Autocracy, Inc. by Anne Applebaum, Chapter 1
From a Google Image Search – The Guardian
Autocracy, Inc. by Anne Applebaum
There are reasons why Anne Applebaum’s book Autocracy, Inc. is directly related to the 2024 election. Voters should always have access to issues that will affect their future as Americans. Sometimes there are issues that are flying under the radar, not being given the weight they should bear in our decision-making. Applebaum offers the details that show the roots of our autocratic tendencies. She ties togethers what seems like an economic wet dream with a flirtatious ideological invitation to keep the money train moving by voting. If Americans give Trump autocratic powers, he will guarantee that wealthy people will have pathways to stay wealthy (cutting taxes, cutting government, tariffs, favoritism). Those who support Trump in every way will be allowed to accumulate fortunes, as has been true for the oligarchs in autocratic states. Applebaum is asking us if we really want to give up our democracy so that rich people can turn the American economy into the Cayman Islands and the American government into Hungary (or Russia)? So, I am offering my version of Cliff Notes on Autocracy, Inc.
Anne Applebaum’s book Autocracy, Inc. is dense with statements of fact and proofs for those facts. Attempting to summarize and condense the contents is difficult. The ideas I am offering are not my own ideas. These are the arguments Anne Applebaum makes in her deceptively petite book. However, I do agree with her ideas and the details provided in her proofs make her commentary important. So, some of my summary will paraphrase the author and some will quote her directly. The contents of this book give us explanations for the rise of autocracies and show how America (and Great Britain) have become enmeshed in these kleptocratic practices. Applebaum is showing us our own drift towards autocracy and kleptocracy. Will abandoning human rights work to bring economic equality to all or to just a very few oligarchs? It’s an easy question to answer, but being able to get “down in the weeds” with cogent examples is the gift Anne Applebaum offers us. She has a team helping her with her research summarizing the content of many sources. She then passes what she has learned on to us.
How did America begin to adopt the practices of autocracies and kleptocracies?“Western political leaders spoke about “democracy” and the “rule of law” in Russia, but Western companies were building autocracies and lawlessness and not only in Russia…By the time Putin became president, he was well acquainted with the double standards of Western democracies, which preached liberal values at home but were very happy to help build illiberal regimes everywhere else.” (p. 33)
Did we reap what we sowed?Applebaum would say “yes,” I think. Her example takes us to Russia. Russia under Putin was designed to look like a democracy but look closer she suggests.
1. there were “no accidental winners” in Russian elections
2. everything was a front
3. banks that looked like banks were often money-laundering operations
4. “companies were sometimes facades” – what they offered were “ways for the very wealthy to siphon assets away from the state”
Many inhabitants of the Western world profited, ostensibly believing that Putin intended to democratize Russia.
Example: A steel plant in Warren, Ohio with a history of two explosions and many safety violations was shut down for good in January 2016. Kolomoisky (a Ukrainian oligarch from when the government followed the Russian model) owned the mill and hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of midwestern properties (“as part of a money-laundering operation connected to defrauding PrivatBank – a retail bank in Ukraine”).
“For decades, American real estate agents were not required to examine the source of their client’s funding.” It was okay to buy property anonymously (both in the US and in Europe). (p. 37)
Kolomoisky’s money from PrivatBank flowed through shell companies in Cyprus, the British Virgin Islands, and an American Branch of Deutsche Bank in Delaware.
Applebaum names some names:
Two Americans bought properties for Kolomoisky. Chaim Schochet of Miami and Mordechai Korf, a Miami businessman. Marc Kasowitz (who also represents Donald Trump) was their lawyer.
“These arrangements make no sense as business decisions,” says Applebaum, “but make plenty of sense in the arcane world of international kleptocracy.”
“In such a system, theft is rewarded, taxes are not paid, law enforcement is impotent and underfunded, and regulation is to be dodged,” she reminds us.
What we have learned.Remember the revelations in the Pandora Papers (October 2021) from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
(Paraphrased) We have learned that financial traffic does not just go through the Caribbean — it also goes through the US and Great Britain. In the US, Delaware, Nevada, South Dakota and Wyoming are open for secretive financial operations.
Applebaum’s Conclusions in Chapter 1“To stay in power, modern autocrats need to be able to take money and hide it without being bothered by political institutions that encourage transparency, accountability, or public debate.”
“Kleptocracy and autocracy go hand in hand, reinforcing each other but also undermining any other institution they touch. the real estate agents who don’t ask too many questions in Sussex or Hampshire, the factory owners eager to unload failing businesses in Warren, the bankers in Sioux Falls happy to accept mystery deposits from mystery clients — all of them undermine the rule of law in their own countries and around the world. The globalization of finance, the plethora of hiding places, and the benign tolerance that democracies have shown for foreign graft now give autocrats opportunities that few could have imagined a couple of decades ago. (p. 42)
