📚 Finished reading Autocracy, Inc. by Anne Applebaum.
In this book I believe Anne Applebaum adeptly identifies what underlies a lot of what underlies our various contemporary geopolitical permacrisis - including what is new and different about it vs past times.
Autocracies have of course existed since time immemorial. The key tenet defining them is that the ruler - usually, and by some definitions it must be, a single person- has all the power. They hold absolute power over their citizens and institutions. They choose what rights their citizens have, how they must behave, who gets punished and how, along with everything they care about regarding how the country in question is run.
If they hold elections, they are meaningless. There is no “legitimate” process to displace the power of the autocrat. They stay until they’ve had enough, or die. The only thing that constrains them is what needs to be done to preserve their power.
Despite the rise of democracies, plenty of autocracies still exist today. Applebaum includes Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Angola, Myanmar, Cuba, Syria, Zimbabwe, Mali, Belarus, Sudan, Azerbaijan and others in her list.
However she no longer believes the traditional “one bad guy in charge” setup is what is going on with the modern incarnations. Instead autocracies are enabled by sophisticated networks, kleptocratic financial structures, miscellaneous security services and technologists expect in surveillance, propaganda and disinformation.
Traditionally the autocrat might confine themselves within the borders of their country. They might have very different ideologies and goals from their peers. Autocrats might be communists, monarchists, nationalists, theocrats or something else.
But, also novel these days, they are nonetheless connected to each other across the globe. They reinforce each other’s power, irrespective of ideology, sharing resources, strategies and propaganda with each other. Their goal is still only to do what is in the interest of preserving their own wealth and power; not to spread an ideologically throughout the world. It so happens that collaborating with other autocrats is an effective way to support this. It’s a transactional relationship, absent are any dreams of a common society.
The general tactics of the autocrat involve silencing their citizens, pushing back against transparency or accountability, and repressing anyone - local or abroad - that challenges them. They live in expensive mansions and often operate for-profit ventures.
Their international collaboration with each other comes the desire to promote the ideas that will keep them in power, keep their wealth growing, and discredit any threat - international or local, physical, financial or cultural - that might challenge them.
The collaborate across borders to each other lessen the effects of sanctions, exchange the technologies of repression, happy to assist each other in getting richer and keep each other in power - for self-interested reasons if no other.
This whole structure is what Applebaum refers to as “Autocracy Inc.”. The autocratic network can be considered as an entity in the vein of a modern corporation.
Another aspect of the modern autocrat is their focus on impunity. The new autocrats feel secure, that they don’t have to persuade other countries or their own population of the correctness of their vision. They don’t even try to. They simply don’t care about criticism, internal or external, and will often openly brutalise their opponents and wantonly defy international law. For which they are rarely severely punished by the rest of the world.
Their main common enemy is the democratic world at large, and international organisations such as NATO, the EU, as well as the very ideas of liberalism. Liberal ideas are innately attractive to some of even the most repressed population. They thus look for ways to discredit the concepts concerned; to give the impression that hey, you might not like how your country is going, how we force you to live your lives, but it’s necessary - there is no better alternative.
Autocrats have no belief in a neutral law, an independent judiciary or press. Anyone who critiques them is a disloyal traitor.
An all-too contemporary example of such a nefarious gathering is of course Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. The democratic world did pull together to some extent; sanctions were instigated, arms were provided to Ukraine, Sweden and Finland joined NATO. But another alliance set out to help Russia one way or another. Applebaum lists China, Iran, North Korea, Eritrea, Zimbabwe, Mali, and the Central African Republic, Belarus, Turkey, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and India as all giving some level of material support to the Russian aggression.
And of course in today’s connected world their discrediting of liberalism can spread to other countries, risking bringing their democratic processes into question.
What can be done about it? This is where I struggle to feel much hope given the level of collaboration likely required in today’s polarised world - but she valiantly provides a few ideas. A lot of it is around democracies finding a way to unite and support each other, just as the autocrats do.
Address autocracy as an idea, not a set of instances:
…think about the struggle for freedom not as a competition with specific autocratic states, and certainly not as “war with China,” but as a war against autocratic behaviors. wherever they are found.
She puts out a call for:
- networks of lawyers and public officials to fight corruption.
- democratic activists who understand kleptocracy.
- military and intelligence coalitions that can predict and stop lawless violence.
- economic experts who can track the impact of sanctions, determine who is breaking them and stop them.
- people who can organise online and coordinate campaigns to debunk propaganda.
Next up, to stop promoting what is effectively “transactional kleptocracy”, something she rightly claims that much of “The West” is guilty of.
Financial transactions should be transparent. We should be able to know who owns every company, who benefits from every trust. We should prevent our own citizens hiding money secretive jurisdictions or working to enable others to do so.
Our enforcement teams should be strong and well-resourced. We should not allow the wealthy to conduct business with autocrats and then come back and do further business with democracies, all while enjoying the privileges of citizenship and legal protection that come from democratic life.
She doesn’t pretend any of this is easy. It’s clear that most of it fundamentally requires international collaboration.
Just as the democratic world once built an international anticommunist alliance, so can the United States and its allies build an international anticorruption alliance, organized around the idea of transparency, accountability, and fairness, enhanced by the creative thinking found in the autocratic diasporas as well as the democracies themselves.
Next up, the autocratic information war must be undermined. Fact checking is necessary but not sufficient. With the rise social media and the expertise of autocratic propagandists there is no longer a “free market of ideas” that will promote the good ideas over the bad, the truth over fiction. People are actively drawn to conspiracy theories and other types of disinformation.
Social media platforms are somewhat to blame. Their algorithms are too easy for the propagandists to game. They must be reformed. Social media platforms should be transparent, allow users to own and control their own data as well as to influence the algorithms that determine what a user sees. Independent scientists must be allowed enough inner access to the system to enable them to understand their impact.
Without breaching our own principles we should also do our best to connect to audiences that may be receptive to anti-autocratic ideas with what they care about. Leverage the power of emotion. Show how fighting truth can bring change.
The democratic world must also decouple and de-risk from autocracies. We have recently learned what it means to be dependent on Russia’s gas. Either withdraw fully or, as a minimum, don’t become dependent on the goodwill of an autocrat.
Regulation will be key as a new world of repressive technologies continues to be developed - surveillance, AI, face recognition and so on.
Her final message is to emphasise that this fight is real and necessary. If the rise of the autocracies seems remote to you, then it isn’t, or at least it might not be for long. Even if you selfishly care nothing for the plight of those currently suffering under autocracies, no-one can assume that the democracy they live in is safe.
A country isolating itself from the world won’t work. Using “realism” as an excuse to fail to take geopolitical action is simply an excuse used by people that don’t care.
There is no liberal world order anymore, and the aspiration to create one no longer seems real. But there are liberal societies, open and free countries that offer a better chance for people to live useful lives than closed dictatorships do.
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Those that exist have deep flaws, profound divisions, and terrible historical scars. But that’s all the more reason to defend and protect them.
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They can be destroyed from the outside and from the inside, too, by division and demagogues. Or they can be saved. But only if those of us who live in them are willing to make the effort to save them.
