Autocracy, Inc. review – a 'clear-eyed' account of authoritarian regimes

"International liberalism" is in crisis, and Anne Applebaum wants to know why, said Yuan Yi Zhu in The Times. 

In her previous book, "Twilight of Democracy", the historian and journalist took aim at liberalism's challengers in the West, particularly populist "demagogues" on the Right. In her new one, she turns her attention to its chief enemies elsewhere – the world's authoritarian regimes. 

Unlike in the last century, when dictatorships formed ideological blocs, today's autocracies – Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, and so on – range from "Shia theocracies" to "communist autarkies". Yet Applebaum argues that their elites share a determination to preserve their "wealth and power", and are thus united not by ideals but by "deals" – hence Autocracy Inc., her "catchy coinage". 

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She provides a strong account of these "unlikely partnerships" and the shady forms they take, and she also does a good job of laying out the corrupting effects that they have on Western democracies. Ultimately, she says, all autocrats dream of "gutting the post-1945 international order" to make the world safer for themselves. 

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, neoliberals assumed "the West would get new markets and the East would get democracy", said Sam Adler-Bell in The New York Times. But globalisation hasn't worked like that. Instead, powered by new technologies, autocracies have spread their illiberal ideas, while the West has become dependent on the likes of Chinese manufacturing and Russian oil, which has hobbled its ability to assert itself. 

Enabled by the "opacity" of global finance, ruthless regimes have got richer by engaging in their own "trade in surveillance technologies, weapons and precious minerals", and many in the West have got rich, too, by helping kleptocrats from mafia states to secrete their ill-gotten gains. In her analysis of the complex networks that lie behind autocracies, Applebaum is "clear-eyed", but her book suffers from a kind of "fuzzy patriotism": she appears to look more favourably on those autocratic states that are allied to the US, such as Saudi Arabia, than relatively democratic states aligned with Russia. 

It's odd that she doesn't mention the Iraq War, or the later intervention in Libya, said Dominic Lawson in The Mail on Sunday. These developments "not only gave rocket fuel to the anti-Western agenda globally", but also sapped the sense that the West had moral authority to criticise other nations' military ventures. But that is a minor quibble; this is a "terrific book".