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PORTSIDE CULTURE

THESE DICTATORS ARE DIFFERENT. ‘AUTOCRACY, INC.’ EXPLAINS HOW  
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Frank Langfitt
July 24, 2024
NPR
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_ Today's autocracies range “from theocracies to monarchies, that
operate more like companies,” united by “a laser-focus on
preserving their wealth, repressing their people and maintaining power
at all costs." _

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_Autocracy, Inc.
The Dictators Who Want to Run the World_
Anne Applebaum
Doubleday
ISBN: 9780385549936

The United States and other major democracies face the most
challenging geopolitical landscape in decades. The crises include a
bloody battle for land in Eastern Europe that challenges the principle
of territorial sovereignty, the risk of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan
in the coming years and a brutal war in Gaza that could still spread.

We are in a new era, but how do we define it, and what is the
fundamental threat?

Several recent books tackle this crucial question_. New York Times_
White House and National Security correspondent David Sanger calls
this historical moment “New Cold Wars.” He sees the U.S. defending
the West against a rising China and resurgent Russia. _CNN_ anchor and
Chief National Security analyst Jim Sciutto calls it “The Return of
Great Powers.”

 

In her new book, the _Atlantic_’s Anne Applebaum takes a different,
more sweeping view. We are not in Cold War 2.0, she argues, but a
battle for the future world order against what she calls
“_Autocracy, Inc., The Dictators Who Want to Rule the World._”
Autocracy, Inc., is not a club. There are no meetings like SPECTRE in
a James Bond movie, where villains give progress reports on their
kleptocratic gains and attacks on democracy. Instead, Applebaum
writes, it is a very loosely knit mix of regimes, ranging from
theocracies to monarchies, that operate more like companies. What
unites these dictators isn’t an ideology, but something simpler and
more prosaic: a laser-focus on preserving their wealth, repressing
their people and maintaining power at all costs.

These regimes can help each other in ways large and small, Applebaum
writes.

Countries such as Zimbabwe, Belarus and Cuba voted in favor of
Russia’s annexation of Crimea at the United Nations in 2014. Russia
gave loans to Venezuela’s authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro,
while Venezuelan police use Chinese-made water cannons, tear gas and
surveillance equipment to attack and track street protesters.

Of course, U.S. companies have also supplied authoritarian regimes.
When covering the crushing of the democracy movement in Bahrain during
the Arab Spring, I rummaged through bins of empty rubber bullet
canisters made by a company in Pennsylvania.

 

More recently and more alarming, though, have been China’s tacit
support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and President Vladimir
Putin’s June visit to North Korea, which the U.S. accuses of
supplying weapons to Russia.
But _Autocracy Inc._, uses more than conventional arms to attack
democracies. In order to retain power and build more wealth, autocrats
also undermine the idea of democracy as a viable choice for their own
people. Fearful of its former Soviet republics drifting further West
– see Ukraine – Russia and its three main TV channels broadcast
negative news about Europe an average of 18 times a day during one
three-year stretch.

China extends its message through local media and helps other
dictatorships. After satellite networks dropped Russia Today – RT
– following the invasion of Ukraine, China’s StarTimes satellite
picked up RT and put it back into African households, where it could
spread Moscow’s anti-Western, anti-LGBTQ message, which resonates in
many African nations.

The goal is not to persuade people that autocracy is the answer, but
to encourage cynicism about the alternative. Applebaum says the
message is this: _You may not like our society, but at least we are
strong and the democratic world is weak, degenerate, divided and
dying.  _

How did the world end up here?

Applebaum is strong on how Western misjudgment and greed enabled and
empowered autocrats over the decades. A working theory in Washington
and Berlin was that greater economic integration and dependency
between the West and China and Russia would serve as a glue and
deterrent, making conflict too costly. But Europe’s dependence on
Russian gas predictably backfired. Moscow used it as a source of
blackmail following the invasion of Ukraine.

Meanwhile, corporate America’s heavy investment in China helped fuel
the country’s extraordinary economic rise, but didn’t lead to the
desired political results. Instead of becoming a more liberal,
Western-friendly regime, the Communist Party became a more powerful
rival. Among other things, Beijing used its new wealth to build
islands in the South China Sea and a blue-water navy to challenge
America’s.

 

At just over two hundred pages, Applebaum’s book is slender. She
might have done more to detail the boomerang effect of globalization.
When American companies exported jobs to China, they cut labor costs,
boosted profits and lowered prices for consumers. Those business
decisions devastated communities built on everything from auto plants
to furniture factories.
That sowed the seeds for the populist backlash in 2016 that continues
to roil the country to the benefit of America’s authoritarian
opponents.

What is to be done? First, make life harder for dictators.

Applebaum says democratic nations have to make it more difficult for
kleptocrats to stash their money overseas. She suggests an
international coalition of treasury and finance ministry officials
across Europe, Asia and North America work to strengthen transparency
and tighten laws together.

This will be tough. Kleptocrats make lucrative clients for lawyers,
financiers and real estate agents. One of London’s unofficial
industries is money-laundering. And, in a complex political landscape,
it can be useful for democracies to work with corrupt regimes to
achieve bigger goals.

Another way to combat dictatorship is for democracies to deliver at
home, as Charles Dunst argues in _Defeating the Dictators: How
Democracy Can Prevail in the Age of the Strongman_. Political
grid-lock, income inequality, stagnant wages and rising crime can
provide fertile ground for populists.

Anti-incumbency and accountability have stood out as themes during
this epic year of elections as voters punished long-serving parties,
such as the Conservatives in the UK and the African National Congress
in South Africa.

More broadly, Applebaum says, democratic countries need to reduce
their economic dependence on authoritarian rivals. Europe’s reliance
on Russian gas was an embarrassing and costly lesson. Minerals could
prove another one for the United States.

Today, the U.S. only produces 4% of the world’s lithium and 13% of
its cobalt, while China processes more than 80% of all critical
minerals.

With the world's next geopolitical fault-line perhaps lying in the
waters around the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea, this kind of
math just doesn’t figure.
_Frank Langfitt is NPR’s Global Democracy correspondent. Previously,
he spent nearly two decades reporting overseas, based in Beijing,
Nairobi, Shanghai and London. In February 2022, he covered Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine. _

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