Anne Applebaum in conversation with Ann Bernstein

Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, journalist and staff writer for The Atlantic, joined CDE’s executive director for a discussion on the rise of authoritarianism and the future of democracy. Applebaum explained that today’s autocracies unite around power rather than ideology. They also share a hostility to human rights, accountability, independent courts and media, and legal political opposition, all of which threaten their hold on power. Autocracies cooperate in other ways. Not every country is as effective as China at controlling what citizens say online, but the others try to replicate China’s methods. Thay have also learned from each other how to control large crowds and to use online smear campaigns against political enemies. Applebaum rejected the argument that ‘NATO aggression’ led to Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. She pointed out that NATO had long pursued formal cooperation with Moscow and always sought to reassure Russia of its defensive purpose. According to Applebaum, Putin accepted this for a long time and invoked NATO expansion only later, when he needed a casus belli for invading Ukraine. In assessing current relations between the US and EU, she pointed out that Trump’s foreign policy is purely transactional, focusing entirely on whether he is winning or losing in the here and now. He shows little interest in historical alliances and does not have a long-term strategy. It is pointless, therefore, to remind him about relations forged in the Second World War, or that Europeans fought alongside the US in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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