How MAGA Has Overtaken Foreign Policy for Personal Gain

Brian Lehrer (0:10)

It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Anne Applebaum from The Atlantic is here with her very pointed and deeply reported cover story in the October issue called Empire of Graft. Why Empire of Graft? Well, the article displays at 40 pages long on my computer. Yes, I read the whole thing, but here's the takeaway in one sentence from page 29 about how she sees US foreign policy today. Quote, it's not to support democracy, not to build American prosperity, but to spread the illiberal revolution and make money for the predators who support it. Not to support democracy, not to build American prosperity, but to spread the illiberal revolution and make money for the predators who support it. She makes this case through deep reporting from many different countries connecting the MAGA movement's campaign to destroy liberal democracy as she sees it with big profits for what she calls the Predator Clan. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD. Vance would probably beg to differ and will play some clips of each that Anne cites in the piece. So let's get into it. Anne Applebaum is an Atlantic staff writer.

She will be featured at this weekend's Atlantic Festival. We'll give you more details on that later.

She's the author of multiple books on this subject too, including Autocracy Inc, The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, Twilight of Democracy, The Seductive Lore of Authoritarianism, and the Pulitzer Prize winning Gulag History. She's a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. We always learn when you come on with us. Welcome back to WNYC.

Anne Applebaum (1:53)

Thank you so much for having me again.

Brian Lehrer (1:55)

Early in the piece, you cite Karl Marx, who argued that revolutions are not just about changing one country, but the international system itself. Why is that a starting point for understanding what you see as the MAGA revolution in this country?

Anne Applebaum (2:11)

First of all, I think it's important to understand that the people carrying it out do believe this is a revolution.

They think they are changing the American political system, and they seek to change other political systems as well. They aren't normal Republicans who, as John McCain once said of Barack Obama, I think their opponents are decent men who want the best for their countries. They think their opponents need to be crushed and destroyed, and they need to put in something different in its place. That mentality you can see in domestic politics as well as foreign policy. But like other revolutionaries at other times, they also think that their revolution at home will be more stable and will last longer if they can achieve the same kinds of goals in other places. So they back far-right parties and other kinds of parties who they think will be compatible with their ideas. So other leaders and political movements who will push back against the independence of judiciaries, freedom of the press, who will use the language that they use about either about white supremacy or about crushing enemies or locking up immigrants. So they see that they have international allies and they seek to promote them in different ways. I mean, it's important also to remember that the Bolshevik Revolution, I mean, of course, it had an ideology and it had goals and so on. But lots of other people grabbed on to it. So when there was this big moment of change in Russia, there were also, I don't know, there were constructivist artists and there were people trying to steal from the old aristocracy. All kinds of people sought to take advantage of the moment and you can see that happening in the US too. So there are people who are attaching themselves to this movement, the cryptocurrency industry or some of the critical minerals mining companies. They see this big change and they're trying to link themselves to it so that they can take advantage of it. But as I said, the main point is that it's ending away a kind of American politics that we all became familiar with, certainly after the Second World War, a world in which the US was the head of a big alliance, it was linked to other democracies, it sought to create security through long-term relationships, especially in Europe and Asia, but also in other places.

All of that is now coming to an end, replaced by this new preditorial instinct.

Brian Lehrer (4:44)

You already mentioned a few industries that are hangers-on to this revolution, but I want to ask you to go deeper and start to make the connection, that's the premise of the piece really, between the illiberal cultural and political revolution and what you call the clan of predators currently in charge of the US government. If the culture war is about racial or religious purity or dominance, as you might describe it, how does that connect to graft and corruption?