Latest news with #AutocracyInc
RNZ News
11-05-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Autocracy Inc: How dictators are teaming up to undermine democracy
Photo: In an era teeming with global crisis liberal democracy is looking increasingly fragile. According to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and journalist Anne Applebaum, this is not simply due to social forces like rising inequality, cultural polarisation, or social media-driven disinformation. Rather, it's the consequence of something far more insidious - an international alliance of autocrats working collectively to undermine democratic societies. Speaking with Sunday Morning's Jim Mora, Applebaum discussed her latest book, Autocracy, Inc., which reveals how modern dictatorships no longer act alone. "There is now, in effect, a network of dictatorships-communist China, nationalist Russia, autocratic Iran-that have learned to work together economically, politically, but also in the field of information and propaganda," she said. This coalition of authoritarian regimes is not united by ideology. Instead, she said, they share a common enemy - liberal democracy. At the heart of her book, said Applebaum, is the idea that today's authoritarian states are wielding vast financial resources to undermine democratic institutions. "The autocratic world spends a huge amount of money on information," Applebaum said. "Not just official TV channels like RT, but also covert information laundering websites that appear to be from Ecuador or Argentina but are really written in Russia." But it's not just media manipulation. Authoritarian regimes are buying influence directly through investments, think tanks, lobbying, and even ownership of sports teams. The goal is to blur the lines between national interest and private enterprise, making liberal societies unwitting participants in their own corrosion. One example Applebaum pointed to was China's acquisition of a container port in Poland. While it may have seemed like a neutral business decision, during the war in Ukraine, it posed a significant security risk. The Chinese government could potentially monitor and control what supplies were flowing into the region. "That has strategic implications," Applebaum warned, noting that the once-prevailing belief that economics could be apolitical "is over." While autocracies are cooperating, liberal democracies are faltering under the weight of their internal divisions. A problem compounded by social media, which thrives on outrage and conspiracy. The sheer scale of disinformation, much of it from foreign states but echoed by domestic actors, is eroding the foundations of democratic debate. "Democracy really only functions if you can have a public debate conducted according to some kind of rules," said Applebaum. But when there's no shared reality, democratic compromise becomes nearly impossible. Autocrats, said Applebaum, are nothing if not ideologically flexible. Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro, China's Xi Jinping, Russia's Vladimir Putin, and Iran's theocrats may have different political branding, but they are united in their disdain for liberal democracy. "The far left and the far right are very happy to work together," said Applebaum. What matters most to these regimes is control. Liberal concepts like the rule of law, free expression, and checks on power threaten the very foundations of authoritarian rule. "Both sides have come to an agreement that the real enemy is not one another. The real enemy is liberal democracy." So, how can democracy fight back? Applebaum offers a three-pronged approach: Despite their growing influence, said Applebaum, autocracies are not invulnerable. Their core weakness is their illegitimacy. Beneath the façade of unity and control lies fear - fear of their own people and fear of democratic ideas. "The ideals of democracy are intuitively appealing to people," she said. This is not lost on the dictators themselves. In 2013, the Chinese Communist Party issued an internal document naming Western constitutional government as the top threat to its survival. These regimes know that once democratic ideas take root, they can be difficult to extinguish. Autocracy, in Applebaum's view, is a system built for survival, but not for progress. Its lack of moral legitimacy, reliance on repression, and inability to deliver lasting prosperity may eventually be its undoing. But if liberal democracy is to survive, she said, it must respond to the coordinated threat now facing it. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
10-05-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
The dictators who work to keep each other in power
This audio is not downloadable due to copyright restrictions. Anne Applebaum is a staff writer for The Atlantic and a Pulitzer-prize winning historian. In her latest book Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World , she examines the power structures currently running the world. Anne says the title 'Autocracy Inc' describes a network of dictatorships who have nothing in common ideologically, but act like an international corporation to help keep each other in control - co-operating financially, militarily, and sharing information to work against democracy. Photo:
The Guardian
12-04-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Donald Trump is now badly wounded. Europe can seize an advantage
The game-changing geopolitical event last week was the near collapse of the immense $29tn market in US government debt, threatening the stability of the American and global financial system and the safe-haven status of dollar assets. The US president boasted as the collapse unfolded that world leaders were queueing to 'kiss his arse'. Twelve hours later, he was in the same humiliatingly weak position as the then British prime minister Liz Truss found herself after her tax-slashing 'mini-budget' in 2022. The markets had forced him to pause for 90 days the swingeing range of 'reciprocal' tariffs that he announced on what he proclaimed 'liberation day'; instead he lowered all of them, bar that on China, to 10%. The markets sighed relief, but 'liberation'' had boomeranged. It was Trump who was imprisoned. He and his sycophants insisted it was all part of a grand plan. Nonsense – he is economically and politically gored. He dare not risk reimposing the same tariffs when the 'pause' ends without risking an even worse US debt crisis. Worse, he has killed the prospect of the rest of the world buying the avalanche of new US government debt that will follow from the huge tax cuts he plans in the autumn. The US Federal Reserve has been forced to reassure the markets, still weak, that it will do anything necessary to ensure their stability – another sign of how power is draining from Trump. The EU, Britain and other rule-of-law capitalist democracies now have the balance of advantage. But they need to recognise it and work together to capitalise on the opportunity, rather than each sue for the most advantageous deal possible in their limited 'national interest'. This is a moment when the national interest is best pursued by hanging together. The situation remains dangerous. The US's average tariff, including the 145% on Chinese imports, is the highest for a century. China, with its technological and financial power plus leverage over key raw materials, is on manoeuvres, trying to put itself at the centre of a new order. The democracies must find a common front over the next 90 days as an exercise in damage limitation, and then go beyond that to fashion a new trade order from the ruins of the old – but necessarily without the US. Equally, they must have their eyes wide open about China. While it must be engaged with, it is not a benevolent power. Rather, it is the lynchpin of what author Anne Applebaum has called 'Autocracy Inc', a network of countries including Russia whose aim is to undermine rule-of-law democratic societies, human rights and political pluralism. Britain's Brexiters – as wilfully ignorant about the damage they have caused and today's realities as Donald Trump – will vociferously complain, but the EU has to be Europe's vehicle for the task ahead. Its current stance is an excellent starting point. Its goal is to remove all tariffs and, while it is prepared to negotiate on genuine US trade complaints and buy more US gas, it will use its heft to resist extra-territorial American claims on sovereignty, tax policies or regulation, calmly reserving the right for targeted retaliation if need be. It will certainly defend EU product standards across the board – from digital services to food. And it is open to a closer trade relationship with Canada. But the EU needs to use the 90-day 'pause' to get beyond that and ambitiously form a coalition of the willing to create a global pact not to pursue beggar-my-neighbour trade policies, and launch the basis for a global customs union. It would recruit from the G20, extending the invitation to Asia's Trans Pacific Partnership, the Gulf Co-operation Council, South America's Mercosur and the Southern African Customs Union. It could be done in parallel with the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a new Global Customs Union Council, aiming ultimately to extend any agreement into common technical and safety standards, and perhaps use the WTO to police its rules and arbitrate disputes. China could join if it accepted the rules. Being outside the EU, Britain cannot be the lead playmaker in this effort, but it must indicate it will play ball – and initiate what it can. Rachel Reeves, writing in the Observer this week, signals a first step in this direction. To be effective, Britain should ally itself with the EU in its negotiations with Trump and go for a much more expansive trade deal with the EU – to include agreement on technical standards – than the timorous one to be unveiled at the joint UK-EU summit in May, even suggesting Gordon Brown, internationally respected for his role in the debt crisis, as the lead sherpa, to show its good faith and commitment to the cause. Any doubts should be dispelled by the numbers. The draft head of terms for the UK-US trade deal is pathetic: minimal concessions from the US while the UK is being forced to shrink its red lines on food standards, product regulation and digital services. The independent forecaster Frontier Economics reckons that the impact of US tariffs will shrink UK GDP by 0.7%, while a deeper deal with the EU could instead lift GDP by 1.5%, despite US tariffs. So what is it to be? Bail out a stricken Trump with a third-rate trade deal on which he will boast Britain has kissed his arse? Or make common cause with the EU to boost our growth and fashion a new global free-trade architecture?
