Autocracy, Inc: the sophisticated networks of the new dictators

Anne Applebaum’s new book serves as a timely warning. It posits that there is now a sophisticated network of dictatorships that are chipping away at the surge of democracy that seemed so prevalent and inevitable following the end of the Cold War.

It is a powerful and disturbing argument. Given current geopolitical realities, Applebaum’s book contends that both unfettered greed and corruption have undermined many polities and allowed autocracy the space to seize power. A new breed of autocrats are able to cultivate complex, globe-spanning networks that work together in each other’s interests.

She names Russia and China as the wealthiest and arguably most influential autocracies, but argues that governments of ostensibly different political ideologies are all adopting similar tactics and developing networks to enrich themselves, entrench power and quell domestic and international dissent.

According to Applebaum they include Angola, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Cuba, Iran, Mali, Myanmar, Nicaragua, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, “among perhaps three dozen others [which] share a determination to deprive their citizens of any real influence or public voice, to push back against all forms of transparency or accountability, and to repress anyone, at home or abroad, who challenges them”.

Applebaum also lists Arab monarchies and others – Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Vietnam – which mostly do not work to undermine the democratic world. She also lists “illiberal democracies” – Turkey, Singapore, India, the Philippines and Hungary – “which sometimes align with the democratic world and sometimes don’t”.

The Venezuela example

Applebaum is particularly strong in her analysis of the long, unhappy reign of the “corrupt, bankrupt” Venezuelan regime.

After the socialist President Hugo Chávez died in 2013, his successor Nicolás Maduro consolidated power in the military, judiciary, media and police.

The regime’s model is, as Applebaum writes, straight from the autocracy playbook. It offers itself as an anti-American, neo-Marxist revolutionary regime.

But behind the scenes is a massively corrupt system whose profits from narcotics trafficking, illegal mining, extortion, kidnapping and fuel smuggling pay for the tools of oppression.

Meanwhile, Venezuela’s real economy has gone into free fall. The decline in the country’s oil industry began, Applebaum writes, when Chávez “threw the industry into chaos, firing 19,000 oil workers when they went on strike” and replacing experts with loyalists.

Today, Applebaum says, most of the petrol available in Venezuela is imported from Russia. Venezuela’s economy has shrunk by 75% in the last nine years. Corruption has cost the country many billions of dollars.

Today more than 80% of Venezuelans live below the poverty line, and more than half live in extreme poverty. Almost a quarter of the population has fled into exile.

The economic free fall has come hand in hand with increasing domestic repression and human rights violations. Maduro has ordered the justice department to use an “iron fist”.

Of course the Maduro government places the blame for the discontent on “right wing extremists” and US interference. The latest development is a war of words between Maduro and Elon Musk, and the blocking of Musk’s X social media site.

But Applebaum’s trenchant analysis of the regime has been vindicated by recent events.

In this year’s sham presidential election – described by observers as neither free nor fair – opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia, who is widely thought to have comfortably beaten Maduro, was forced into asylum in Spain after a warrant was issued for his arrest.

Venezuela’s enduring tragedy is a reminder that autocracies do not give up their privileges voluntarily.

Less sure-footed on Africa

While Applebaum is strong on Venezuela, she is less sure-footed when it comes to African autocracies.

The problem is that the book is certain that there are good guys and bad guys – the autocrats’ enemies are labelled as “us… the democratic world, ‘the West’, NATO, the European Union, their own, internal democratic opponents” – but Applebaum does little to explain just why certain countries turn away from democratic ideals.

Many countries that endured colonialism are, unsurprisingly, unwilling to take lessons in democracy from their erstwhile colonialists.

Applebaum focuses most of her attention on Zimbabwe. While she adequately sums up President Robert Mugabe’s imposition of a one-party state and the crimes and follies of Mugabe and his successor-by-coup, current President Emmerson Mnangagwa, there is little analysis of how the roots of autocracy in Zimbabwe were laid by the violent and autocratic colonial Rhodesian state.

Surprisingly, there is also no reference to post-colonial Zimbabwe’s most egregious human rights crisis – the Matebeleland mass killings of the 1980s, known locally as Gukurahundi – in which tens of thousands of Ndebele were murdered by government troops as part of an onslaught on the opposition Zimbabwe African People’s Union.

However, Applebaum is much stronger on how dictatorships are trying to spread their influence over African governments of all stripes today.

The Sahel is a case in point. In Mali, a military coup was swiftly followed, in 2021, with the arrival of Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group, who subsequently “gained access to three Malian gold mines, among other assets”.

Turning to Central Africa, Applebaum continues: “A parallel story unfolded in the Central Africa Republic after the president of that country invited Wagner troops to help him fight off insurgency.

“Now Wagner mercenaries guard the president and brutally repress his enemies. They run a radio station that produces Russian and government propaganda that ironically rails against ‘modern practices of neo-colonialism’.”

The pay-off is that the Russians have secured mining licenses and the right to export diamonds, gold and timber without paying tax.

A LinkedIn network of autocrats

Indeed, Applebaum reminds us that autocracies are not run by one “bad guy” but by “sophisticated networks relying on kleptocratic financial structures, a complex of security services – military, paramilitary, police – and technological experts who provide surveillance, propaganda and disinformation”.

Not only that, but the members of such networks are connected to like-minded networks in other autocracies. After decades of damaging “one-man” rule across Africa, this new dispensation arguably represents an even more potent challenge to the democratic rights of citizens across the continent.

Applebaum argues: “a world in which autocracies work together to stay in power, work together to promote their system, and work together to damage democracies is not some distant dystopia. That world is the one we are living in now.”

Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
By Anne Applebaum
£20, Allen Lane
ISBN 978-0-241-62789-1