Why the global league of autocrats thrives

Something new is happening in the world of oppression.

- SAM ADLER-BELL

Or so says the historian Anne Applebaum. Whereas the twilight struggle of the 20th century was waged between formal "blocs" of ideologically aligned allies, today's autocrats are more diverse-a mix of self-described Marxists, illiberal demagogues, kleptocratic mafiosi, oldschool tyrants and new-school theocrats.

Of course, they do share ideas if not ideologies, among them that liberal internationalism is an alibi for imperialism, the means by which Washington and Brussels impose their interests and decadent cultural mores (especially LGBTQ tolerance) on the rest of the world. But today's autocrats principally cement their bonds, Applebaum argues, "not through ideals but through deals." Thanks in large part to the opacity of global finance, they enjoy a vibrant trade in surveillance technologies, weapons and precious minerals, laundering one another's dirty money and colluding to evade American sanctions. This venal compact of convenience she calls Autocracy, Inc.

In the past decade or so, Applebaum has followed a not-unfamiliar trajectory from neoconservative Atlanticist to antipopulist Jeremiah. To her credit, Applebaum's new book risks a more sophisticated, and less flattering, answer: Globalisation did work, only not how she assumed it would. Autocracies became more integrated with one another, while American and European trade dependence on the autocratic worldon Chinese manufacturing and Russian oil, for instance-became a weapon to be used against the West. Nobody imagined that autocratic and illiberal ideas "would spread to the democratic world instead," Applebaum writes.