Delphi Talks

Liberal Democracy and the rule of law as a foreign policy tool

Delphi Economic Forum

One of the world’s most read authors and historians, Anne Applebaum spoke in the Delphi Economic Forum last April with Ta Nea’s Michalis Mitsos, on a critical question of our time: Why do people who live in democracies find authoritarianism appealing?

Drawing inspiration from her newly published book “Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World”, Applebaum explains how autocratic figures like Russia’s President Vladimir Putin sell the image of a supporter of traditional values and position themselves as “deniers” of Western values. For Applebaum, the conclusion is clear: in an era of radical change like today, the need for a strongman arises. And to counter that, we must devine a kind of “tough liberalism”, which is not naive about the realities of our time and the extent of foreign influence in our democracies.