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Anne ApplebaumA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
In the Introduction to Autocracy, Inc., Anne Applebaum argues that, contrary to the popular belief about autocracies, contemporary autocratic states are complex networks driven by kleptocracy, repression, and pragmatism. Moreover, she states, modern autocrats, while not always on the same page ideologically, share a commitment to maintaining power and wealth. These regimes, which Applebaum collectively calls “Autocracy, Inc.,” collaborate with each other through financial dealings, security services, and technology exchanges. Applebaum states that they suppress dissent, manipulate public opinion, and resist accountability.
One of the recurring ideas in the book is that, unlike past dictators, today’s autocrats do not care about global criticism or international norms, using open brutality to maintain control. Applebaum highlights the impunity these autocrats enjoy, as they are sustained by alliances and mutual support, which allows them to govern over failing states and repressed populations with little regard for their citizens’ well-being.
Moreover, Applebaum discusses how modern autocrats, despite differing ideologies, share a common enemy: The democratic world and its values of transparency, accountability, and individual rights. She argues that 20th-century fascists, communists, and radical Islamists all scorned democracy, viewing it as a threat to their power. This sentiment endures today, as autocrats like China’s president Xi Jinping and Russia’s president Vladimir Putin perceive democratic movements as existential threats. They suppress dissent, fearing popular uprisings like those seen in the 1990s and 2000s in Ukraine, Georgia, and other countries going through transitions to democracy. The autocrats actively undermine democratic principles at home and abroad in order to maintain control.
Applebaum also describes Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, 2022, as a pivotal moment in the global struggle between autocracies and democracies. Russia—a key autocratic regime in the world—sought to challenge international norms, dismissing human rights, international laws, and treaties. Putin acted on the belief that divisions in the democratic world would prevent a united response. However, sanctions and military aid swiftly followed from democratic nations. Nevertheless, autocracies like China, Iran, and North Korea supported Russia, while nations like India exploited the conflict for economic gain.
In the rest of the book, Applebaum explores how autocracies cooperate in an attempt to reshape the world order so that it works to their advantage.
In Chapter 1, Anne Applebaum explores the origins of the economic relationship between the Soviet Union and Western Europe, focusing on the development of an ideology of trade, especially of gas and energy resources. She describes the secretive talks in 1967 about building gas pipelines from Siberia to the West as the starting point of this process. The pipelines, Applebaum argues, represented a major shift in East-West trade, requiring long-term contracts and political stability.
West German Chancellor Willy Brandt saw this as part of his Ostpolitik—a strategy to reduce military conflict through economic collaboration. However, American presidents such as Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan expressed concerns about the political consequences of such trade. They feared it would make Europe reliant on the Soviet Union, which they considered an undemocratic regime.
Applebaum discusses the idea, popularized in the 1990s by Francis Fukuyama, that liberal democracy is inevitable, due to its obvious superiority to other forms of governance. Fukuyama argued that, sooner or later, economic engagement through trade and globalization will foster political reforms in autocratic states like China and Russia. Western leaders, such as Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, also promoted this view, hoping that trade would liberalize China and integrate it into the global democratic order. However, Applebaum contends, the leaders of democratic states failed to consider the political risks of this optimistic, trade-focused outlook, such as the risk of autocracy and illiberalism spreading to democratic nations instead.
Anne Applebaum then traces the transformation of Russia from a nation on the cusp of democratic reform in the late 1980s to Putin’s autocratic kleptocracy. Initially, many Russians believed their country could become a liberal democracy. Reformers, like the economist Yegor Gaidar, advocated for rapid engagement with the West to rebuild the political and economic system. However, Vladimir Putin, while initially presenting himself as a reformer, used his position as president of the Russia to establish a system where state assets were diverted into the hands of insiders. Western companies, lawyers, and banks played a key role in facilitating these schemes, prioritizing profit over democratic values.
Applebaum argues that Putin’s Russia disguises itself as a democracy while using state mechanisms to enrich its leaders and suppress opposition. Since trade with the West supported this scheme, the West became complicit with Putin, Applebaum contends. According to her, the autocratic structure of Russia became a model for modern dictatorships.
The last section of Chapter 1 describes the effects of a corruption scheme carried out in the US by Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who became rich, like many oligarchs in the area, in the 1990s, during the transition from the Soviet Union to current autocratic Russia. Kolomoisky bought the Warren Steel company in Ohio, driving it to ruin. In 2010, the steel mill suffered from severe safety failures, eventually shutting down in 2016 and leaving 200 people jobless.
Kolomoisky acquired the plant as part of a US property-buying spree, using these properties to launder money obtained illegally through the retail Ukrainian bank, PrivatBank. His strategy involved moving money through shell companies in countries like Cyprus and the US state of Delaware, which are considered tax havens due to their relaxed legislation regarding investments and taxation for foreign investors. This method of hiding illegally-obtained wealth allowed anonymous purchases of real estate with little scrutiny.
By describing Kolomoisky’s US investments, Applebaum highlights how international autocrats exploit global financial systems to obscure their wealth and undermine democratic institutions and the rule of law, as local communities and financial institutions unknowingly support the laundering of illicit funds. Thus, Applebaum uses the Warren Steel case to exemplify the broader issue of kleptocracy and financial manipulation across democratic nations.
The Introduction and Chapter 1 of Anne Applebaum’s Autocracy, Inc. introduce Applebaum’s main argument: That today’s autocracies operate not as isolated, ideological regimes, but as a cohesive network bound by common interests.
In the first part of the book, Applebaum sets the stage for a broader exploration of how these regimes collaborate, sustain themselves, and manipulate their populations and global systems to maintain power. Applebaum details the interconnection of autocracies through shared economic and political interests, and the role of kleptocracy in perpetuating authoritarian rule. Moreover, she introduces one of the main themes of the book, The Complicity of Democratic Nations in Empowering Autocratic Regimes.
The notion that modern autocracies do not exist in isolation but rather form a cooperative network that transcends ideological divides provides the foundation for Applebaum’s book. She emphasizes that these regimes are bound together by pragmatic interests, particularly in maintaining power and accumulating wealth. This pragmatic approach enables them to collaborate across borders, despite differences in ideology, such as those between Russia, China, and Iran.
Applebaum’s analysis points to the fact that these regimes are united by their opposition to democratic values, which they perceive as existential threats to their power. Autocratic rulers fear democratic uprisings, like the ones seen in Ukraine and Georgia, which serve as reminders of the potential for popular movements to overthrow entrenched power structures. Thus, these regimes suppress dissent within their own borders, on top of actively working to undermine democratic institutions abroad. This shared fear of democracy leads to collaboration in areas like financial dealings, technology exchanges, and security services, creating a network of mutual support that allows autocracies to thrive even in the face of international pressure.
Applebaum also contrasts contemporary autocratic regimes with past dictatorships, pointing to the lack of an ideological or social façade in the current regimes:
Unlike the fascist and communist leaders of the past, who had party machines behind them and did not showcase their greed, the leaders of Autocracy, Inc., often maintain opulent residences and structure much of their collaboration as for-profit ventures. Their bonds with one another, and with their friends in the democratic world, are cemented not through ideals but through deals—deals designed to take the edge off sanctions, to exchange surveillance technology, to help one another get rich (3).
Thus, the focus on economic gains rather than ideology strengthens the grip these regimes have on power. Applebaum defines the combination of economic corruption and autocratic power as “kleptocracy.” Kleptocracy is the governing system based on the enrichment of the ruling class at the expense of the citizens. Applebaum argues that modern autocracies are primarily driven by the desire to accumulate wealth, with leaders and their allies enriching themselves at the expense of their nations.
In Chapter 1, Anne Applebaum traces the origins of the kleptocratic system to the economic relationships between the Soviet Union and Western Europe, particularly focusing on the development of the trade of gas and energy resources. The construction of gas pipelines from Siberia to the West, initiated in secretive talks between states in the late 1960s, marked, according to Applebaum, the beginning of a new era of East-West trade, in which economic collaboration with autocratic regimes was seen as a way to foster stability and reduce military conflict.
However, Applebaum contends that this economic engagement had the unintended consequence of strengthening autocratic regimes by making them financially dependent on global markets, while allowing them to manipulate these markets to their advantage. The trade agreements provided autocracies with the financial resources to maintain their grip on power, while also making Western nations complicit in the growth of autocratic kleptocracies. Applebaum regards this development as an example of Western complicity in the perpetuation of autocracy, contending that the trading system set up in the 1960s has fostered business collaborations that are often illegal but which have been accepted or downplayed by the West, due to the loopholes that the collateral trade agreements created.
Overall, in the Introduction and Chapter 1 of Autocracy, Inc., Applebaum explores how authoritarian rulers use global systems to maintain power and undermine democracy. Pragmatic cooperation, kleptocratic rule, and the complicity of what Applebaum calls “the democratic world” offer a complex picture of how autocracies operate in the modern world and the challenges they pose to the democratic order.
By Anne Applebaum