Taking on the global brotherhood of despots

In 1999 Hugo Chávez made a choice. He had won Venezuela’s presidency promising revolutionary change. His chief of internal police brought him evidence of graft within his regime: some top officials were stealing from a fund for the poor. Chávez listened, said nothing and sacked the whistleblower. Insiders got the message: if you are loyal, you can steal. Chávez (pictured) wanted to stay in power for ever. He bet “that corrupt officials would prove more malleable than clean ones, and he was right”, writes Anne Applebaum.

Ms Applebaum, a journalist, made her name with “Gulag”, a history of the Soviet Union’s prison camps that won the Pulitzer prize. Her new book, “Autocracy, Inc”, is shorter and more urgent. Whatever their professed ideology, today’s strongmen typically crave little besides power itself and the loot it brings. They share an enemy: checks on power, and the democratic world that espouses them. That common enemy spurs them to collaborate, spinning global networks of mutual support.