Anne Applebaum is a journalist, historian and staff writer at ‘The Atlantic’. Over the past three decades she has reported on different forms of authoritarian power, from the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe to the threat of 21st-century disinformation. Here she speaks to Ben Horton, Head of the Director’s Office at Chatham House, about her latest book ‘Autocracy Inc’, which explores the alarming rise of autocracies and the financial, security and technological networks which sustain them.
What do you mean by Autocracy Inc?
We all have an idea of how a dictatorship works. There’s an isolated bad guy at the top, and he has police and flunkies; he fights against dissidents, and that is how he maintains control in society. But that’s not necessarily true in the modern world. Dictatorships in different countries are linked together across many sectors.
Today’s autocrats may lack a common ideology, but are connected through a ‘fluid network’ of financial, propaganda and security interest, argues Anne Applebaum. Leonardo Cendamo/Getty Images.
They have economic links, with state companies in one country doing business with state companies in another. They have links with surveillance technology, much of which they buy from China. They have links in terms of propaganda, using the same political tactics. They imitate one another and create a network.
However, it’s not formal enough to be an alliance. Rather, it’s a fluid network of leaders and governments with mutual interests. Some countries are part of it some of the time, and not at others, and there are swing countries that play both sides.
Autocracy Inc is an expression I came up with to characterize this network. It functions almost like a huge corporation that a number of companies are part of, pursuing some common goals but doing different activities at different times.
Are autocrats only concerned with domestic regime survival, or is there some sort of shared world vision they work towards?
Above all, the vision is to re-establish the idea of ‘might makes right’ and underline that whoever is the strongest in their region gets to decide. It will look to many like chaos, but there is a logic to it. A dictatorship’s main interest is a negative one: they want to eliminate certain kinds of taboos and conversations that are prevalent in international politics.
Human rights is one such conversation. They also want established norms and assumptions about changing borders to disappear. In the case of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, part of the purpose is to make clear to the world that they can take territory by force and get away with it. A Russian victory in Ukraine would be a sign to China that they could take Taiwan back with impunity, or it could even encourage North Korea to invade the South.
When Putin uses the word ‘sovereignty’, he means that Russia is sovereign in the sense that it can impose its will on its neighbours, whereas Germany, for example, is not because it is constrained by its membership of the European Union. Putin’s deeply held view is that he can do whatever he wants wherever he wants, and nobody should be able to stop him just because of international law. That is the autocrat’s aim.
Autocracy is not a new phenomenon but seems to be flourishing right now. Why is that?
At least three things make this time distinct. First, Autocracy Inc is more closely interlinked which makes each of them more powerful. Russia would not still be fighting in Ukraine were it not for the weapons it gets from Iran and North Korea and the economic help it gets from China.
Another driver is financial. The global institutions of kleptocracy have made these leaders extremely rich and powerful in their own right. Twenty years ago, Chinese or Russian autocrats weren’t rich enough to buy off people in London, Paris or Washington. Rulers have become themselves fantastically wealthy and this has given them leverage inside our societies.
The third driver is that autocratic countries have come to perceive the ideals of the West as a domestic problem for them. In 2013, Xi Jinping’s government issued an internal document making the case that the language of the US Constitution was a political problem for people in China.
This understanding has cascaded into other autocratic countries, from Russia to Venezuela. They perceive the ideas that come from our part of the world as a threat, and so they refocus their own propaganda and their own political efforts to try to defeat those ideas. In some cases that just means putting up barriers around their own countries. In the case of Russia, though, it means trying to undermine our political systems.
There are elements within western political systems that are adopting some of these tactics. Do you see those involved as members of Autocracy Inc?
It is hard to generalize. Some people are explicitly interested in the autocratic project, and some are just willing to take the help of autocrats for their own projects. Right now [Hungarian President] Viktor Orbán is seeking to create alliances with Russia and China, probably in anticipation of being kicked out of the European Union.
On the other hand, in the Brexit referendum, while there was some kind of role for the Russians – they were clearly agitating in favour of Brexit, and the result was clearly in their interest – would you say that Russian influence was the only reason for Brexit? Clearly not.
There are some people about whom we still don’t know. Marine le Pen for a while clearly aligned herself with Russia, financially and linguistically. She has toned this down lately, but what would happen if she became President of France? Which side would she choose? I think it’s too early to say.
Is Donald Trump a member of Autocracy Inc?
Trump is a strange figure because he is only really interested in himself and is not particularly ideological. He is someone who appeals to the leaders of Autocracy Inc, and he is certainly very comfortable with their methods.
When he was president, the way he used foreign policy was much like the way a Central Asian dictator would use it. In other words, he kept close links with the Emirates and Saudi Arabia in order to benefit his son-in-law’s investment companies. His dealings with Turkey were also coloured by his own property interests in the country.
That link between family money and politics is something we know from the autocratic world but is pretty new to America. If you look into how he made his money over the years, you will find that he is a product of the same secretive financial system that has helped enable the rise of Putin and other autocrats, so in that sense he is very much like them.
How can the West resist the rise of autocracies?
Part of this story is about reforming our own societies. We must make our economies and political systems autocracy-proof. The reason I focused on issues such as anti-corruption and social media regulation in the book is because they are often overlooked in the bigger political picture.
They must be seen as national security issues and not as softer concerns for business or society to deal with. I hope that the next US administration, if it is run by Kamala Harris, will focus on these questions
But there is, of course, a need for military rearmament, especially for European countries who must be prepared for the possibility of a Russian victory in Ukraine or even a Russian attack on a NATO ally. We’ve already seen a campaign of Russian sabotage in various forms across Europe. Being more prepared to fight is clearly part of the solution as well.