'No rule' suggesting dictatorships can succeed, says Pulitzer-prize winning historian

great to have you with us and thanks so much for for joining us you you list uh throughout the book but uh also in the publicity for it the very many autocracies that exist today we often think of just China and Russia but there are many many more than that and and to what extent do they now almost outnumber uh the democracies or is is that too much of a stretch what portion of the world do they cover so the book actually describes a particular network of autocracies so it's Russia China Iran North Korea and a handful of others Zimbabwe Venezuela who have begun to cooperate they don't share an ideology they don't have the same goals we're talking about communist China nationalist Russia bolivarian socialist Venezuela Theocratic Iran um but they do they do they do cooperate kind of transactionally and opportunistically with one another and they do have a common goal and the and the they have a common enemy really and the enemy is us the enemy is liberal societies liberal ideas the ideas of rule of law the idea of transparency and they work together to push back against those ideas and they do so and they help one another out uh in in in doing so there's in addition there's a whole world of other states that are some are illiberal some are dictatorships but it's really that group that has begun to act more more coherently and and more concertedly is there any legitimate argument behind why some of these countries are autocracies or is it purely down uh to the selfish interests of of a few people at the top or could you argue that China has made a success o of an autocracy over the last couple of decades in in a way that perhaps it might not have done if it had been a democracy so I mean you know when you talk about successful autocracy acies you have to remember that the poorest and uh most desperate countries on the planet are all autocracies Zimbabwe which is the country I write about in the book is terribly poor it's a it's a dictatorship Venezuela which is a country that was the richest in South America and is now the poorest is so entirely because of politic and entirely because of bad leadership uh you know the specific reasons why China has succeeded have more to do with the nature of its bureaucracy also the degree to which it opened up and liberalized it's what was a very centrally controlled system um you know the the the the sources of Chinese success I don't think lie in the n in in the fact of it's being a dictatorship and I think a lot of Chinese have actually been disappointed by the degree to which in recent years China has closed up and begun to cut itself off more from the world and has also begun to control civil society and debate much more so than than than people had hoped it would do do you think that their success has crossed a critical threshold such that autocracies will always continue to thrive one way or another China themselves might be able to support others certainly to support themselves well CH China certainly does try to support other autocracies but look there is no such thing as historical inevitability there is no rule you know there is no rule that says democracies Will Survive and succeed and there is also no rule that says autocracies will survive and succeed you know or or come to dominate the planet you know everything that happens tomorrow depends on what we do today and the my book makes an argument for understanding these developments taking them seriously making them part of our foreign policy conversations but also our domestic conversations there are many ways in which the autocratic world has influence inside our countries I I talk a lot about kleptocracy the role of money laundering the enablers in in in London and New York and else where who've helped kleptocrats come to power uh there there are ways we can change our own society that I think would make us more resilient to that kind of influence I mean does the new age in the world of Finance make that harder uh to to sort of put the genie back in the bottle as it were whether it's cryptocurrencies uh and and other currencies including the Chinese currency becoming a an alternative to the US dollar which doesn't then have the same level of ability to control yeah I mean the problem really dates back to the 90s when we effectively began to launder money for the post-soviet world and then then then it spread broader um you know but the the certainly the task of getting more control over that system does you know is is going to be a really important one both for both in the US and in Europe and the UK over the next over the next decade I mean I really think that's going to be one of the tests you know can we um you know can we maintain a a regulated or a semi-regulated system that works to the benefit of our people or will we lose control of it and and and allow secretive um not just autocrats but International criminals uh to dominate the financial markets um a final question back on China if I may um not so much about how they govern themselves internally but the way they interact with the the west and how close they were to sort of signing up meaningfully genuinely to to Western trade rules and and other laws um was that always an impossibility and something that they were kind of being deceptive about or or was it relatively close was TPP an opportunity for for example are there opportunities in the future or is it done undusted now so I think that the Chinese certainly in the 90s I think both there were people both in China and in Russia who did hope that economic integration would lead to political integration you know the dream of of of of the 1990s I think there were people in Moscow and Beijing who wanted that um I think I imagine there are people who still do uh they're not winning the argument internally um but you know but but you know China in particular has benefited so much from being part of a regulated World Trade system um from some elements of the rule of law uh that I don't think I don't think the argument is ever over I don't think it's I I think the you know the the it continues and that we should continue to try to persuade as much of the planet as possible to be part of a world of rule of law because it's better for everybody and thanks so much for joining us fascinating stuff thank you