op political science will never not be in vogue—the pithy volumes that seek to explain complex trends in geopolitics via a single sentence or catchy book title. Tom Friedman’s “The World is Flat” (it isn’t and never was), Samuel Huntington’s undying (and erroneously simplistic) “Clash of Civilizations,” or Francis Fukuyama’s much cited (but little read) “End of History” are just three examples—interesting ideas and concepts, but from which only the toplines are drawn and little else.
The challenge is, that which sounds good over a jet–set dinner party or while flying between the coasts or across the oceans often has a deleterious effect on the actual, substantive debate about geopolitics. These rhetorical framing devices have value, for sure. They help the lay reader make sense of the world. They offer policymakers a way of assembling seemingly disparate events into an overall framework of understanding. The value remains so long as the limitations are recognized—they are shortcuts, not guideposts. Yet all too often those shortfalls and shortcuts are omitted.
In “Autocracy Inc.,” polemicist Anne Applebaum offers her contribution to the ongoing and largely inchoate effort to define the present state of geopolitics. Are we in Cold War 2.0? Applebaum says no. Rather than the reemergence of ideological blocs and competing nation–states, the real threat according to Applebaum is a loose collection of autocratic regimes—the titular Autocracy Inc.
This is something of an expansion of aperture from her previous book “Twilight of Democracy”. There, Applebaum’s more narrowly focused and tightly argued thesis saw the real threat to democracy as the emergence of authoritarianism and authoritarian tendencies (and an ecosystem that profited from both), within Western democracies such as the United States, United Kingdom, Poland, and Hungary. A sweeping polemic, as well, the connections she identified and the solutions she suggested were far more internally coherent than her latest outing.
In Applebaum’s understanding, Autocracy Inc. acts less like a monolithic entity and is more akin to a corporate conglomerate that seeks to perpetuate regime power while undermining the Western–led (read United States) liberal international order. This is the real threat to the West—not strategic competition or hegemonic ambitions, but the alignment of interests and cooperation between a diverse set of autocratic regimes, each of which is built upon systemic corruption and domestic oppression. A comparably short volume from Applebaum, the prose of “Autocracy Inc.” is unsurprisingly well–written, but is fundamentally and fatally flawed.
This is a book that very much knows its audience and is written exclusively for that audience. It is meant for the jetset, Davos–attending, liberal progressive crowd and few others. It is neither deep enough for proper experts on autocracies, kleptocrats, or authoritarians (though it does draw from works like Oliver Bullough’s “Moneyland,” Tom Burgis’ “Kleptopia,” and Catherine Belton’s “Putin’s People”) nor is robust enough to meaningfully contribute to the general public’s understanding of these complex and dynamic trends. Judging by the response Applebaum has received for “Autocracy Inc.” in the pages of august broadsheets like the Washington Post and Financial Times, she’s succeeded and succeeded well.
“Autocracy Inc.” suffers from definitional fluidity that is sure to irritate experts and confuse lay readers. In Applebaum’s telling, any state that constrains or limits the voices of the people is an autocracy. Democracies, by contrast, are those that enable and listen to the voices of the people—vox populi, vox dei. The autocracies in question are a motley crew that ranges from Belarus and Russia to Singapore and Hungary, and countless, unnamed, other countries in between. In her defense,Applebaum does focus on the worst–of–the–worst, but she opens and closes with lamentations about autocracies writ large. While it makes for a wonderful liberal progressive rallying cry— ‘down with those who oppress the voices of the people!’—the problem is that neither are all democracies, nor are all autocracies created equal. Democracies can behave autocratically, and autocracies can have democratic trappings.
Adherents of this strain of liberal progressivism maintain an unacknowledged moral relativism on the topic of democracy. Underlying many of the arguments about Donald Trump’s supposed threat to American democracy is the fact that, for liberal progressives like Applebaum, it is unthinkable the electorate could vote Trump into office at all. His supporters must not have been motivated by or voting in accordance with rational calculus or self–interests, but were ignorant, manipulated, or suffering from some moral failing (or all the above), and nothing else. That the Democratic Party mounted what could certainly be seen as an internal coup against President Joe Biden, inserting Vice President Kamala Harris as the candidate without the people’s input, is by contrast seen as wholly democratic.
Finding Applebaum’s common interest among and across these autocratic states demands a reductionist approach that obliterates any nuance or strategic complexity. It supplants strategic rationality with broad–brush moralistic idealism. Do autocracies work together? Yes. Do interests create strange geopolitical bedfellows like Iran and Venezuela? Yes. Do technological means of ideological and informational control spread from one regime to another? Yes. Are there those who seek to profit from these regimes? Yes. None of this is fundamentally new, unless you restrict your historical frame of reference to the world that emerged from the ashes of World War II. The Cold War was, arguably, the real aberration—a bifurcated ideological and geopolitical contest. The increasingly multi–polar and hypercompetitive world of today is much more historically the norm than anything that took place in the 20th century.
Viewing all autocracies as, effectively, the same is little better than the 21st century’s great strategic failure: seeing all Islamist movements (radical or otherwise), insurgencies, and instability as part of the ‘Global War on Terrorism.’ While that failure could, perhaps, be partially excused as a function of the collective horror and fear that followed 9/11, there is no comparable excuse for painting with such a broad brush today. Not only does it create conditions for strategic missteps and risks policy failure, it plants the seeds of moral hypocrisy. When Washington engages with one autocracy out of strategic necessity or expediency but condemns another, criticism is not without basis.
Ironically enough, it is liberal progressives in the vein of Applebaum who are most vociferous in their criticism of these moral failings. Demanding that Washington must act according to some set of abstract ideals and values, then condemning its failure to match words and deeds, when it has instead been pursuing its interests all along, is par for such a course. It is easy enough, for example, to claim that Russia must be defeated, dismantled, and de–colonized (as if total victory were possible or indeed desirable), when one discounts the consequences of such bellicosity on those who must do the defeating, dismantling, and de–colonizing. Values should certainly inform foreign and national security policy, but interests are why nation–states ultimately act—strategic necessity and pragmatism should govern policy.
Applebaum has little time for strategic realism or regional expertise. Realists are prone to isolation and indifference, she writes. Treating the world as it is? Pah! That is for lesser beings, those of little vision and small ambitions. If one just manifests a better world via marshaling extensive column inches, surely it will come into being. As if years of liberal interventionism have not proven anything. As if Washington hasn’t yet learned the lesson that there are some problems that are not solvable. Manageable? Yes, but not solvable.
From Applebaum’s perch, those pesky regional experts fail to see the broad sweeping trends that only those looking down from their lofty ivory towers can see. If only they would take up their Sharpies and circle great swathes of the world, wipe away complexity, and charge forward with ideological zeal, they could remake the world in the liberal progressive mold for which Applebaum and others advocate.
The great geopolitical challenge of this age is not China’s ambitions in the Indo–Pacific, Russia’s revanchism and aggression in Europe, instability in the Middle East, or any of these already complex issues. Rather, according to Applebaum, it is corruption and systemic oppression (and the cooperation of regimes of a similar ilk). If only the West could solve these issues, there would be no autocracies and there would be no challenges to the liberal international order. “Autocracy Inc.” is not a useful model for understanding the world or contextualizing geopolitics today. It is a reductionist, simplistic polemic that obliterates strategic nuance at a time when such nuance is needed more than ever. It neither advances the policymaking discussion nor leaves the public better informed and is a disservice to both.
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Oversimplifying the world today
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August 17, 2024
The geopolitical stage is more complex than ever, requiring nuance to unpack. “Autocracy Inc.” intends to lay out a blueprint for overcoming autocracies, but the approach is too reductionist for today’s reality, writes Joshua Huminski in his latest book review.
P
op political science will never not be in vogue—the pithy volumes that seek to explain complex trends in geopolitics via a single sentence or catchy book title. Tom Friedman’s “The World is Flat” (it isn’t and never was), Samuel Huntington’s undying (and erroneously simplistic) “Clash of Civilizations,” or Francis Fukuyama’s much cited (but little read) “End of History” are just three examples—interesting ideas and concepts, but from which only the toplines are drawn and little else.
The challenge is, that which sounds good over a jet–set dinner party or while flying between the coasts or across the oceans often has a deleterious effect on the actual, substantive debate about geopolitics. These rhetorical framing devices have value, for sure. They help the lay reader make sense of the world. They offer policymakers a way of assembling seemingly disparate events into an overall framework of understanding. The value remains so long as the limitations are recognized—they are shortcuts, not guideposts. Yet all too often those shortfalls and shortcuts are omitted.
In “Autocracy Inc.,” polemicist Anne Applebaum offers her contribution to the ongoing and largely inchoate effort to define the present state of geopolitics. Are we in Cold War 2.0? Applebaum says no. Rather than the reemergence of ideological blocs and competing nation–states, the real threat according to Applebaum is a loose collection of autocratic regimes—the titular Autocracy Inc.
This is something of an expansion of aperture from her previous book “Twilight of Democracy”. There, Applebaum’s more narrowly focused and tightly argued thesis saw the real threat to democracy as the emergence of authoritarianism and authoritarian tendencies (and an ecosystem that profited from both), within Western democracies such as the United States, United Kingdom, Poland, and Hungary. A sweeping polemic, as well, the connections she identified and the solutions she suggested were far more internally coherent than her latest outing.
In Applebaum’s understanding, Autocracy Inc. acts less like a monolithic entity and is more akin to a corporate conglomerate that seeks to perpetuate regime power while undermining the Western–led (read United States) liberal international order. This is the real threat to the West—not strategic competition or hegemonic ambitions, but the alignment of interests and cooperation between a diverse set of autocratic regimes, each of which is built upon systemic corruption and domestic oppression. A comparably short volume from Applebaum, the prose of “Autocracy Inc.” is unsurprisingly well–written, but is fundamentally and fatally flawed.
This is a book that very much knows its audience and is written exclusively for that audience. It is meant for the jetset, Davos–attending, liberal progressive crowd and few others. It is neither deep enough for proper experts on autocracies, kleptocrats, or authoritarians (though it does draw from works like Oliver Bullough’s “Moneyland,” Tom Burgis’ “Kleptopia,” and Catherine Belton’s “Putin’s People”) nor is robust enough to meaningfully contribute to the general public’s understanding of these complex and dynamic trends. Judging by the response Applebaum has received for “Autocracy Inc.” in the pages of august broadsheets like the Washington Post and Financial Times, she’s succeeded and succeeded well.
“Autocracy Inc.” suffers from definitional fluidity that is sure to irritate experts and confuse lay readers. In Applebaum’s telling, any state that constrains or limits the voices of the people is an autocracy. Democracies, by contrast, are those that enable and listen to the voices of the people—vox populi, vox dei. The autocracies in question are a motley crew that ranges from Belarus and Russia to Singapore and Hungary, and countless, unnamed, other countries in between. In her defense,Applebaum does focus on the worst–of–the–worst, but she opens and closes with lamentations about autocracies writ large. While it makes for a wonderful liberal progressive rallying cry— ‘down with those who oppress the voices of the people!’—the problem is that neither are all democracies, nor are all autocracies created equal. Democracies can behave autocratically, and autocracies can have democratic trappings.
Adherents of this strain of liberal progressivism maintain an unacknowledged moral relativism on the topic of democracy. Underlying many of the arguments about Donald Trump’s supposed threat to American democracy is the fact that, for liberal progressives like Applebaum, it is unthinkable the electorate could vote Trump into office at all. His supporters must not have been motivated by or voting in accordance with rational calculus or self–interests, but were ignorant, manipulated, or suffering from some moral failing (or all the above), and nothing else. That the Democratic Party mounted what could certainly be seen as an internal coup against President Joe Biden, inserting Vice President Kamala Harris as the candidate without the people’s input, is by contrast seen as wholly democratic.
Finding Applebaum’s common interest among and across these autocratic states demands a reductionist approach that obliterates any nuance or strategic complexity. It supplants strategic rationality with broad–brush moralistic idealism. Do autocracies work together? Yes. Do interests create strange geopolitical bedfellows like Iran and Venezuela? Yes. Do technological means of ideological and informational control spread from one regime to another? Yes. Are there those who seek to profit from these regimes? Yes. None of this is fundamentally new, unless you restrict your historical frame of reference to the world that emerged from the ashes of World War II. The Cold War was, arguably, the real aberration—a bifurcated ideological and geopolitical contest. The increasingly multi–polar and hypercompetitive world of today is much more historically the norm than anything that took place in the 20th century.
Viewing all autocracies as, effectively, the same is little better than the 21st century’s great strategic failure: seeing all Islamist movements (radical or otherwise), insurgencies, and instability as part of the ‘Global War on Terrorism.’ While that failure could, perhaps, be partially excused as a function of the collective horror and fear that followed 9/11, there is no comparable excuse for painting with such a broad brush today. Not only does it create conditions for strategic missteps and risks policy failure, it plants the seeds of moral hypocrisy. When Washington engages with one autocracy out of strategic necessity or expediency but condemns another, criticism is not without basis.
Ironically enough, it is liberal progressives in the vein of Applebaum who are most vociferous in their criticism of these moral failings. Demanding that Washington must act according to some set of abstract ideals and values, then condemning its failure to match words and deeds, when it has instead been pursuing its interests all along, is par for such a course. It is easy enough, for example, to claim that Russia must be defeated, dismantled, and de–colonized (as if total victory were possible or indeed desirable), when one discounts the consequences of such bellicosity on those who must do the defeating, dismantling, and de–colonizing. Values should certainly inform foreign and national security policy, but interests are why nation–states ultimately act—strategic necessity and pragmatism should govern policy.
Applebaum has little time for strategic realism or regional expertise. Realists are prone to isolation and indifference, she writes. Treating the world as it is? Pah! That is for lesser beings, those of little vision and small ambitions. If one just manifests a better world via marshaling extensive column inches, surely it will come into being. As if years of liberal interventionism have not proven anything. As if Washington hasn’t yet learned the lesson that there are some problems that are not solvable. Manageable? Yes, but not solvable.
From Applebaum’s perch, those pesky regional experts fail to see the broad sweeping trends that only those looking down from their lofty ivory towers can see. If only they would take up their Sharpies and circle great swathes of the world, wipe away complexity, and charge forward with ideological zeal, they could remake the world in the liberal progressive mold for which Applebaum and others advocate.
The great geopolitical challenge of this age is not China’s ambitions in the Indo–Pacific, Russia’s revanchism and aggression in Europe, instability in the Middle East, or any of these already complex issues. Rather, according to Applebaum, it is corruption and systemic oppression (and the cooperation of regimes of a similar ilk). If only the West could solve these issues, there would be no autocracies and there would be no challenges to the liberal international order. “Autocracy Inc.” is not a useful model for understanding the world or contextualizing geopolitics today. It is a reductionist, simplistic polemic that obliterates strategic nuance at a time when such nuance is needed more than ever. It neither advances the policymaking discussion nor leaves the public better informed and is a disservice to both.
