of it thinking, wow, does this get through UK libel laws? But anyway, that’s between you and your Publishers, who are here. But John, can I just tease out one thing, because we are here talking very much about China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela? But you’ve already mentioned, for example, Saudi Arabia. We could go onto the Emirates and Qatar and Vietnam and in Ben’s programme and many other countries, which are not democracies, and yet don’t seem to want to belong to this ‘conglomeration’, as Anne’s described it, are really positioning themselves quite differently in the world.

Sir John Jenkins KCMG LVO

Yeah.

Bronwen Maddox

And I would just like to tease out your sense of what you – where you think the problem is. Is it a Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, sort of, problem, or is it one about autocracies not wanting to take part in the international order? ‘Cause some of these countries are positioning themselves very differently and don’t seem to be challenging the international order at all.

Sir John Jenkins KCMG LVO

I think mainly it’s what you said first.

Bronwen Maddox

Right.

Sir John Jenkins KCMG LVO

I think there is a difference. I mean, I think, if you look at Saudi Arabia, for example, there’s a demographic issue. I mean, Iran is 80 million people. What’s Russia, 150 or something? And China is, whatever, is a billion. You know, the total population of GCC is about 27 million. I mean, it’s peanuts. Saudi Arabia’s 20 million of that. So, there’s a demographic issue. If you look at what Mohammed bin Salman…

Bronwen Maddox

Meaning they’re smaller?

Sir John Jenkins KCMG LVO

They’re smaller – what Mohammed bin Salman wants to do, Vision 2030 is designed to increase economic welfare in the country as a whole. Of course, you know, “I want to get rich as well,” but I mean, it’s everybody in the Kingdom is going to do well. If you look at Iran, 80 million of them, the resources accrue to the elite. There is a difference. So, are they kleptocratic? You can argue, I mean, some of them are, and there have been kleptocratic episodes in – Iraq is certainly kleptocratic. 70% of Iranians probably want a different regime in Iran. They don’t want this lot with – that’s not the case in Saudi Arabia. There is – and a lot of this comes back to the issue of legitimacy, how you legitimate your rule. I think you do that differently and more effectively in the monarchies of the Gulf than you do in Iran.

Bronwen Maddox

That’s a really, really interesting point. Ben, what’s your perspective on this? We’re beginning to get onto, I mean, the sheer complexity, not just China in your area, but many, many other countries.

Ben Bland

Yeah. I think it’s interesting that Anne focuses pretty much on the supply side of autocracy, but I think there’s something which I think John was just hinting at, which is the demand side. So, why do citizens of countries with authoritarian systems, sort of, accept the rule they have? And in some cases it’s because of the pressures on them, and control of – financial control, control of social media and the media. But I think there’s a question of performance legitimacy, certainly in China and other places in Asia where governments are delivering for their people. Not all the time, and obviously, you know, in authoritarian systems, we don’t usually have accurate polls to know how popular people really are. But I do think there’s an extent to which good authoritarian leaders are able to project back to their people things that they want, which includes a sense of strength in the international system. Sometimes that means pushing back against the US and the West. It includes a sense that they’re delivering some sort of economic benefit. So, I think that’s a big part of the equation.

A couple of other things that I would focus on. One is the, sort of, the fragmentation. So, I know Anne’s not saying this, but we do hear this narrative from the US Government, sometimes from British Government, so different flavours about the battle between democracies and autocracies, and I really think that doesn’t get to the heart of the fragmented world that we’re in. I think that misses the point, and we are much more of a pick and mix world, where if you take an illiberal democracy like India, they have their own territorial disputes with China. To some extent, they want geopolitical balance with the West against China, but if you think about other questions, they’re actually aligned with China. So, for example, at the UN, India and China see eye to eye in terms of reframing human rights to focus on communal economic rights, as opposed to individual political rights. So, I think we are living in this very fragmented world. I think there’s a danger if we frame things too simplistically.

I think the last thing I’ll say, which is really interesting to me in Asia, is the power of families. So, it’s not just about money, but I think family systems in South East Asia, in South Asia, Xi Jinping himself is a princeling. And in post-colonial countries that are young, many of them, you know, less than 70 or 80 years old, as modern nation states, the power to have personal connections and history is really strong, in addition to control of finances, control of the media. I think that gives people a, kind of, legitimacy as well, and it gives them a platform, especially in the democracies where politics isn’t necessarily very well institutionalised. So, I think that’s another interesting element for me, and actually that’s something that’s been quite appealing to the voters of South Asia and South East Asia, is these family connections.

So, it’s not always about performance. It’s sometimes about a feeling of connection and nationhood, and I do think there’s a danger if we – if the West leans too hard to this battle of democracies versus autocracies, will actually risk backfiring and pushing people away. Maybe they do want choice, but they want democracy in their own flavour, not the flavour of democracy that we might think is best for them.

Bronwen Maddox

Have the choice to pick sides between America led group of countries and a Chinese led one on different issues. Can we just swing to the military aspect of this, as we’ve been talking about things like money, technology, indeed legitimacy? And thanks for taking us into that. But Anne, you put some – you give some space in your book to the question of the military investment that some of these countries made, and I wondered whether you thought that was a big factor in their survival and whether the implication is that we have to make a big military investment ourselves.

Anne Applebaum

Well, certainly they think it’s important to make big military investments, you know, and we don’t necessarily know towards what end, although of course, we can guess. You know, the Russians made an enormous investment into their military over the last decade. Actually, we now know much of it not very well thought through and terribly corrupt and so on, but they, you know, they did plan to have a war, and they were thinking about a war and talking about a war. In fact, they were more or less telling us they were going to have a war. Not that we necessarily wanted to listen to that, but they – it’s been clear that they were on that track for a long time, and we didn’t really prepare for it.

I mean, to some extent, some people – you know, there were some – you know, the – some small amount of weaponry was given to Ukraine, and actually some of that turned out to be very important at the beginning of the war – the beginning of the full-scale invasion. But we didn’t think through what the consequences were, and I am not sure that we – and here, I’m – I – ‘we’, I use in a very broad sense. I mean not – I don’t like the expression ‘the West’ anymore. I mean, I would talk about the democratic world. The democratic world, which includes Australia and Japan and South Korea and so on, I don’t think have really…

Bronwen Maddox

I prefer that, I must say, but then it immediately pushes you into this framing of democracies against the rest.

Anne Applebaum

It’s true. It’s true, and I completely agree with you and you’re…

Bronwen Maddox

I mean, antagonism doesn’t always suit what we are trying to…

Anne Applebaum

No, no, no.

Bronwen Maddox

…achieve through that.

Anne Applebaum

I mean, there is something like a democratic world, but that doesn’t mean that every country on the planet sorts into one group or the other. I don’t see it as black and white at all, so just to be clear. But there is a question whether the democratic world is prepared for an escalation of lawless violence, for example, from China, or from Iran, more so than there is already. I mean, Hamas was a version of that, in fact, and it turned out the Israelis weren’t prepared for it, at least not in that form.

Bronwen Maddox

Do think China wants a war?

Anne Applebaum

So, I am not a China watcher or a China expert, so I cannot – maybe Ben will…

Bronwen Maddox

Indeed, I mean let’s go straight to the end of the line.

Anne Applebaum

I imagine this room is – the room is full of them. If I were to guess, my guess would be that China would like to take over Taiwan without a war, and that they would like to do so through political and economic and other kinds of pressure. You know, they’re certainly fighting a very aggressive information war in Taiwan. I was there a year or two ago and was shown the different aspects of it, and I imagine what they would like is to do it that way, and that they would like to avoid a military conflict. But could there be a moment when they would change their minds? I mean, perhaps they would. There’s – you know, certainly the weapons production and so on would you – lead you to believe that they’re thinking about it.

Bronwen Maddox

Ben?

Ben Bland

Well, I think we do need to separate out this quartet. I think George Robertson, who’s conducting the Defence Review for the new UK Government has talked about, you know, China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia. I think China’s perspective is very different. I think they see things in much more defensive terms. So, for them, you know, Taiwan, which I agree, they do want to take, preferably without force, if possible, and what they’re doing in the South China Sea is about securing their sea lines of communication. It’s about pushing the US out slightly from their backyard. So, I think they would view it in defensive terms.

I’m not sure China does currently have, sort of, aggrandizement ambitions beyond Taiwan and the South China Sea. I don’t necessarily think they want to take mainland Vietnam or the Philippines. It’s not really about that. So, I think there is a difference there, but there’s obviously a big confluence of interests between China and Russia and North Korea, and to a certain extent Iran on some questions. But again, even I think for China, it’s quite pick and mix where they work with Iran, where they work with North Korea, which they find very difficult, and where they work with Russia. But I think it’s – they would view it in much more defensive terms, but they are willing to push quite hard if they feel their red lines on Taiwan are under pressure, which they clearly are.

Bronwen Maddox

Hmmm. So, let’s just turn for a few minutes before we come to wider questions, to the question of what we should do, either about the China, Russia, Iran question and resisting the threat that you’ve described, to other countries’ ways of organising themselves, or to work with those who really are not lining up on one side or the other. John, where would you start on this, your instinct of what to do?

Sir John Jenkins KCMG LVO

You know, this point about military force does seem to me really important. I’ll – we’ll talk about Iran because that’s really – you know, I – it’s the Middle East. You know, Iran’s – if you look at it in the last 20 years, since the invasion of Iraq, you know, Iran has massively expanded across the region, and it’s done it through its – through the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guards, this Praetorian force, which is a revolutionary military. I mean, it’s like the French – I mean, it’s not – it’s like the French revolutionary armies in the 17 – early 1790s – mid-1790s, and it’s an indoctrinated army, and their ultimate goal is the destruction of Israel.

I was on another event – virtual event last week with some people talking about Iran. One of them is my old friend Saeid Golkar from the University of Tennessee, who’s fantastic, who comes from a Basiji family himself, actually, a military guard family himself, and now teaches in Tennessee, which is nice for him. And the other two are from NIAC, the National Iranian American Council, which is much softer on Iran, and they, of course, think Iran is a normal state. I don’t think Iran is a normal state, and I think ultimately Iran wants to destroy Israel. They keep saying it. They’ve been saying it since 1979.

Now, do – are we interested in this? Yes, I think we are, but as your point about, you know, what happened on the 7th of October last year with Hamas, is important. Because if you want to push this back and if you want to do something about Iranian expansionism in the region, you are going to have to use physical force. There is no alternative to it. Now, it’s not us necessarily who’s going to do it, so the Americans are absolutely critical to this. Are the Americans prepared for it? That’s an interesting question, because anything – the Iranians will judge the pushback, as they did in the 1980s, by the force to which they are subjected, and if they think they can get away with it, they will do even more. So, one element of this, certainly in the Middle East, is about physical force. It’s about the ability to counter physical aggression.

The other point, which is about money, which is big in your book, is huge. One of the real driving factors in the so-called Arab Spring was this sense by ordinary people in most of these countries that governments were not governing for them and were fundamentally corrupt. So, the money was going somewhere else, and you saw this everywhere, from Libya, through Lebanon, Syria, Iraq. The point about – and corruption is politically corrosive in all these states. It’s also instrumental because it’s one of the things that preserves autocrats in power. I mean, I was also Ambassador in Burma for four years, and it – you know, the SPDC, the hunter in those days, was basically a brutal, extractive elite, at the top, who were getting rich while the rest of the country was staying poor.

Bronwen Maddox

And then are using the money to keep themselves in power.

Sir John Jenkins KCMG LVO

And they are using the money – going – and the money was going to Thailand. It was going into Thailand. It was going to Singapore. It was going – but they were storing it offshore, and we – and you talk about this in your book a lot. And I think, you know, this issue of what you do about corruption and the way in which this tap is – this plugs into international criminal networks, is really important. You know, by some estimates, the black economy, is as big as, or if not bigger, than the open economy – the global – open global economy.

That’s the huge problem. It’s not a problem one country on its own can deal with. You need to be – have collective action on this, and, you know, I was in the Foreign Office for 35 years. I think – and I probably saw collective action twice, very, very fleetingly. It’s like glimpsing some very rare mammal, and this is a problem, you know, the classical problem of collective action. How do you make it – historically, this was what the Americans did because the Americans, United States, post 1945, had the convening power to do this. I think that has become much more difficult in the last ten years as political discontents have emerged and caused rifts in the political communities across the West. So, I don’t have an answer to this, but I know it’s an important – and I know that is one of the central issues.

Bronwen Maddox

Thank you. Ben, briefly, your thoughts about what to do.

Ben Bland

Yeah, three easy answers, I would say. One is, firstly, look at ourselves and the functioning of our own democracies, because they’re not necessarily delivering very well, either on the principles or the practicalities.

Bronwen Maddox

I was pondering the question of why do democracies survive, and do they, as we came in. Yes.

Ben Bland

So, firstly look at ourselves. I’d say secondly, listen more to countries around the world, countries like India and Indonesia and many others that are going to have a much bigger say in how the world is governed and that, you know, China and the US and ourselves are trying to pull them closer. Why don’t we spend more time listening and trying to understand? Including where they disagree and why about the world system. I think that would be very useful for being able to have some degree of collective action.

And the third thing I would say is at the margins, and it speaks to what Anne’s been writing about, is there is something that the UK and other like-minded, truly like-minded countries, you can support better journalism, better think tank research, some academic work at the margins. I’m not sure that supporting democracy activists in authoritarian states is necessarily helpful directly. It’s usually probably counterproductive. Both ‘cause we don’t really understand what they’re going through and just the fact of foreign support can often undermine them. But at the margins, I think there’s things where – we can do where we have particular skills, to help fund, you know, more transparency. But we have to accept that transparency may be thrown back onto us, and people might say, “Well, why was that money laundered through the Isle of Man or through London?” And I think we are usually not very comfortable when it comes back onto us, but we have to be willing to accept that.

Bronwen Maddox

Hmmm, and Anne, is there anything you’d like to add as a taster? You’re very free to say buy my book in answer to the question, what should we do? But is there anything you’d like to add before we go to wider questions?

Anne Applebaum

Other than buy my book. That’s…

Bronwen Maddox

Other than buy your book.

Anne Applebaum

I mean, I love the idea that we should give more support to think tanks. It’s, you know – in this room of people who work at the think tanks…

Bronwen Maddox

To buy our membership.

Anne Applebaum

…that, that would be a great way to find – I mean, so, I mean, in the book, I argue really about – I mean, there are many different arguments you could have for prioritising three things. One of them we’ve already discussed, which is deterrence. You know, you end wars, you promote peace by deterring wars, and so, beginning to think along those lines, you know, in Europe, in Asia and in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Number two is focusing on kleptocracy, and this is something that I think actually we’re pretty close to being able to create for international groups to do. There’s a growing consensus – I mean, I’m not entirely sure I understand why it’s taken so long, but there is – in the US, in the UK, in a number of European countries where it matters, there is beginning to be a consensus that the, you know, the, sort of, dark money is poisoning our own political systems. And you can – I mean, there’s – I have – you know, you can hear that said in the US Senate now. I mean, so, it’s a – it’s not a foreign idea, and in the book I list ideas of how to think about that. I mean, I think ending the world of anonymous companies and anonymous property purchases would be a very good place to start. Since normal businesses are subject to regulation and have to meet all kinds of rules and standards, I don’t see why there should be an alternate universe of businesses that don’t have to meet the – you know, those rules, at the beginning.

And then I think the third area is, it’s very, very complicated and has many implications well beyond foreign policy, which is a conversation about the internet and social media platforms and democracy and what are the – how do we encourage better conversations? And I’ll leave it there because it’s a big subject. It is technologically and legally and in other ways, possible, firstly, to apply the rules and laws of the real world to the online world, that – and we are late in discovering that we aren’t doing that. And it’s also possible to give people more – their – more transparency to the algorithms that determine what they see, more control of their data and so on. And I think that that’s another conversation that could be had among several countries that are adversely affected by the proliferation, not just misinformation, but actual crime online.

Bronwen Maddox

Thank you. With that, let’s go to questions. If we can have the lights up. I’ll take them in pairs and we’ll stir in the really excellent questions we got online. Thanks very much, indeed. Let me take one here on the aisle, first. Can you wait for the microphone, please, so people online can hear you?

Jessica

Thank you so much. I’m curious on the technologies and specifically thinking about how we should govern that within our own count – within our own, like, democratic world. How we should think about things like end-to-end encrypted messaging, right, which obviously has recently been in the news of the Telegram founder arrest, and whether we should view these things which are labelled, you know, security threats, is actually real vital freedom technologies.

Bronwen Maddox

Brilliant. Would you like to say who you are? You don’t have to.

Jessica

Oh, I’m Jessica. I invest in technology to counter authoritarianism.

Anne Applebaum

So, you have a stake in the answer to this question?

Bronwen Maddox

That’s great, and let me take one over here, right on the edge.

Bernard Herman

[Pause] Bernard Herman, a member of Chatham House. Most European democracies used to be solely ethnically homogenous. You have a growing minority, especially on the Muslim minority, within all of these countries. How significant is that in relation to a common political and cultural approach to defending democracy?

Bronwen Maddox

Thank you very much for that, and let me then add to that, since you raised the question, one from Ivan Seifert, talking about the recent success of the AfD in Germany and asking whether immigration specifically is a threat to – might trigger democracies turning into autocracies. I’m summarising a well put but very long question. So, we have from Jessica the question of messaging and regulating messaging and the particular are interesting knot of questions raised around Telegram and whether the arrest of its leader is good or bad for free speech, and from Bernard on European Muslim populations, and then from Ivan on migration. Who would like to start?

Anne Applebaum

I mean, yeah, I would say, regarding Telegram, it’s – this was, as I understand it, and I don’t have access to, you know, French police documents, but as I understand it, this arrest had nothing to do with free speech. It was a – it was to do with the plat – the Telegram platform being used both for – to sell and distribute child pornography and also, to recruit terrorists. There’s a – not just an – and incidentally, probably by the Russians to recruit saboteurs in Europe, as well. So, you know, so, it was a – you know, if you ask yourself, if there was a bank that was, you know, found to be engaged in financing terrorism or financing child pornography, you know, would the bank be held responsible and would the CEO be held responsible? I mean, yes, of course it would.

And so, there’s nothing – in that sense, these are companies like other companies, and they should obey the law. And, you know, the – you know, writing the rules for how that works and how end-to-end messaging is – you know, can or can’t be conducted is a – you know, is technical. But I mean, the basic principle that they should obey the law seems to be indisputable, I mean, if they’re operating in our country. So, that’s what I have to say about that.

I mean, you know, immigration is such a strange question. I mean, the United States has been a country that has accepted immigrants for centur – you know, as long as it’s existed, and has – and at different times has considered, I don’t know, Jews or the Irish or the Italians, to be completely alien people who were importing a different culture and so on and then over time, they were assimilated. So, I don’t – I’m not sure immigration per se, necessarily, is some kind of threat to democracy. I don’t see it that way. I mean, it’s a question of how it’s, you know, how it’s managed and how it’s, you know, how it’s described and discussed. I don’t see that as a particular – you know, as a special issue in this context.

Sir John Jenkins KCMG LVO

I’m going to talk about immigration because it is an important issue, it seems to me, and I take your point entirely about this being – you know, I think – and again, this is something I was – we were speaking about over the weekend. There were quite a lot of Germans. My wife is an Austrian, so this is a big – it’s been a big theme in German speaking Central Europe for at least a decade, and of course, it’s a big theme here. It was one of the drivers of Brexit, the issue. If you look at what – one of the main reasons for people voting to leave was concern about immigration and the future, essentially, of the political community which you inhabit. And I think this issue of how political communities are constituted and maintain themselves and flourish is something that has become particularly acute over the last decade. It’s an issue that goes back to Hobbes, and as opposed in particularly acute form by the rather notorious German Jurist, Carl Schmitt, 100 years ago.

And I don’t think governments have been very good at handling this, and I think it has – it is one of the major sources of political discontent across Western Europe. It’s one of the reasons you get Alternative für Deutschland, or indeed Sahra Wagenknecht, scoring the results they did in Saxony and Thuringia over the weekend. It’s one of the reasons you got Brexit here. It’s one of the reasons for Marine Le Pen. It’s one of the reasons for what happened in the Netherlands and Scandinavia. And I think one of – you know, one of the things that’s happened in my lifetime as a Diplomat is the way the foreign policy has increasingly become domestic policy, which means that – so, we saw it, I think, this morning with David Lammy’s announcement that he was not going to license – he was going to hold 50 licenses for arms sales to Israel. Which will have no impact at all, actually, on what’s happening in the Middle East, but it’s clearly designed to – for a domestic constituency, and I think that is a problem because it means the governments…

Bronwen Maddox

You don’t think it’s designed at all to put pressure on Israel, I mean, through the simple reason that it’s…?

Sir John Jenkins KCMG LVO

But I don’t think it will, and I think he must know that. So, I think it’s far more designed as a domestic – for a domestic constituency, which is the problem, because there’s this point about inward looking – about being inward looking. If you don’t have a sense of the world as something that – outside our shores, that is not conditioned solely by domestic politics, and domestic politics in this country. And of course, Western Europe have become far more contentious over the last ten to 20 years, particularly when it comes to the Middle East, because of the issue of Islamism, the issue of Israel, issue of Gaza and Iraq and indeed, Afghanistan. And I think there is a problem for government, and it speaks to this point about putting our house in order and actually being able to articulate a sense of action in the world and then implement that action.

Ben Bland

Yeah, just to comment on the technology question. I think it is very, very difficult, and it’s ironic to me that, you know, we are now talking about cyber sovereignty, but actually it was China and Russia that was pushing this idea first. And of course, it’s – of course, it makes sense in one way that we should enforce our laws online just as we would any other law, but of course, the whole idea of the internet was that it broke down borders and brought the world together. So, I think it’s very, very difficult, and if we are going to say we are going to police online harms here, well, the Thai Government or the Chinese Government or the Vietnamese Government just has a very different view of what online harms may be. So, I think it’s quite difficult for our societies.

The second thing I’ll say is that I personally, think in the countries I look at, that myths and disinformation is there, but often, I think we lean on that to explain what’s going on when it doesn’t go our way. ‘Cause it’s far nicer to think that, you know, people have been manipulated than just a lot of people don’t agree with us. And a good example of this is, you know, Russian and Chinese information campaigns, you know, to point out Western hypocrisy. I mean, they exist, but I think in lots of the Global South people are perfectly willing to see that the West is hypocritical for their own reasons. So, it’s not the case that China and Russia is pulling the wool over people’s eyes in Indonesia or Vietnam or other places, but actually people already think that, but it’s easier to say, “Well, this is a Chinese misinformation campaign.” Those campaigns exist, but actually often, it’s – they’re successful – they appear successful when they’re preaching to the converted.

Anne Applebaum

Can I say just a word about the AfD, ‘cause there wasn’t really a question about it, but it came up? The – there has – to be clear, there has been in Eastern Germany, going back a decade, a very long term, very concerted Russian campaign. That’s the best way I can put it. It’s not like a little one-off disinformation campaign or like a false rumour that’s spread online. It’s a cul – it’s been a long-term cultivation of the Russian speaking population in Germany, which is much bigger than you think. It’s several million people. There was a cultivation of people in Eastern Germany, a promotion of nostalgia. You know, since the war in – since the full scale war in Ukraine, there’s been a promotion of a narrative about, you know, “This isn’t our war,” or “We need peace” or something. I mean, there’s a – there are different versions of it.

It’s been going on for a very long time. The AfD has been created in that context and many – and there have been a number of connections between the AfD and Russia financially and in terms of propaganda and otherwise. I mean – and to, sort of, see that phenomenon somehow as something that’s totally separate and nothing to do with us, I mean, is part of the – I mean, sorry, nothing to do with outside forces, and it’s – you can be explained by German immigration policy or by democratic failure, I think is to misunderstand the degree to which Russia sees itself. And – as a player inside our politics, cares a lot about how it’s perceived, spends a lot of thought, is very sophisticated about how – what kind of promotion.

It’s not just stuff on the internet. It’s money, it’s influence, it’s – goes through the business community. It goes through politics. You know, these are very long-term strategies. We have been very slow in recognising them and understanding them, and we still underestimate them, and we don’t have – I mean, there’s certainly no – you know, there’s certainly no parallel – despite, you know, some support that we give to democracy activists, there’s no parallel policy inside Russia.

Bronwen Maddox

Really interesting, and Anita Punwani online, hope that begins to get to address your question. We’ve got a lot about news and information. Let me take another couple, at least. Alright, right over there on the aisle, yes. You had your hand up? No, behind. No, the woman?

Cristina

Me?

Bronwen Maddox

Yeah, yes, you.

Cristina

Hi, I’m Cristina, a Journalist from Spain, and just I finished your book yesterday. I really like it, and after I finished, I saw some news in the Spanish media that say, like, around 30% of young male would prefer to live in an autocratic regime than in a democracy. I find it’s shocking, and I wanted to ask you, what’s the appeal for people living in democracies, young people to want to be in an autocratic regime? Is that the Politicians are doing something wrong in our countries or autocratic regimes are doing something right? Thank you.

Bronwen Maddox

Thank you. Where…

Anne Applebaum

That was in my last book, actually.

Bronwen Maddox

Where was the 30%, or of which – of who…?

Cristina

Of young male in Spain.

Bronwen Maddox

In Spain?

Cristina

Yes.

Bronwen Maddox

Yeah, okay, and let me take another one here, again on the aisle.

Jonny Singh

Hi there. I’m Jonny Singh, Chatham House member. The question about why autocrats survive, I wonder, how prepared are we for when they don’t survive? And in particular, I wonder about Russia and how fragile you think the state is in a way that perhaps it isn’t in China and Iran and the others. So, I guess, the question is, you know, what – how prepared are we, or what can we do if there is a collapse and autocrats don’t survive?

Bronwen Maddox

There’s two great questions. Let’s take those and then I’m coming – there’s a whole bundle of questions I got on hypocrisy. So, we’ll come onto those, but Cristina’s interesting question on what might appeal to those in democracies to be governed otherwise, not just men in Spain, and Jonny’s question, really interesting one about the end of autocrats. Who would like to start? John?

Sir John Jenkins KCMG LVO

I mean, I can’t speak…

Bronwen Maddox

Or either, yeah.

Sir John Jenkins KCMG LVO

I can’t speak about why 30% of young men in Spain want – would – might prefer to live in a autocracy. It’s something you see in the Middle East. I mean, one of the interesting things after the – after about 2013, in the region, was what I call the flight to security. I think people saw revolutions overthrowing existing governments, existing autocrats, that happened in Libya, particularly in Egypt and Tunisia. And the successor governments failed to deliver what people wanted, which initially – I mean, I think people ultimately want governments which are responsive, effective, efficient and legitimate and just. But initially, what they want is jobs, services, and security. Without security, nothing else happens, and, you know, all – in all the polling in the Arab Barometer or the ASDA’A Burson-Marsteller survey of Arab youth, you saw this trend. People moving away from wanting democracy to wanting security.

Now, of course, in the Middle East, democracy has never worked, for various complex sociopolitical, reasons. So, you ended up with elections which produced the same government or a version of it, which was equally unsatisfactory, ‘cause it was still kleptocratic, elite and oppressive. So, it was disillusion, certainly across the Middle East. Spain, I don’t – I mean, I assume this idea that in some sense, governments are failing to deliver certain things which they believe that an autocratic – so, one question is, which model of autocracy are they looking at? Are they looking at China, are they looking at Russia, or are they looking at something else? I don’t know because…

Anne Applebaum

Or Zimbabwe.

Sir John Jenkins KCMG LVO

Or Zimbabwe, because, you know, some autocracies clearly are appalling for everybody. Some people seem to believe – like, maybe China is an example. Some people think that, you know, if you can get a bridge built in whatever it is, six months, rather than ten years, people think that’s a good thing. I think there’s a massive downside to all of this, which people don’t see, but, you know…

Anne Applebaum

So, every moment in human history – this is the subject of my last book actually, and actually there was a bit of that Spain in it, so you can go and look it up. In every moment in history, when there has been rapid change, and we now live in an era of extraordinary change, social change, demographic change, we’ve just discussed it, political change, economic change, informational change. The nature of how we perceive the world has changed completely in the last decade, whenever you live it through moments like that, you have people who long for some deeper sense of security and stability. And you can see it at the end of the 19th Century in Germany. You can see it – I mean, you – pick your era. You know, when I – you know, when you look back at different complicated moments in history, you almost always find that, and of course, this is what the autocratic world – this is how they sell themselves. We offer you security, safety, stability, as opposed to division and cacophony and degeneracy or – as they would put it.

So, there is a – so, that – it doesn’t seem to be surprising. I mean, the only thing in a way, that’s surprising is that we’re surprised. You know, when the Founders of the United States wrote the US Constitution, they had in their head the idea that sooner or later a demagogue would arise and would – people would be attracted to it, and the rules of our incredibly complex Constitution were written precisely to avoid it. I mean, the Electoral College was not created so that the people of Michigan get to decide who is the President. It was created so that we would somehow evolve a – ward off a demagogue, and so, they assumed that democracies could collapse. It’s just that we lived in an era of unbelievable democratic success and prosperity, and we find it strange, but actually historically, it’s not strange.

I mean, actually, the question of whether preparing for the collapse of Russia – so, in my view, the end of Putin and the end of the Putin’s regime would be an – of enormous benefit to the planet. It would be of huge benefit to the people of Russia. It would be – it would bring in a new – an era of change, and we should be in favour of it. I mean, clearly, even the tenor of the question and the commentary, you know, around that subject in the press, people are afraid of change in Russia. They always have been. When Stalin died, people worried about the hardliners waiting in the wings.

This is one of the – it’s a – one of the worst forms of government, the most aggressive, the most venal, that we could imagine. The difficulty in Russia is also that – and this may be, also, important to your question, the – there is a fragility there. If Putin fell down the stairs tomorrow, not only do we not know who would succeed him, we don’t know how that person would be chosen. There’s no Politburo. There’s no Council of Elders. We – there would be – by definition, there would be some chaos or some complicated transition that might last for a long time.

Bronwen Maddox

But do we then assume that that person would have a lot of freedom of movement, as Putin does at the moment, but he has been there a long time? And I’m thinking also of…

Anne Applebaum

Whoever…

Bronwen Maddox

…for example, Iran, where the Revolutionary Guard now has such control, and including economic control, of the country, that you can argue about – obviously, it makes a bit of difference who is Supreme Leader or President, but still, does it entirely change how the country positions itself?

Anne Applebaum

It could or it couldn’t. I mean, I can’t tell you. I mean – but it would be a moment of possibility. It would be – there could be a possible – it would be someone who could, for example, end the war, because it wouldn’t be – whoever it would be, it wouldn’t be his war. It would be someone who could change. I mean, I’m not saying that it would be, but anyway, I’ll stop there.

Bronwen Maddox

Yeah, I just want to ask Ben on this, ‘cause these are terrific questions. On the first one about, why live in a non-democratic country? I’m not saying that India is not a democratic country, but Modi has begun to do some things that are less democratic and depart from the original conception of the Constitution, apparently with great assent of many people there. Do you see this as a – describe to us how you and the – your colleagues are portraying this? Is it a democratic move that people are voting for this kind of leadership? And I’m going to – might ask you something about Xi as well, but not in the same breath.

Ben Bland

Well, obviously Modi and the PJP didn’t do as well in the recent elections as they’d hoped. So, I think, yeah, there’s a sign there that, you know, things are contested. I mean, India is something of an illiberal democracy, and I think the way you select your leaders doesn’t necessarily determine the principles by which they govern. I think they’re different things. It’s important to remember that, but I think, yeah, we’ve got to remember democracy is about fighting over power and resources. Democracy isn’t, sort of, a museum piece that you take out and preserve. So, it’s a battle, and I think India’s future – you know, there are many futures for India, and I think power’s going to be contested. Modi won’t be there forever, and I think you’ll see different directions taken in future there, but I think that’s the case everywhere, to be honest.

The good thing about, you know, democracies is that there is a bit more resilience, I think. You know, our systems are under pressure and I think we have in the past been too hubristic. Just talking about democratic backsliding implies that we thought we were all progressing forwards. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be surprised that we’ve sliden backwards. So, I think it’s a good reminder, but there is a resilience in our systems. I mean, the UK has shown it in the last few years with a lot of chaos, but a certain degree of resilience, too.

Bronwen Maddox

Let’s come onto maybe our final group of questions, and I just want to begin with, one – there are various ones on hypocrisy and should – or how does the West deal with countries that are not democracies, or how – right, how does the democratic world deal with non-democracies, for example, Saudi Arabia or others have mentioned Egypt or Azerbaijan? And is that hippocrat – hypocritical? Is it pure self-interest? Is it compatible with pursuing world order? And [inaudible – 55:05] has talked about this, particularly, not talking so much – he’s saying about the big – the Russia, China, Iran conversation that we’ve been having, but smaller ones. “How should democratic countries deal with them if they are in pursuit of trying to protect their own values?”

Let’s take that one and there are various aspects to this in the excellent online questions. Thank you. Let me take two more, as well. These are going to be our last ones, I think. Right here in the middle, you’ve been very patient.

Dr Jennifer Lind

[Pause] Thank you for a wonderful panel. I’m Jennifer Lind. I’m a Fellow here at Chatham House. I’m wondering, Ms Applebaum, is there any sort of temporal dimension that you noticed while you were researching this, as – is this a trend that’s more recent? It’s ramped up recently in response to, I can imagine, several different potential things, or is this just – they’ve been doing these sorts of things just in very different forms and with very different available technologies and so on? Thank you.

Bronwen Maddox

Thank you very much, and right in front of you, and apologies that there are so many people with hands up who I know are going to ask brilliant questions, and there are so many terrific ones online, but…

André Adamson

Thank you, André Adamson from King’s College London. You mentioned earlier that we in the West didn’t really have an effective counternarrative in the way that perhaps we had Radio Free Europe and things like that during the Cold War. And I’m wondering if you have any views on the way the mainstream media portray us, Western democracies if you like, that will be consumed by those autocracies, that would effectively, confirm the narratives put out by their governments.

Bronwen Maddox

So, whether Western mainstream media is supporting the…

André Adamson

I think the responsibility of the media to audit its…

Bronwen Maddox

…autocracies narratives against us?

André Adamson

Yeah.

Bronwen Maddox

If I got you right, that one. Jennifer’s question about timing, where did this – when did this…

Anne Applebaum

That’s an easy question.

Bronwen Maddox

…get big? And – yeah, and then the first one I posed to you of either hypocrisy or how democracy should deal with these others. Let’s – let me start with Ben and come this way.

Ben Bland

Just on hypocrisy, there’s obviously no monopoly on that. In foreign policy, it’s, sort of, the first principle, right? So, I think we have to accept that, but I think…

Bronwen Maddox

You heard it here. Yeah, thank you for that.

Ben Bland

But I think – actually, you said hippocratic would be good. Like, it would be good if we could…

Bronwen Maddox

Yeah, I was stumbling through hippocratic, reading through these things.

Ben Bland

I know, but it would be…

Bronwen Maddox

Hypocritical, yeah.

Ben Bland

It would be good if we could do no harm, right? In our foreign policy, but we can’t. We have to make all these messy compromises, and I think on the one hand, we do have to deal with all kinds of regimes all around the world. On the other, I think we can’t lose sight of our values. I mean, good foreign policy and good partnerships can be based on the combination of those things, but we just have to be smart about where we’re – when we’re foregrounding our values and our interests. But that’s difficult to do when we’re consumed by so many domestic short-term problems.

Sir John Jenkins KCMG LVO

Hypocrisy, I mean, as Ben said, you know, I’ve – and I’ve had this. You know, in my 35 year career in the Foreign Office, I kept having people saying, you know, “You’re hypocrites.” Everybody’s a hypocrite when it comes to foreign policy, or everybody’s a realist, which makes it – which is one of the reasons I find it dangerous to enunciate, to say you – we’re going to have a policy which is progressive and realist. I think you can be progressive or you can be realist. I’m not sure you can be both. Certainly, not at the same time, and you know, Saudi Arabia is a good example, and you’re making judgments all the time.

You know, whatever you think about Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia is central to the stability and prosperity of the Middle East. If Saudi Arabia fails, everything else in the Gulf fails. Jordan probably fails. Egypt probably fails. That’s simply too dangerous. Saudi Arabia has to work, which means you have to deal with whoever is in charge, and of course, the King is still King Salman, not King Mohammed. But Mohammed will be King, and unless something happens, he’s going to be King for 40 years, and we saw this with America. So, when Biden, you know, comes in and says, oh – before he gets elected, he says, you know, “I’m going to make Saudi Arabia a pariah,” and then has to go to Saudi – to Riyadh to make nice with a fist bump with Mohammed bin Salman.

Ultimately, you have to deal with what’s in front of you. It is different, and, you know, we have shared interest with Saudi Arabia. I mean, I’m not keen on the talk of values. I mean, I remember saying to David Cameron once, you know, “You talk about values.” This is in the context of the Muslim Brotherhood review. “What do you mean?” I mean, it’s like Orwell. You know, “Old maids cycling through the mists to Holy Communion,” it doesn’t make sense. You’re talking about interests. That has to be the fundamental basis. We have shared interest with Saudi Arabia in Middle East stability and various other things. We don’t have shared interest with Iran, actually, because it is diametrically opposed to what we want in the Middle East. That’s the point. That’s the fulcrum.

Bronwen Maddox

Thanks John, and Anne, I’m going to put all three to you, but we have hypocrisy, we have Jennifer’s on, when did this get real, and André’s.

Anne Applebaum

So, the typical question is an interesting one. I mean, I certainly think, you know, Putin, I think from the beginning was an illiberal leader and he transforms into an anti-liberal leader, I think, much sooner than people think. Obviously, the Iranian regime from the beginning was – I mean, illiberal isn’t really the right word, is it? I mean, it’s a project to create a…

Sir John Jenkins KCMG LVO

Yes, it is, yes.

Anne Applebaum

…theocratic state. You know, it’s a – so, that’s clear that – from the beginning. However, I do think there’s a particular moment about a decade ago, 2013/2014, which is – 2013 is the rise of Xi Jinping. The date of the publication of this – my very favourite named Chinese document, this is “Document number nine,” and this is – you’re all lau – I’m sure most – half the room already knows what it is. This is the document that says, “The threats to the Chinese Communist Party. One of the first ones is Western constitutional democracy.” The beginning to identify that as an actual threat to China as opposed to something that we live in.

And that’s at about the same time of – as the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine, when Putin watches a regime that in some ways, was parallel or similar to his own, that he was seeking to encourage and support, is overthrown by a genuine civic, you know, civic – civil democracy movement. The President flees the country. We all get to see pictures of his golden palace and his ostriches, and Putin thinks, right, that could happen to me. I mean, I think that’s a very – that’s – that you know, those – that’s the important moment.

Bronwen Maddox

And we had, as well, André’s question on our ‘mainstream media’.

Anne Applebaum

The – I – the only – I mean, forgive me, the problem is, what do you mean by ‘mainstream media’? I mean, mainstream media includes Fox News, it includes The Guardian, it includes GB News, it includes, I don’t know, you know, The Times and the Telegraph and The Guardian, I mean, and the Financial Times and the New York Times. I mean, the – you know, you can find in our vast media network…

Bronwen Maddox

Media is very plural…

Anne Applebaum

…in our conversations…

Bronwen Maddox

…and plural and very much – yeah.

Anne Applebaum

…you can find many criticisms of our system that are – that would be appealing to autocracies who want to say, “Look how hypocritical you are,” or “Look how divided you are,” or “Look how degenerate you are.” I mean, that – I’m not sure that that’s a thing we can do anything about, and I’m – you know, I mean, the – my bigger problem with the media is that the nature of modern media is more and more sensationalist. It’s – it involves shorter and shorter attention spans. It’s not entirely the media’s fault. It’s the nature of the – it’s the business model for, you know, for media that has time to examine issues and investigate problems and spend – and, you know, and encourage readers to think deeply, has – is dissolving. And that’s true in every country on the planet, and it’s also true of right wing media and left wing media. It’s not a political problem. So, that, to me, is the problem with the media.

Bronwen Maddox

With that, we are going to have to stop. Thank you for coming. Thank you for terrific questions and thank you online for really, really excellent questions, but at this point, can you join me in thanking our panel [applause]?