Departures with Robert Amsterdam
193 episodes - English - Latest episode: 10 days ago - ★★★★★ - 36 ratingsInternational lawyer Robert Amsterdam and other members from the Amsterdam & Partners LLP team host a wide range of special expert guests to discuss leading international political and business issues.
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Episodes
Ukraine at a critical juncture
September 24, 2022 15:05 - 25 minutes - 47.7 MBIlya Ponomarev, a former member of the Russian Duma, joins Robert Amsterdam to discuss recent developments in Russia's war in Ukraine and the rapidly diminishing prospects for Vladimir Putin.
Successions in the wake of Mao and Stalin
September 19, 2022 16:37 - 28 minutes - 52.2 MBTo rise to power within the rigidly authoritarian party bureaucracies of the Soviet Union and China is a feat accomplished only with great strategic acumen, backhanded political maneuvering, and, sometimes, with a certain level of violence. On this week's episode of Departures with Robert Amsterdam we are very pleased to feature Joseph Torigian, an assistant professor at the School of International Service at American University in Washington and the author of the new book, "Prestige, Mani...
Why democracies must prepare for political violence
September 09, 2022 14:27 - 24 minutes - 45.9 MBIn the past, when insurgencies challenged the power of the state, they did so from a position of occupying physical territory. But in today's wildly unregulated post-truth environment and hyperconnected society, the space that they occupy is virtual - and most democracies are not well prepared to deal with these often violent threats to the hegemony of representative government. Dr. David Ucko, a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at King's College, has recently published a fascinating new bo...
Why authoritarians prefer to be surrounded by incompetence
August 29, 2022 16:30 - 31 minutes - 58.4 MBAs China approaches the 20th Party Congress to be held at the end of the year, President and CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping is aggressively promoting his government's superhuman achievements and infallible contributions to the glory of the state, making his case for an inevitable third term, and perhaps, leadership for life. But the problem with long-running leaders of authoritarian systems is that after a while, the people they surround themselves with are no longer the most trusted, th...
Tyranny and autocracy are on a winning streak
August 19, 2022 16:48 - 31 minutes - 57.4 MBToday there are currently fewer global citizens living in open and free democratic systems than in 1989, a sobering fact underlining the rapid global expansion of authoritarian regimes around tthe world. According to Moisés Naím, the world has made itself safer for tyrannical leaders to install themselves, often using the "three Ps" of populism, polarisation and post-truth, putting both fragile and established democracies at risk of extinction. In Naím's latest book, "The Revenge of Powe...
Historical memory on trial
August 08, 2022 14:18 - 29 minutes - 54.9 MB“Imagine that all of humanity stands before you and comes to this court and cries. These are our laws, let them prevail.” -Sir Hartley Shawcross, War Crimes Trials, Nuremberg, Germany, July 27, 1946 After discovering a former Nazi who belonged to the same killing unit as her grandfather and was the subject of a posthumous criminal investigation and concurrently a rehabilitation petition in Latvia, author Linda Kinstler began to deconstruct what these laws really mean when people are remove...
The founding mythology of global economic governance
August 02, 2022 13:09 - 26 minutes - 49.5 MB"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," is often a colloquial proverb tossed around to express a reluctant surrender to whatever dominant force one may be facing - but it might also be a decent way to express how many states have found their domestic political options increasingly constrained by in the age of globalization, whereby participation in international commerce binds a national government to the rules and norms of powerful institutions such as the World Bank and the International Moneta...
Zimbabwe's Democracy Deficit
July 14, 2022 19:19 - 28 minutes - 52.9 MBWhen one thinks of Zimbabwe, the concept of "free and fair elections" is not the first to come to mind. And yet, like many post-Cold War authoritarian states, elections are nevertheless organized and manipulated to produce something adjacent to public legitimacy, which becomes all the more treacherous when the opposition is able to actually win them. To discuss the rapidly developing situation in Zimbabwe, this week on Departures we are featuring a very special guest, Chenayi Mutambasere. ...
Thugs for hire: How China enlists nonstate actors to do the dirty work
June 14, 2022 17:22 - 26 minutes - 49.2 MBState repression, whether or not it’s outwardly aggressive, invites backlash. So how does the Chinese state maintain control during disruptive periods of intense urbanization, even as heavy consequences impact society? This week Departures is pleased to feature a discussion with Lynette Ong, a Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto about her excellent new book, "Outsourcing Repression Everyday State Power in Contemporary China." Through the coordination of independe...
Cyber warfare and the risk of regulatory failure
May 11, 2022 20:47 - 31 minutes - 24.6 MBWar doesn't always look like it used to, with just tanks, missiles, ships, and planes. It also takes place online, and observers in the West are becoming increasingly aware of the need to increase cyber defense capacities as authoritarian states like Iran and China rapidly advance. This poses important questions for democracies around the world: do open societies have more difficulty in mobilizing cyber defense than closed societies? And if so, why and what can be done to course correct? ...
Modern Central Asia: empires, revolutions, and the remaking of societies
April 28, 2022 17:00 - 26 minutes - 20.3 MBOften dismissed as the edge of the Russian or Chinese empires, Central Asia hosts a complex history that informs on present day atrocities including the Russian invasion in Ukraine, and the Uyghur concentration camps in China. It is through these current events, that Central Asia has become one of the most important geopolitical regions in the world. This week’s episode of Departures features Adeeb Khalid, the Jane and Raphael Bernstein Professor of Asian Studies and History at Carleton C...
The economic underpinnings of global disorder
April 21, 2022 16:19 - 31 minutes - 24.1 MBWe can all agree that the global world order has become rather disorderly. We also seem to have trouble coming up with consistent and convincing explanations of what brought about this disorder, pointing useless at shocks such as the passage of Brexit to the Trump to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But for political scientist Helen Thompson, the author of the excellent book, "Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century," the makings of our current geopolitical problems were cast deep in the ...
From Syria to Ukraine, the era of decivilization
April 06, 2022 11:37 - 24 minutes - 18.9 MBBefore Russia invaded Ukraine, it intervened in Syria in 2015 to shore up the beleaguered regime of their ally, Bashar al-Assad. How did this experience inform upon Vladimir Putin's catastrophic decision to invade and attempt regime change of the democratically elected government in Kyiv? This week's episode of Departures features Joby Warrick, a Pulitzer Prize-winning national security reporter for the Washington Post, and author of the book, "Red Line: The Unraveling of Syria and America...
From the frontlines of Kyiv, Dispatch #2
March 28, 2022 19:40 - 29 minutes - 54.7 MBWe last checked in with former Russian lawmaker Ilya Ponomarev about a month ago, as the Russian military began its invasion of Ukraine. Now, with things looking much different and many things not going to plan, we check back in for Dispatch #2 from inside Ukraine. Ilya Ponomarev, who was forced into self-exile from Russia following his solitary vote against the annexation of Crimea, has spent years living in Kyiv supporting governance efforts and leading new ventures. As someone who has d...
Congo's invisible war
March 17, 2022 18:45 - 25 minutes - 46.9 MBThe Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the most resource-rich nations in the world, holding the largest deposits of critical minerals which will be key to the coming industrial transformation. But it is also a nation that is well into its third decade of war - a war that in many ways is forgotten, ignored, and buried away from public attention. But one person who has been paying attention is Jason Stearns, a Senior Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation and Chair of the Advi...
From the frontlines of Kyiv
February 25, 2022 21:30 - 24 minutes - 44.7 MBIlya Ponomarev is one man who knows the costs of crossing Vladimir Putin. In 2014, he was the only member of the Russian Duma who voted against the annexation of Crimea, and then was forced into political exile, eventually becoming an entrepreneur in Kyiv, Ukraine. Tonight, as Russian tanks began entering the outer neighborhoods of the Ukrainian capital, we speak with Ilya again to get a sense of how people are preparing for the worst and hoping for the best in this besieged city, and what...
Four days that changed the course of World War II
February 22, 2022 16:26 - 32 minutes - 60.3 MBDuring one specific week in December in 1941, a series of events and calculations led to Adolf Hitler's disastrous decision to declare war on the United States, putting the conflict on the eventual path toward the outcome we now regard with familiarity. The sequence of events leading from the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan to the entry of the United States into the war were of course very far from clear cut or certain at the time, and instead played out with the high-tension drama of a H...
The past is a foreign country
February 09, 2022 17:08 - 27 minutes - 50.2 MB"100 billion people have lived on planet earth since our species evolved, and for all our archives, all our libraries, and all our museums, we have only the tiniest little sliver of any record of who these people were and what their lives were like," says Jon Grinspan in his conversation with Robert Amsterdam. "So the challenge of history is to live in the present, and try to connect with these human beings who came before us, try to understand what their meaning was." And it is with this ...
So little time, so many kinds of wars to wage
February 01, 2022 16:37 - 29 minutes - 55.6 MBAs tensions continue to rage between Russia and the West over its build-up on the Ukrainian border, Departures turns to expert Mark Galeotti for his analysis on the situation and a discussion of his brand new book, "The Weaponisation of Everything: A Field Guide to the New Way of War." Galeotti, who has spent years researching and writing about Russian organized crime and the security state, argues that despite the buildup of a traditional military conflict potentially in Ukraine, overall ...
Oil, gas, and coal as the lifeblood of the Russian polity
January 26, 2022 19:24 - 23 minutes - 43.4 MBThroughout the most recent intensifying conflict between Russia and the West over Ukraine, there is a common assumption that the Russian leadership is wielding its "energy weapon" to break apart European unity and advance its interests. While that may be partly true, it would be a huge mistake to assume that such a vast industrial chain of inputs, labor, refining, and transportation of these goods lay in the hands of so few people, argues Prof. Margarita Balmaceda in her new book, "Russian...
Summiting Everest for climate change
January 18, 2022 16:49 - 32 minutes - 59 MBSeveral years ago, Hakan Bulgurlu was at the top of his game. He was serving as CEO of Arçelik, a multi-billion dollar corporation. He and his family, including three young children, were enjoying a great life with frequent international travel. But he was also deeply troubled by the raw data he was seeing professionally concerning the rapidly deteriorating climate situation. And when he would speak up about these concerns, he found that people wouldn't listen and wouldn't act. So, he made a...
Irregular warfare is becoming the new regular
January 14, 2022 15:15 - 32 minutes - 60.1 MBForget tanks, missiles, and soldiers. The forms of warfare predominantly being used against the United States today are much more often unconventional and irregular, such as large-scale offensive cyber actions, disinformation campaigns, spying, economic subversion, and smaller armed conflicts via proxies. This is a deeply worrying trend, argues Seth Jones, author of the terrific book "Three Dangerous Men: Russia, China, Iran and the Rise of Irregular Warfare," because the United States is...
From the frontlines of Ukraine
December 22, 2021 17:36 - 30 minutes - 55.8 MBThe saber-rattling from Moscow over Ukraine has grown deafening in recent weeks. Hours before we recorded this episode, Vladimir Putin appeared on television threatening "retaliatory military-technical" measures while amassing some 175,000 troops on the border of Ukraine, asserting that Russia "has every right" to invade and start a war. Evelyn Farkas, a former Obama administration defense official, summarized the West's response in a tweet "Putin just declared war on Ukraine (pretending it'...
The rise of the Beijing consensus
December 14, 2021 15:43 - 25 minutes - 46.4 MBIn early December, the administration of US President Joe Biden convened a mostly virtual democracy summit, in which some of the world's largest economies were invited to participate and provide a clear framing of the agenda - and a clear poke in the eye of China and Russia. In response, Chinese state media trolled Biden with Harry Potter jokes about the fallibility of democracy as a system, and then went back to their regular efforts to redefine international norms and present its top-dow...
We aren't ready for the weaponization of space
December 02, 2021 16:45 - 29 minutes - 54.6 MBFaced with challenging and intractable problems from climate change to civil conflicts to terrorism, it is tempting for many of us to look to the heavens, with billionaires pouring their resources into space exploration, expansion, and even dreams of colonization. But this is a major mistake, argues Professor Daniel Deudney of Johns Hopkins University in his fascinating new book, "'Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity." Deudney's perspective is...
What Uganda shows us about modern authoritarianism
November 19, 2021 12:20 - 26 minutes - 48.7 MBYoweri Museveni's 35 years of iron-gripped ruthless authoritarianism in Uganda did not take place in a vacuum. It has instead been a years-long process of converting the country's institutions into instruments of arbitrary power, which has been fueled by a series of targeted moves to destabilize the social coordination that would be needed to hold leadership accountable. This has been the fascinating focus of research for Prof. Rebecca Tapscott, a visiting fellow at the University of Edinb...
Preparing for the geopolitical conflicts of tomorrow
November 05, 2021 15:27 - 25 minutes - 46.8 MBIt was once the dream of starry-eyed proponents of globalization that the increasing pace of trade, travel, and exchanges of ideas would lead to a "borderless" world of reduced conflict and cosmopolitanism. Instead, the opposite has happened, as the lines and demarcations between nations struggling to manage their conflicts have become paramount and subject to escalating risk. Whether it's China building islands in the South China Sea or Russia seizing the arctic or even the UK having a No...
Trust, Credibility, and COP26
October 27, 2021 18:32 - 28 minutes - 53.4 MBAs world leaders gather in Scotland for the COP26 climate change summit this week, there's a tremendous level of scrutiny not over the ambitions but the shortcomings of the world's biggest sources of emissions. This week, Departures is pleased to invite David Claydon, the founder of Kaya Group, which is an advisory firm which helps companies, investors, and governments navigate climate change policy and the decarbonization process. Claydon, who will be among the delegates in Glasgow, is ...
One spy's burden of accountability
October 23, 2021 14:13 - 32 minutes - 60.1 MBMany of us have wondered what it would be like to be a real spy. Not necessarily the James Bond-esque car chases and shootouts, but the real practice of exercising tradecraft in the field, recruiting and handling assets, and maintaining such a complex web of relationships between your colleagues, family, and sources. There could possibly be no better book to take us deep into this world than the latest release by Douglas London, titled "The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American In...
That feeling when we are between world orders
October 08, 2021 16:38 - 28 minutes - 52.6 MBWe are no longer living in a unipolar world of US dominance, argues India's brilliant former Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon in the latest episode of Departures with Robert Amsterdam, but neither have we transitioned to multipolarity or whatever is coming next. Former Ambassador Menon's new book, "India and Asian Geopolitics: The Past, Present," is slightly misleading in its title, in that it implies a regional study, when in fact his insights, analysis, and proscriptions are truly glo...
Punctuated equilibrium: how the 1490-1530 period changed the world
September 28, 2021 16:10 - 23 minutes - 43 MBHistory is not a single continuum. There are certain stretches in which momentous change occurs in a very compact timeframe. The forty-year period between 1490 and 1530 is one of these bursts of revolutionary change. In The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World, Patrick Wyman, a historian and the host of the popular podcast Tides of History, argues that the turn of the 16th century was a momentous moment in history when Europe began to break off from the res...
Despite British colonialism, Nigeria is a success story
September 15, 2021 20:59 - 26 minutes - 48.2 MBSince Britain's annexation of Lagos in 1861 up until independence in 1960, the history of colonialism in Nigeria has almost always been told from London's perspective - often exaggerating the benevolent intentions and downplaying and blameshifting the abuses, ethnic violence, and social disarray the occupation created. Every listener to this podcast knows that we love Nigeria. Been traveling there and working there for decades, so when we heard about Max Siollun's new book, "What Britain D...
Did Russia win the Cuban Missile Crisis?
September 09, 2021 14:56 - 27 minutes - 49.8 MBLooking back almost 60 years ago when the United States and the Soviet Union came within an inch of destroying the world via all-out nuclear war, we continue to gain new insights into the dramatic events, the changing of thinking and decision-making that went on in both ExComm and the Presidium. This week we're proud to be joined Serhii Plokhy, a professor of history at Harvard University and the author of the excellent book, "Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis." Plokhy...
The deep roots of the Cuban Missile Crisis
September 03, 2021 13:23 - 21 minutes - 39.6 MBAs Kennedy and Khrushchev just barely navigated their way out of a world-destroying nuclear armageddon, there remain many lessons to be explored with regard to statecraft, diplomacy, and decisionmaking in a crisis. The Pulitzer-winning historian joins the Departures podcast this week to discuss his book, "Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis," which not only provides fresh insight into the critical meetings which changed Kennedy's thinking o...
Is America back, or are we seeing America's back?
August 27, 2021 14:38 - 35 minutes - 65.3 MBThe rapid collapse of Kabul in the final weeks of the US withdrawal has forced a reckoning of not only Washington's failure in the region, but broader questions about US foreign policy and what the Biden administration wants (or is actually able) to achieve. This week Departures with Robert Amsterdam is pleased to welcome a return guest for this special emergency podcast, Prof. Alexander Cooley of Barnard College, who is a highly regarded expert on Central Asian politics and the coauthor o...
"We don't do windows" - How the Bush administration sold the Iraq War
August 25, 2021 15:07 - 29 minutes - 54.8 MBThe chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and rapid fall of Kabul to the Taliban brought back in sharp focus the misguided policies of the George W. Bush administration that led the US into the War on Terror. In “To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq,” Robert Draper, a writer at large for the New York Times Magazine and the author of several books tells the story of the Bush Administration’s misguided invasion of Iraq in 2003. Draper delves into the ...
Why we should look at China in shades of grey
August 18, 2021 15:06 - 29 minutes - 54.5 MBChina’s rise on the global stage has sparked both envy and fear across the globe. Much has been written about how China might reshape the international order, but few have taken the time to delve into the myriad Chinese actors and interests that collectively make up China’s newfound global influence rather than viewing Beijing as a monolith. Shaun Breslin, Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick analyzes the nature of Chinese power and the extreme – and...
NXIVM and the expanding influence of cults
August 11, 2021 17:00 - 26 minutes - 48.3 MBIn "Don't Call it a Cult," Vancouver-based investigative journalist Sarah Berman tells the story of the bizarre cult known as NXIVM. Founded by longtime pyramid scheme mastermind Keith Raniere in 1998 who referred to himself in the group as the "Vanguard," the group roped in many rich and prominent individuals from socialities Buffy and William Cafritz, actress Nicki Clyne, and Clare Bronfman, heir to the Seagram fortune who enabled and funded the cult. Raniere was sentenced last year to 1...
Why the catastrophes of 2020 should prompt a rethinking of America's role in the world
August 04, 2021 11:56 - 30 minutes - 55.4 MBBy many measures, 2020 was a year to forget. With natural disasters, a climate crisis, a vicious pandemic, a massive economic crisis, a cruel and dishonest president, unprecedented demands for racial justice and its corresponding ugly backlash, US society has been taken to the brink. For Prof. Andrew Bacevich of Boston University, these events represent an American Apocalypse, one which requires a thorough rethinking of how Washington engages with the wider world based on the needs of its ...
China's high-tech gulag archipelago
July 28, 2021 20:00 - 26 minutes - 48.2 MBIn the Xinjiang region of northwestern China, more than 1.8 million people have been disappeared into a vast network of concentration camps without any clear charges, due process, or fair trial. How are these victims selected? Via state-of-the-art predictive artificial intelligence and surveillance technology systems deployed by Beijing that seek to punish people for political activity they may be profiled to potentially commit in the future. This week on the podcast we're very pleased to ...
What Germany fails to understand about Russia
July 21, 2021 14:48 - 24 minutes - 44.5 MBIn power since 2005, Angela Merkel's CDU coalition has managed to govern Germany with an admirable level of success, but at the same time during this period, Vladimir Putin's Russia has invaded multiple countries, interfered in elections both near and far away, and run amok with jailings and assassinations of dissidents. How is it possible that still today, many German public officials fail to see that they have a problem in managing relations with Moscow? Author John Lough, a friend of th...
Even dictators have to play by (some) rules
July 16, 2021 15:25 - 26 minutes - 48.8 MBWhen we think about dictatorships and authoritarian regimes, we tend to think of extremes. Places like North Korea, with brutal, absolutist rulers vanquishing their opponents with prejudice and limitless power. But that's really not the reality for most autocratic countries, in fact, there are usually a series of executive constraints, rules, procedures, and structures even in the most non-democratic countries which shape and limit what the leader can do, and how stable transitions of powe...
EPISODE 100: The fools and villains who prevented peace in 1916
July 09, 2021 19:33 - 27 minutes - 50.5 MBTo commemorate the 100th episode of our Departures with Robert Amsterdam podcast, for the first time we have invited back a return guest, one of our favorite authors, Philip Zelikow. Dr. Zelikow is a renowned former diplomat, historian, lawyer academic, and author of extraordinary talent. He has formerly served as the Director of the 9/11 Commission, the former Counsel to State Department, National Security Council, and currently serves as the director of the Miller Center of Public Affair...
How the pandemic creates opportunities for global change
July 05, 2021 15:57 - 25 minutes - 47.8 MBThe disruptive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has obliterated many standing global norms, but it's less clear how this crisis could change our approach to solving the world's biggest challenges. According to Ian Goldin, who is a Professor of Globalisation and Development at the University of Oxford, the coronavirus pandemic could serve as the necessary catalyst to set in motion a much stronger response to a vast array of challenges, from climate change to inequality to conflicts. With t...
The most powerful political machine ever created
July 02, 2021 14:27 - 32 minutes - 60.3 MBThis July, the Chinese Communist Party celebrated its 100th anniversary, marking a major milestone and underlining some major questions about its future. No other communist party has lasted this long, and certainly no other ruling authoritarian government has held its grip on power for a similar period of time in the modern era. But that's not to there was ever inertia. The party's history has been fraught with difficult decisions, successes, mistakes, and sweeping changes of perspective, ...
Why elections in Russia still matter
June 30, 2021 14:19 - 30 minutes - 56.3 MBThere is little debate over the fact that Russia is an authoritarian state in Vladimir Putin's grip, one which oppresses the rights of its citizens and suppresses the voice of the political opposition. But this does not mean that elections and the democratic process - weakened as it may be - is not still important in terms of applying pressure on the Russian government and constraining and shaping its choices. In her fascinating new book, "Elections, Protest, and Authoritarian Regime Stabi...
We are all 'Homo Sovieticus'
June 21, 2021 15:57 - 26 minutes - 48.8 MBVladimir Putin never seems to go away. No matter what economic or political crisis, invasions of neighboring nations, or crushing oppression of basic civil liberties, he somehow manages to sustain enough of a perception of popular support and legitimacy to keep on going. Why? That's the question studied in the terrific new book "The Red Mirror: Putin's Leadership and Russia's Insecure Identity" by Gulnaz Sharafutdinova. Taking a social identity theory approach to the puzzle of Putin's popu...
How China's foreign policy is shaped
June 11, 2021 16:01 - 28 minutes - 52.7 MBSince Xi Jingping rose to power in 2012, China has embarked on a new phase of expanding their role as a global superpower. Gone are the days of the charm offensive and the peaceful rise, here come the 'wolf warriors.' Xi's "Chinese Dream" has been pitched by state propaganda as a visionary plan for a "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation" leading up to the year 2049, but now it seems they are entering a phase where the internal threats significantly outweigh the external challenges to re...
The innovation and resilience of the Mongol Empire
June 08, 2021 16:41 - 24 minutes - 45.6 MBIn the 13th and 14th centuries, the Mongol horde exercised control over an unfathomably large empire, spanning thousands of miles from Europe to Russia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. History has often not looked kindly upon these nomadic civilizations, which has led to some major blindspots regarding astonishing achievements, explosive growth in trade, commerce, and communications, and even a certain level of resilience and tolerance of governing very different and often opposing groups...
Who 'belongs' in a nation, and who is allowed to wield state power?
June 04, 2021 16:26 - 29 minutes - 54.1 MBThis week we are beyond thrilled to have Mahmood Mamdani on the podcast, one of the world's most highly regarded public intellectuals, author of dozens of books, and a decorated professor at Columbia University. Dr. Mamdani has had diverse life experience, from marching on Birmingham for civil rights to being chased from Kampala by the Idi Amin regime to fighting apartheid in South Africa, and in his new book, "Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities," he ...