Autocracy Inc: the authoritarian club plotting to defeat the West

Three decades ago, many liberals proclaimed victory for democracy and a “rules-based international order.” But today, the majority of the world’s population lives in countries that are only partially free or are under one form or another of autocratic rule.

Why are autocracies on the rise? In her new book, Autocracy, Inc, Pulitzer prize winner Anne Applebaum provides an answer: there is a “network” among the world’s autocrats, who use the clandestine routes of our interconnected world to further their aims and undermine democracy.

Autocracy, Inc is a club of dictators and their states, Applebaum writes. Like the concept of “autocracy” itself, this incorporation is loose and fluid. The club’s members are not bound by any ideological kinship or constitutional structure.

Among them are hard dictatorships (like Belarus, China, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation), and hybrid illiberal democracies or softer autocracies (like Turkey, Singapore, India, the Philippines and Hungary).

For some reason, Applebaum does not pay a comparable share of attention to the Arab monarchies (which do not seek the end of democracy), nor to the hybrid regimes.

According to Applebaum, deals, not ideals, drive the autocrats together. Their collaboration is based on a common obsession with power and money. They face off against a dwindling group of democracies, which they try to undermine by all available means.

At times, this confrontation leads to war, as in Ukraine. To Applebaum, Russia’s war against Ukraine is the first battle in a larger war. It is part of “a conscious plan to undermine the network of ideas, rules and treaties” that have defined the now nearly extinct liberal world order.

Are they really all in cahoots?

Un