Applebaum rightly places kleptocratic institutionalized thievery at the center of her analysis ... A valuable book for many reasons, but the focus on illicit wealth creation and on those in democracies who enable it is especially timely. So is Applebaum’s recommendation that we wage war on autocratic behaviors wherever they occur.
Applebaum is cleareyed about the difficulties of rectifying this situation ... In her zeal to connect the enemies of the free world, Applebaum also sometimes comes to fantastical conclusions.
Applebaum is strong on how Western misjudgment and greed enabled and empowered autocrats over the decades ... At just over two hundred pages, Applebaum’s book is slender. She might have done more to detail the boomerang effect of globalization.
Modest in scale. It’s less a work of scholarship than the kind of tightly argued, crisply written policy brief Washington insiders might flip through on their charter flights to Aspen ... It won’t be comfortable reading. Applebaum is unsparing in her criticism of Western elites for enabling the rise of anti-democratic forces ... Applebaum reserves particular contempt for those American leaders who insisted that information technology would help make the world safe for democracy.
A brief book that covers a great deal of ground. Yet in only 176 pages, not much can be covered well ... Applebaum is at her best when examining history ... Applebaum’s strongest moments are those where her focus narrows ... Applebaum wants to unite democracies against autocracies, but democracy is meaningless if it isn’t local.
Well-positioned ... Skillful ... It’s a disturbing world we live in, but understanding its ways, keeping our own counsel, and knowing who to trust have never been so important. Anne Applebaum, who 30 years ago foresaw the way we were going, is one of those we can trust.
Applebaum... cannot be accused of being a bad writer. In under 200 breathless pages, she makes out her case in an urgent, almost steamrolling prose ... Applebaum does an excellent job laying out the corrupting effects these autocracies have on western democracies ... But if the stories Applebaum tells are striking, she has a tougher time proving her broader thesis of an Autocracy Inc.
The strength of Autocracy, Inc lies in its description of how autocrats bend and distort opinion, and find allies across national boundaries ... Not surprisingly, Applebaum lauds patriotism but fears nationalism and isolationism ... Applebaum hopes liberalism and democracy are sustainable but is uncertain of their fate.
The liberal West is under threat. Its enemy: a collection of antidemocratic forces which Applebaum lumps together under the reductive moniker Autocracy, Inc. ... In effect, while Autocracy, Inc. gestures toward the complexity of both twentieth-century and contemporary geopolitics, it too often resorts to liberal mythmaking ... On a surface level, Applebaum’s analysis is functionally correct, yet it reflects strangely back on the author through omission ... Frequently, Autocracy, Inc.’s analysis comes up short, omitting a critique on Western capitalist society for the same sins, or is fatally undermined by Applebaum’s personal political positions. Indeed, there is a long paper trail of articles by Applebaum supporting: the disastrous Iraq War in 2002 through a comparison between Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler and the bombing of Palestinian media operations during the Second Intifada ... Applebaum’s role in manufacturing consent for US wars is quickly forgotten, or at least repressed in Autocracy, Inc. Throughout the book, she rightly lambastes the expansionist foreign policies and human rights abuses of states like Russia and China while remaining silent about her own side’s crimes and wars. Applebaum seems aware of the negative effects that US interventionism and war have had on trust in democracy and human rights law, but she is unable to identify the cause of the widespread cynicism toward the idea of the rules based international order ... Autocracy, Inc.’s most engaging analysis focuses on the oligarchical money that is effectively laundered through the financial institutions of the City of London, Wall Street, and European real estate markets. Here we get a glimpse of an Applebaum more skeptical of the effects of global capitalism, at least when it props up dictators ... After hundreds of pages detailing the rise of dictatorship globally, Autocracy, Inc. comes to an anticlimactic conclusion about how to counter authoritarianism. In Applebaum’s mind, the solution to Autocracy, Inc. is technocratic expertise, and not economic redistribution, popular politics, or the extension of democratic practice into everyday situations like workplaces.
