An Existential War Anne Applebaum on Russia, Ukraine, and the Twilight of Democracy Nanovic Forum April 22, 2022
The Nanovic Forum 2022 An Existential War: Anne Applebaum on Russia, Ukraine, and the Twilight of Democracy BY GRÁINNE MCEVOY
“Democracy is not inevitable, autocracy is not inevitable. Everything that happens tomorrow depends on what we do today, and so the decisions we make now will create the world that we are going to live in next.” —Anne Applebaum The Nanovic Institute for European Studies had the honor of bringing Anne Applebaum, Polish-American historian and journalist, to the University of Notre Dame. During this Nanovic Forum event, Applebaum talked to Notre Dame faculty members and students about the war in Ukraine, Russia, and the “Twilight of Democracy,” a concept she explores in her most recent book The Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism (Doubleday, 2020). Diane Desierto, professor of law and global affairs and Nanovic Institute faculty fellow, conversed with Applebaum before opening up to questions from the audience. The Nanovic Forum is typically an annual event but this was the second such event of the spring 2022 semester alone. Clemens Sedmak, director of the Nanovic Institute and professor of social ethics, noted that this “unprecedented fact [was] owed to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”
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In response to the war, the Nanovic Institute invited Applebaum to Notre Dame to share her reflections on a world order that was fundamentally changed by the events on and since February 24. Sedmak observed that these are big questions that Applebaum tackles in her work on why elites in democracies around the world are turning towards nationalism and authoritarianism. “We are excited,” he said, “to have her experience and expertise as we navigate the intellectual challenge of understanding the political world we are in.”
Is This the Twilight of Democracy? Desierto immediately directed the conversation to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and called on Applebaum to characterize the war and outline its significance. Desierto noted the conflict between the forces of democracy and authoritarianism that is the focus of Applebaum’s recent work and asked “is this war…the actual twilight of democracy, the culmination of what we’re seeing [in] your book?” Applebaum explained that to describe the war between Russia and Ukraine as such might suggest that the Russian invasion was inevitable and a Russian victory is similarly assured. She did, however, emphasize that the stakes of this conflict are exceptionally high. Applebaum described it as a clash of civilizations in that, from the perspective of both sides, it is an existential war. Ukrainians, faced with the brutality of Russian bombardment and occupation, now understand this as “a war for survival as a nation, as a people, and as a country that is not just a democracy but a country that values personal freedom and values tolerance and many of the same things [as the West].” The Ukrainian people, she explained, have seen how Russian forces enter towns and villages, arrest democratically elected officials, and then descend into indiscriminate violence against the population. Vladimir Putin, with an entirely different perspective on political and social developments since the fall of the Berlin Wall, also views this clash as existential. According to Applebaum, Putin views the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989-91 as “the destruction of a civilization that he believed in,” such that he has spent his career pursuing the goal of restoring the autocratic state that he remembers
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from his childhood. The Russian president, therefore, sees “the existence of a sovereign, democratic Ukraine…integrated into Europe and with the world as a personal threat to him and his power.” Desierto pressed Applebaum to consider this scenario as one that is particularly alarming from among the numerous examples of authoritarianism that she describes in her book. “We’ve seen aggressions like these,” Desierto notes, referring to the way in which the Holocaust was carried out not in one fell swoop but in “increments of mass human rights violations,” resulting in many atrocities and refugees. Applebaum agreed with the connection and described how Putin is consciously rejecting the international laws and norms that were established to prevent genocide. By spreading propaganda that falsely aligns Ukrainians with Nazis, she explained, the Russian government is deliberately undermining the apolitical order built in Europe after 1945 and reestablished after 1989-1991. “It’s a civilizational war,” said Applebaum “against those ideas and those rules that have kept the peace in Europe for at least the last several decades.”
The Lure of Authoritarianism Desierto brought the conversation to an element of The Twilight of Democracy that she found both uncomfortable and compelling: the way in which Applebaum identified the signs of political polarization around the world within her own circle of friends. She asked Applebaum to expand upon this division and the lure of right-wing radicalism in the 21st century. Applebaum explained that the rhetoric of stability and tradition versus disruption and change has been successful because “it plays into real fears people have about real ways in which the world has changed.” The speed and pace of economic, demographic, and sociological change in the last twenty to thirty years, she said, “has been so fast and so transformational that it means the places they grew up in or the towns that they come from or just the society that they knew as children seem to be lost.” While that version of the past may or may not be authentic, Applebaum explained, the sense of loss is real and has created a backlash that she describes as “restorative nostalgia.” It is that same sense of loss that fuels Putin’s
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nostalgia for the Soviet Union and the nostalgia of Americans who “remember or misremember a world they grew up in as better, calmer, quieter, or easier to understand than the present.” Restorative nostalgia and the desire for a “simpler” society, Applebaum continued, are manifestations of acute disappointment in the status quo. When taken to its extreme, this disappointment can become desperate, destructive, and politically radical. For Applebaum, it is no accident that these processes are at work and that extremism is taking similar forms in very different parts of the world. Desierto, an international human rights lawyer who grew up in a post-dictatorship, postcolonial Phillippines, pressed Applebaum on what she sees as a contradiction whereby citizens express their desire to live in a society in which everyone has fair and equal opportunities and yet place trust in authoritarians who commit every possible illegality, atrocity, and act of corruption. Applebaum suggested that, despite professions to the contrary, people don’t desire fairness and equality: “Maybe we desire a society where our group can flourish and where our group is in charge and…gets to make the rules.” She outlined the precarious nature of democracy, which relies upon a set of rules decided by neutral institutions and designed so that whoever is in power must protect those institutions in a way that might permit their political enemies to take the reins after the next election. “That’s asking a lot of human beings,” Applebaum noted, “and so the temptation to shift the system so that the rules benefit only us has always been strong.”
The Failures and Responsibilities of Democracies Both Desierto and a number of audience members asked Applebaum for her reflections on how democratic nations might have responded more swiftly or effectively to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and to a litany of expansionist aggressions stretching back to its attack on Georgia in 2008. Pointing out that these were not rationales that she personally agreed with, Applebaum identified three key reasons for these failures. Firstly, she described a sense of disbelief on the part of Western leaders, elites, the business community, and ordinary people that Russia’s leader was
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capable of this kind of genocidal language and threat, deploying propaganda that had not been seen in Europe since the 1940s. Putin is the type of leader, she explained, that historical programs and Holocaust education have been warning about for six decades. “There was a conviction in Europe that it was not possible that there could be this kind of Russia again,” Applebaum said. “That we’d gone through that…we discarded the old world and invented a new world.” Secondly, Applebaum explained that when Western democracies promise to intervene against genocidal or expansionist policies, naming such activities triggers an obligation to act. “If you say that Russia is a power that is a grave threat to its neighbors and has genocidal intent in Ukraine,” she said, “then you can’t very well fund the Russian state by buying its gas.” The stakes of disrupting the current system of trade, business, and diplomatic ties had seemed too high, and certainly higher than the interests of people in seemingly distant places like Georgia, Chechnya, or Crimea. Lastly, Applebaum explained, there was a powerful argument — one that held sway with political leaders in both the U.S. and Europe even several weeks into the war in Ukraine — that picking a fight with Russia would lead to a broader European conflict, “something worse, something even more unpredictable and even more frightening.” Other questions, particularly around the topic of sanctions, allowed Applebaum to make suggestions for how liberal democracies can more effectively confront the growing power of authoritarian regimes. She warned against an antiquated vision of authoritarianism in which one cartoonish villain rules an isolated state with the support of a corrupt security apparatus. She described 21st-century authoritarianism as a system in which “these states are linked to each other and learn from one another every day and have ways of avoiding Western sanctions and statements.” For example, if Iran is sanctioned by the West, Russia will invest in Iran, and when the Belarusian authorities suppressed street protesters, their counterparts in Venezuela followed the same playbook. In order to stem the spread and power of authoritarianism, Applebaum argued, liberal democracies must think about these states more systematically.
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Applebaum also outlined the way in which Western democracies have helped strengthen kleptocratic systems in authoritarian states and argued “we must change how we do business and change our laws.” In recent decades, Western democracies have operated on an intuitively logical premise that the best way to deal with such states is to trade with them, building relationships and mutually beneficial economic ties that would discourage confrontation and, ultimately, spread liberal democratic ideals. In reality, and especially in Russia, this trade has only increased the wealth and power of a small number of people, enriching an oligarchy that simultaneously owns and rules the state. To begin to remedy this, Applebaum argued that the Western governments that wrote the laws that have allowed oligarchs to amass vast amounts of capital should now unwrite those rules by, for example, outlawing shell companies, tax havens, and other mechanisms for shielding one’s wealth from the law.
Bend the Arc of History For her final question, Desierto asked if there was a teaching moment to take from this discussion of the lure of authoritarianism in Russia and around the world. Applebaum responded with a clear and emphatic call to action and a warning about the fragility of political systems when the citizenry becomes complacent, cynical, or nihilistic. She argued that in the several decades since the end of the Second World War, reinforced by the fall of the Soviet Union, people in the United States and Europe “began to think that our society, our democracy, our liberal world order are somehow inevitable, that we achieved something that can’t be changed.” According to Applebaum, this confidence in the ineluctable spread and triumph of democratic ideals is a mistake. She warned that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s oft-repeated metaphor that the arc of history bends toward justice is “a misleading quote,” one that risks dissuading ordinary people from responsive activism. “Democracy is not inevitable, autocracy is not inevitable,” Applebaum warned, “and the decisions we make now will create the world that we are going to live in next.”
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Applebaum owned that the message that political structures and principles are neither inevitable nor permanent is disturbing — since human nature craves stability and certainty — but it is also empowering. “Nothing is forever,” she elaborated, “and therefore it is our obligation to make the world the way that we want it to be.” She called upon the audience to get involved in politics, activism, and civic organization because “the more people are able to participate in public life, the better chance we have of maintaining the political system we have.” Applebaum had an opportunity to revisit this call to action and challenge to apathy in her response to audience questions that were specific to authoritarianism in Russia and its aggression toward Ukraine. Liviu Nicolaescu, professor of mathematics at the University of Notre Dame, asked for Applebaum’s thoughts on the Russian billionaire Oleg Tinkov’s suggestion that Putin’s actions reflect the desires and views of the ordinary Russian person. She repeated her aversion to any analysis that says nothing can change and pointed to the political, social, and grassroots change that has taken place in Ukraine over the last 15 years. In perhaps the starkest warning of the night, Applebaum insisted: “the idea that change isn’t possible is the argument for cynicism, pessimism, nihilism and, ultimately, autocracy” and the kind of hopelessness that autocrats like Vladimir Putin wish to encourage.
The Nanovic Forum, facilitated by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, deepens Notre Dame’s rich tradition of connections to Europe by bringing prominent figures to campus in a wide range of fields to explore, discuss, and debate the most pressing questions about Europe today. Generously sponsored by Robert and Elizabeth Nanovic, the Forum invites its distinguished guests to interact with Notre Dame in ways they most wish, which can be surprising. For the complete archive of lectures, visit nanovic.nd.edu/forum.