Alliance of Autocracies: Part 3

The increasing interconnectedness of a broad range of authoritarian states has been overshadowed in recent years by a group of writings about the axis of the big four autocrats, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, and how their links could cause global upheaval. Several of these writings call the big four an “axis”—of upheaval, autocracy, or another term suggesting the big four work together with massive negative impacts. For instance, Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Richard Fontaine of the Center for New American Security have written about how the big autocrats impact the Ukraine war. They also discuss how, more broadly, the big four are coordinating their military and diplomatic activities to possibly overturn the current international system.

Writing in a similar vein, the academic Hal Brands, distinguished professor of global affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, notes in an article that “China and Russia have a ‘no-limits’ strategic partnership. Iran and Russia are enhancing a military relationship … Illiberal friendships between Moscow and Pyongyang, and Beijing and Tehran, are flourishing.” He further argues that the big four “intensify pressure on an imperiled international system And were these four to expand their cooperation in the future—by sharing more advanced defense technology or collaborating more extensively in crisis or conflict—they could upset the global equilibrium in even more disturbing ways.”

Similarly, the new and well-written book by The Atlantic staff writer Anne Applebaum, Autocracy Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Rule the World, examines the growing links among autocrats but primarily focuses on the so-called big four powers of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The book is, however, relatively short in length and serves more as a stern warning about the four big dictatorial states—indeed a needed warning—but not one looks as much at the broader autocratic network.

There has also been significant work on the links between two or three of the big four autocrats. For instance, a wide range of works have been on the growing closeness of the two biggest autocrats, China and Russia. Works by Nadege Rolland at the National Bureau of Asian Research have deeply examined China’s increasing ties with Russia, as has the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ China Power Project and its director, Bonny Lin, and the Asia Society Policy Institute’s many articles created as part of its project on “Unpacking the China-Russia Conundrum.” There are also many excellent studies on China-Russia ties and their rapid improvement produced by multiple European think tanks.

In addition, there is a more limited number of works on China and Russia and their interactions with other autocrats besides North Korea and Iran. The new book Russia in Africa: Resurgent Great Power or Bellicose Pretender? by Samuel Ramani of the Royal United Services Institute offers a broad overview of Russia’s emerging relations with African autocrats. However, it is often too historically focused and does not target either policymakers or the public, which this project’s book would do. The excellent book China’s Relations with Africa: A New Era of Strategic Engagement by longtime China-Africa experts David Shinn, a former U.S. ambassador to several African states, and Joshua Eisenman, associate professor at the University of Notre Dame and perhaps the leading expert on China-Africa relations, effectively characterizes and analyzes the various ways Beijing has built closer ties to a broad range of African states, including many autocratic regimes in recent years, as well as how China is handling a degree of backlash from Africa about some of China’s lending projects and interference in African affairs. But the book, again, focuses solely on China’s ties to Africa and not the broader global authoritarian network’s ties amongst itself. Other similar works—books, journal articles, and others—on China’s ties to Africa take a similar approach as Eisenman and Shinn. Similarly, while the Stimson Center, and especially its director of the China Program, Yun Sun, a proficient and brilliant scholar, has produced a granular, detailed analysis of China’s links with the Myanmar junta government, this analysis again focuses on an autocratic regime’s ties to one of the big authoritarian powers.

A similar story is true regarding current literature on Iran and North Korea and each of their ties to other autocrats beyond China, Russia, and North Korea. Karim Sadjadpour and others at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace have spent several years studying Iran’s growing outreach to other autocrats beyond China, Russia, and North Korea but have focused on what Iran is doing and not much on how the other autocrats are responding to Iran, or how other autocrats are making semi-alliances even without Iran (or other big authoritarians). Freedom House (for whom this investigator writes portions of their annual Freedom in the World report, although none of the chapters on any of the countries studied in this project) has also ramped up its analysis of both Iran and North Korea’s linkages (and North Korea’s significant military sales to other autocrats) with other authoritarian regimes in developing countries, as well as Iranian and North Korean ties to Russia and China.

Simply put, Washington and other democratic capitals remain far more focused on the quartet of authoritarian powers and their potential for causing upheaval than the growth of a much broader and increasingly linked network of autocrats, many of whom pose dangers to global stability. To be sure, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are certainly worth studying; their potential for global upheaval is real, and the world must have thoughtful, informed policies about these major autocrats. Yet, studying them alone is not enough. By focusing almost exclusively on them, policymakers miss the danger of the broader network, a far more significant number of autocrats, many of them regionally powerful themselves, working with each other absent the big four powers and sometimes together with them. And this makes it harder to develop countermeasures.

This blind spot is a reason, for instance, why the United States and France initially missed the rise of authoritarianism and links among autocrats in West Africa, which ultimately led to the expulsion of French and U.S. forces in a region home to large, globally dangerous terrorist networks that threaten not only Africa but also Europe, the Middle East, and U.S. installations in the Middle East. It is also a reason, for instance, why policymakers have consistently underestimated the difficulty of ending the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. They have not clearly understood how many advantages Maduro enjoys—not only the willingness of his intelligence services and other allies to engage in the most brutal repression possible but also his ability to support himself with aid and training from multiple other autocratic states. Again, this underestimation has helped Maduro stay in power, causing intense instability in Latin America because of outmigration from Venezuela.