Historian and Anglo-Polish journalist Anne Applebaum uncovers the sophisticated networks of kleptocratic financial structures, security services and professional propagandists. The main enemies of domestic demagogues fanning the flames of populism. Foreign dictators who seek to impose their vision of a new international; order and hate our freedoms in George W Bush’s sonorous phrase.

Applebaum’s catchy coinage “ Who are these bad guys?” is said to be a group of autocratic regimes, such as Russia, China and Iran, who together operate “not like a bloc but rather like an agglomeration of companies, bound not by ideology but rather by a ruthless, single-minded determination to preserve their personal wealth and power.”

Autocracy Inc’s members are diverse ranging from Shia theoceracies to communist autarkes – but they help each other to keep their corrupt associates wealthy. They would like to make the world safer for autocrats by gutting the post-1945 international order.

Applebaum chronicles Soviet atrocities, cannot be accused of being a bad writer, but highlights unlikely partnerships among the world’s autocratic regimes. Venezuela and Iran appear  to have little in common at first sight, and practise very different brands of authoritarian politics. Yet this unlikely  couple bonded over their need to evade western economic sanctions  and oppress their people. Iran provides technical support for Venezuela’s domestic oppression apparatus, while Venezuela helps Iran with money-laundering services for Hezbollah and travel documents for its officials. When Venezuela ran out of petrol in 2020 – an extraordinary feat of mismanagement for one of the world’s biggest oil producers – Iran sent tankers of fuel to bail out its president, Nicolas Maduro. When state TV channel Russia Today was dropped from western satellites after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a Chinese satellite picked  it up and now beams its pro-war propaganda across the developing world. China’s Xinhua produces a  reliable stream of anti-American stories that are syndicated at heavily discounted price to broadcasters worldwide many of them run by authoritarian regimes. Seduced by once widespread belief that trade was an inherently liberalising force  as well as the large profits that were to be  had –western countries became hooked on cheap Russian gas and Chinese goods. Western banks happily laundered autocrats’ ill-gotten gains.

Applebaum proposes to counter international autocracy  bringing critical industries back home, increasing financial transparency, more regulation of social media. They do not require military adventurism of the sort seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. China’s unwillingness to help Russia’s war in Ukraine  in ways that would attract the full punishment  of western sanctions  offers a telling message about the limits of their ideological collanoration.  

Autocracy Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World by Anne Applebaum, Allen Lane £20, 228 pages.