Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World

This is a new book by Anne Applebaum, the journalist. Politics isn't one of my favorite subjects, but global politics have become so complicated in recent years that I thought that I should get an update. Although this book is written in a journalistic style and lacks an index, Applebaum is experienced and insightful regarding the topic. The writing is a bit jerky at times, because it integrates magazine articles that were written separately. 

 Autocracies have been around for thousands of years, but there was somewhat of a lull following World War II, when world leaders founded organizations such as the UN in order to keep global order. What is confusing now is that, not only have they made a big comeback, but that there is a new ecosystem in which autocrats regularly assist each other even when they have different goals and ideologies. A good example comes from the relationship between Venezuela and Iran:

Since 2000, Iran has systematically increased its aid, first for Chávez and then Maduro. Iranians bought Venezuelan gold and sent food and gasoline in return. Iranians are believed to be advising Venezuela on repressive tactics against dissidents. Iranians helped Venezuela build a drone factory (apparently with mixed success) and have sent equipment and personnel to help repair Venezuelan oil refineries. The Venezuelans, for their part, might have helped launder money for Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group, and are believed to have provided passports for Hezbollah and Iran officials as well.

Besides Iran, Venezuela is getting help from Russia, China, Cuba and Turkey.

In the most general sense, today's autocrats don't have rigid ideologies and are tolerant of other autocrats who are willing to work with them. This sometimes means that large, well-organized countries such as Russia and China are working directly with brutal thugs who like wealth and power and don't care about their own countries at all.

The king of evil autocrats seems to be Vladimir Putin, who has spent much of his adult life working on autocratic schemes. He benefited from his familiarity with techniques employed by Stalin long ago. The Nord Stream natural gas pipeline to Germany began operation in 2011 and has provided stolen funds to Putin that are used to finance his various projects. This helped Russia become a leading kleptocracy, as Applebaum describes it. The stolen funds go to Putin's facilitators all over the world through a vast network of money laundering. Because the money is stolen, it doesn't have to be invested carefully, and it can end up in unneeded new buildings. Applebaum advocates transparency in real estate ownership, because kleptocrats currently live in unidentified homes all over the world, including the U.S. and U.K. 

Applebaum's main solution to the autocracy problem is as follows:

...the democracies of North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, together with the leaders of democratic opposition in Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Belarus, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, and other autocratic states, should 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: in Russia, in China, in Europe, in the United States.

Since American social media sites are hardly regulated, she also advocates legislation to correct that for the users.

Trump does come up in the book in a couple of places. For example: 

The fact that anonymous shell companies were purchasing condominiums in Trump-branded properties while Trump was president should have set off alarm bells. That it did not is evidence of how accustomed to kleptocratic corruption we have become.

My view is that, because Trump is a narcissist and isn't particularly talented, in the course of his life he has moved from one field to another, and each time he fails. He wasn't particularly successful as a real estate developer and failed as a casino operator. He also tried and failed at leveraged buyouts when they were popular. His main success was in becoming an actor specializing in characters who are great businessmen. I think that he admires autocrats because he would like that job. He would love it if everyone had to agree with him and praised him all of the time.

Overall, autocracies are a complex topic, and they are still evolving. This book provides some of the basic information that you need to know now. I would have liked to know more about Xi Jinping, because he remains somewhat of a mystery to me. Applebaum is not unrealistic about the difficulties of democratic processes, which are the main alternative, but seems less skeptical of them than I am. Because I look at humans biologically, it is obvious to me that we have gradually been creating greater and greater risks to our continued existence, and that one of these days our luck may run out.