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
How the liberal international order was built on blood
August 28, 2020 17:31 - 25 minutes - 47.4 MBIn the 1950s and 1960s, the United States engaged in a relentless anticommunism crusade which included the sponsorship of mass killings, coups, and installations of authoritarian regimes across much of the global South, from Indonesia to Brazil. In his fascinating new book, "The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World," journalist and author Vincent Bevins explores some fascinating personal testimonials of survivors and their fam...
In postwar Japan, a dramatic trial of a show trial
August 24, 2020 16:06 - 23 minutes - 44.2 MBIn 1942, Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle led an audacious one-way bombing raid to hit targets in Japan which many thought impossible. With nowhere to land their planes, eight American airmen who were captured afterward by Japanese troops in occupied Chinese territory, and later subjected to trials and death sentences. In his fascinating new book, "Last Mission to Tokyo: The Extraordinary Story of the Doolittle Raiders and Their Final Fight for Justice," Columbia Law Professor Michel Paradis ta...
Tanzanians are living in fear of Magufuli
August 18, 2020 16:14 - 21 minutes - 40.6 MBTundu Lissu is not known for backing down from a challenge. From his humble roots growing up herding cattle in Central Tanzania to his British education and legal practice, he rose to a senior position in the CHADEMA opposition party. As a vocal critic challenging the alleged human rights abuses of President John Magufuli, in 2017 he survived an attempted assassination in which he was shot 16 times. On this podcast, Tundu is interviewed by his international lawyer Robert Amsterdam, and...
How Syria has rapidly accelerated the development of international law
August 17, 2020 17:01 - 29 minutes - 54.5 MBAs the Syrian conflict has raged on for almost a decade, and the United Nations is hamstrung with Russia's veto power over proposed legal instruments to intervene, international law finds itself being innovated at light speed in response. Michael Scharf, the co-dean of the Law School of Case Western Reserve University and the co-author of "The Syrian Conflict's Impact on International Law," joins the podcast this week to discuss the effect of the Syrian conflict on the doctrine of humanita...
The unraveling of the US-China détente
August 14, 2020 17:04 - 34 minutes - 63.5 MBAs the trade war heats up between the United States and China, the strategic calculations on behalf of both Donald Trump and Xi Jinping bear increasing levels of risk of the confrontation spinning out of control. Joining the podcast this episode are two Wall Street Journal reporters, Bob Davis and Lingling Wei, whose new book "Superpower Showdown: How the Battle Between Trump and Xi Threatens a New Cold War" examines the history driving the current trade dispute and the behind the scenes t...
How US diplomacy failed South Sudan
August 11, 2020 14:33 - 28 minutes - 52.4 MBAs a career foreign service officer, Elizabeth Shackelford was seen as a rising star in the US State Department, a recipient of the Barbara Watson Award for Consular Excellence. But in 2017 she resigned from public service, publishing a stinging indictment of a letter which brought to light the extraordinary mismanagement and strategic drift under then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. In Shackelford's new book, "The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age," she takes the re...
A perfect vehicle for chaos
August 04, 2020 16:27 - 29 minutes - 55.1 MBWith assassinations taking place on foreign soil, widespread hacking and disinformation campaigns aimed at undermining democratic elections, and provocations of armed conflict across multiple theaters, Russia's role in the post-Cold War international system under President Vladimir Putin has been that of a disrupter. But they've likely never had a more powerful weapon at their disposal than the current president of the United States, Donald Trump. Luke Harding, an author and journalist who...
Make America competent again
July 27, 2020 19:18 - 31 minutes - 58.4 MBAs an attorney, distinguished diplomat, academic and author, there are few public officials with careers as varied and impressive as Philip Zelikow. He served as the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, was the author of the "Zelikow memo" disputing the legal grounds of torture of terrorism detainees, and co-authored books with former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and recently published on "strategy corruption" in Foreign Affairs. In this wide-ranging discussion with Robert Amst...
The strategic advantage of democracies
July 21, 2020 13:58 - 20 minutes - 38.3 MBThe United States has enjoyed a position of relative primacy in the international system since the end of World War II, but are those days numbered as China and other powers continue to rise? Or does Washington still have a few more decades left in the tank? Matthew Kroenig, a political scientist and the Deputy Director of the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, has a decidedly more optimistic view of the capacity of American democracy to help the country prevail...
The soul inside the legal thriller
July 17, 2020 16:04 - 26 minutes - 50 MBFor fans of legal fiction, there are few characters more memorable than Scott Turow's protagonist, Alejandro “Sandy” Stern, whose crusading work as a defense counsel first appeared in his 1987 book, "Presumed Innocent." Now, with Turow's latest novel, "The Last Trial," it appears we are witnessing the end of a long arc of a beloved character. In this discussion with Robert Amsterdam, Scott Turow talks about what went into the creation of Sandy Stern, and the process by which he plots his...
Competitive coercion and the need to rebuild the US alliance system
July 14, 2020 20:03 - 27 minutes - 50.9 MBThe United States has risen to its position of primacy thanks to a carefully constructed system of alliances with numerous other countries. That system, however, has suffered significant damage in recent years, is under increasing attack both at home and abroad, and desperately needs rebuilding, argues Mira Rapp-Hooper, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center. In this interview with Robert Amsterdam, Rapp-Hooper discusses her new boo...
The war on international justice
July 10, 2020 16:34 - 30 minutes - 55.9 MBLast month, the White House issued an executive order to apply terrorism-style sanctions such as bank account and asset seizure orders against members of the International Criminal Court (ICC), presumably as a response to express disapproval of a war crimes investigation related to events in Afghanistan. William Burke-White, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and policy advisor who worked at State Department under the Obama administration, joins Departures this week to talk ...
The Jewish dynasties that built modern China
July 07, 2020 19:27 - 31 minutes - 59.2 MBFor 175 years, well before the young Mao Zedong began his Long March, two rival Jewish dynasties dominated Chinese business and politics, accumulating massive wealth and power while navigating the tumultuous history of the period before losing nearly everything once the Communists swept into power. Jonathan Kaufman, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and the author of the "The Last Kings of Shanghai," joins Robert Amsterdam on the podcast to discuss the fascinating stories of these two fa...
The obstacles to Africa's prosperity
July 03, 2020 16:52 - 40 minutes - 75.4 MBFor many years, Africa's natural resource wealth, young population, and vibrant societies have raised many hopes for a rapid emergence on the world's stage - but the development of these opportunities has often slow and uneven. So what is holding the region back? John Campbell, a former US Ambassador to Nigeria, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and author of multiple books on the region, joins Departures this week to discuss a wide range of trends he sees taking precedenc...
A world without "The West"
June 30, 2020 18:18 - 27 minutes - 51.7 MBSo much of the peace and prosperity achieved following the end of World War II and past the end of the Cold War was rooted in a common civilizational grammar driving foreign policy, an imagined community of nations referred to as "The West" based on a set of Enlightenment ideas. But then we lost confidence in that cultural narrative, and gradually many in the United States abandoned the Jeffersonian West of liberty, multilateralism and rule of law in favor of an ethno-religious-nationalist l...
Russian kleptocracy as a business model
June 23, 2020 20:36 - 29 minutes - 55.3 MBThere are few other countries in the world that have wielded money and influence as well as the modern Russian state, to the point of purchasing impunity and acquiescence to their status quo. And this is not all simply because of a "master strategy" by Vladimir Putin, but instead a vast and complex system of illicit enrichment and state capture by his network of siloviki and willing oligarch businessmen. It is this network and its operative methods that is the focus of a fascinating new bo...
The future is not a right, but a commodity
June 19, 2020 16:27 - 28 minutes - 52.7 MBFor experts who spend their careers studying modern authoritarianism, it has only recently become prudent to apply their analytical skillset to talking about political developments in the United States. Journalist and author Sarah Kendzior, who stood out in 2015 as one of the lone voices warning that Donald Trump was going to win the presidency, speaks with Robert Amsterdam about her latest book, "Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America." "It's alw...
China's long road to democracy
June 15, 2020 18:15 - 42 minutes - 79.1 MBEarlier this month marked the 31st anniversary of Tiannanmen Square, while during this same period, the same Chinese Communist Party solidified its grip on Hong Kong with the passage of a new national security law that would subject Hong Kongers to extradition and Chinese legal jurisdiction. These events are just examples of the extreme lengths Beijing will go to demonstrate its commitment to avoiding a collapse similar to that of the Soviet Union, argues Jean-Pierre Cabestan during his in...
The intoxicating power of nostalgia
June 12, 2020 19:19 - 25 minutes - 48.3 MBThere is really no shared political ideology, there is no general set of policies, that are common among populists like Vladimir Putin to Donald Trump, or Viktor Orban, or Jair Bolsonaro and so on. What unites them is that they are all nostalgists, that they have mobilized an imagined version of each country's historical past greatness and put that at the core of their political messaging, argues author Peter Pomerantsev in a discussion with Robert Amsterdam. According to Pomerantsev, none...
The US can't seem to kick its addiction to regime change
June 09, 2020 12:50 - 36 minutes - 67.2 MBFor the past 50 years, the US foreign policy establishment has relied on methods both overt and covert to express its interests abroad, often involving the destabilization and removal of democratically elected governments, frequently resulting in outcomes that end up worse than their precedents. Stephen Kinzer, a veteran foreign correspondent, author, and academic, joins Robert Amsterdam on the Departures podcast to discuss this fascinating history of US misadventures abroad, the exploits ...
Will the killing of George Floyd change America?
June 05, 2020 15:58 - 28 minutes - 53.4 MBTwo weeks after the callous murder of George Floyd by four Minneapolis police officers, the United States is beset by a level of nationwide unrest and protests the likes of which hasn't been seen in decades. Will this be a moment of reflection in which our society and institutions are finally reformed to purge the deeply embedded structures of racial inequality? Or will different segments of the country continue living in separate realities, unable to acknowledge the existence of the probl...
The inevitability of tragedy
June 02, 2020 17:20 - 30 minutes - 56.9 MBWe usually don't use the titles of books as podcast titles, but in this case, during this week in Washington DC, it is sadly quite apt. Before introducing this week's author, Bob shares his thoughts on the tragic events following the killing of George Floyd followed by the ensuing protests, riots, and crackdowns. As the United States experiences a challenge to its stability not felt in generations, we're very fortunate to have Barry Gewen, an author and New York Times journalist who has ...
Who cares about the sword if you can manipulate the hand that wields it?
May 29, 2020 17:08 - 37 minutes - 70.2 MBThe United States spends trillions on its military, but is it really achieving stronger national security? Not really, says Sean McFate, the author of the book "The New Rules of War." In his conversation with Bob, McFate argues that the US has been obsessed with outdated conventional warfare, has fetishized technology and tactical battlefield victory, and has failed to understand that war has transitioned away for billion-dollar fighter jets to the strategic level, the political level, a...
Rumors of democracy's demise are greatly exaggerated
May 26, 2020 18:17 - 37 minutes - 69.5 MBThere are a lot of pundits out there declaring democracy promotion to be dead on arrival in the Trump era. But there's still an important community of activists fighting for the cause against the odds. "Democracy matters and democratic leadership matters, even in the face of a fast-moving crisis like the coronavirus," says Jeffrey Smith, the founder and president of Vanguard Africa, a nonprofit which has worked closely with a number of successful, visionary leaders. In this lates...
Democracy is great if you can get there, but first let's prioritize governance
May 22, 2020 15:38 - 32 minutes - 61.3 MBThe default mode of thinking in U.S. foreign policy circles is that more countries should be like us, and that with the right support, new democracies can bloom and flourish all across the world. Except history shows us again and again that it doesn't work like that. Stephen Krasner, a professor at Stanford University and a former official in the George W. Bush administration, joins Robert Amsterdam on this episode of Departures to discuss his latest book, "How to Make Love to a Despot: An...
How technology could save us, if we don't mess it up first
May 20, 2020 19:28 - 28 minutes - 53 MBKim Dotcom is no stranger to lockdowns. For more than 8 years, the Megaupload founder and tech entrepreneur has been fighting an extradition request to New Zealand from the United States following an over-the-top FBI raid on his home in 2012 ... bizarrely over accusations of third-party copyright infringement. Robert Amsterdam, whose firm has provided counsel to Dotcom's defense team, speaks with Kim about the current status of the case, asks his opinions on the most important emerging t...
The unique burden of being Russian
May 06, 2020 17:52 - 35 minutes - 66.2 MBIs it better to fight an authoritarian government and lose, or work with that government and survive to fight another day? Bob interviews Joshua Yaffa, Moscow Correspondent for the New Yorker and author of Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin's Russia, about the mentalities of the people who brought Vladimir Putin to power, the internal moral compromises they make to keep him there, and what those compromises mean during a global pandemic. Yaffa describes a perva...
Is Putin making Russia great again?
May 02, 2020 12:47 - 37 minutes - 69.5 MBOn the latest episode of Departures, Robert Amsterdam speaks with Professor Angela Stent, director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies and a professor at Georgetown University about her book, "Putin's World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest." In her book, Stent examines Russia's long-troubled relationship with the West, while also dissecting Russian relations with the rest of the world, including China, Japan, and the Middle East. She writes that "Putin's...
The travel industry will never be the same
April 28, 2020 15:11 - 34 minutes - 63.7 MBAcross the world, borders have been closed, flights grounded, and hotels shuttered. When we eventually begin the great re-opening, the travel industry is going to look radically different and may remain that way for the foreseeable future. This week's guest arguably knows the travel sector better than anyone. Peter Greenberg, the Emmy award-winning producer and journalist for CBS News, speaks with Robert Amsterdam about what we should be watching, precautions we should take when traveling,...
Will rule of law withstand the age of pandemic?
April 24, 2020 20:28 - 40 minutes - 75.9 MBBrian Greenspan is highly regarded as one of Canada's foremost criminal law practitioners, having represented a wide variety of celebrities to some of the country's top business groups. In this conversation with Departures host Robert Amsterdam, Greenspan shares his views on a diverse range of issues, including how he sees rule of law and criminal justice holding up under the immense pressures of the coronavirus pandemic, the contrasting political cultures between the US and Canada and wha...
The incredible shrinking US influence
April 17, 2020 20:16 - 43 minutes - 81.4 MBThe debate over whether or not the United States is losing its global influence and moving away from its role of leadership in the international system has moved more to a discussion of just how far and how fast it is falling, and what that means for how the rest of the world structures its relationships and disputes. This process, which was well underway before the 2016 election of President Donald Trump, has recently been accelerated in light of the global COVID-19 pandemic, according to...
Take-it-or-leave-it diplomacy
April 13, 2020 16:32 - 40 minutes - 74.4 MBWhy have the people who have made the biggest foreign policy mistakes of all time never had to face the music? Robert Amsterdam discusses the changing role of diplomacy and the US grand strategy in a post-pandemic world with Stephen Walt, Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University, author of The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of US Primacy. For Professor Walt, sustainable US foreign policy successes are w...
Offshore balancing acts in the age of Trump
March 30, 2020 17:55 - 46 minutes - 86.4 MBOver the past 25 years, the power and influence of the United States has been challenged in new ways from a variety of state and non-state actors, yet our responses to these challenges often seems mired in the past. In this latest episode of Departures, Robert Amsterdam has a wide-ranging discussion regarding emerging geopolitical trends with David Kilcullen, author of the book "The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West."
With friends like these - corruption as an organizing principle in Putin's Russia
July 23, 2019 16:57 - 33 minutes - 45.3 MBThere nothing better than spending your summer vacation reading some good books - which at least for us, means reading our way through several new titles examining the future trajectory of Vladimir Putin's Russia. This week, Anders Åslund, a senior fellow in the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council, joins Bob on this episode of Departures to discuss his latest book, "Russia's Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy."
The assumed notion of permanence
January 23, 2019 17:18 - 32 minutes - 62.2 MBIs understanding the past the best way to view the present? Robert Amsterdam and guest Dr. Ed Watts, author of 'Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell Into Tyranny," discuss how a closer look at the Roman experiment with representative democracy may help us to better understand our own circumstances in the United States, and the obstacles and opportunities that we may see on the way forward.
Breaking the Schools to Prison Pipeline in the United Kingdom
October 30, 2018 16:35 - 25 minutes - 49.5 MBThe City of London takes great pride in its cosmopolitan, international approach to diversity - but the reality on the ground and in the public schools for young black children is sadly rather dire. This week Robert Amsterdam explores the issue with Cheryl Phoenix, who leads the Black Child Agenda, a unique and important organization focused on breaking the schools to prison pipeline in the United Kingdom.
Doing business in the new Chinese world order
October 25, 2018 15:48 - 30 minutes - 58.3 MBThe ambitious expansion of global influence by China, right at a moment in which the US and West are retreating from the world, is rewriting the playbook on global trade. "This is really a change not just in the software of international trade – it’s also in the operating system," says our guest Chris Flynn, a lawyer at Australian Gilbert + Tobin. Robert Amsterdam and Flynn discuss how businesses are managing this transition, and what new opportunities are coming in the reordering of Asia.
Why the West looks away from Uganda's deepening political violence
September 25, 2018 12:34 - 30 minutes - 58.3 MBHelen Epstein is the author of "Another Fine Mess: America, Uganda, and the War on Terror." Epstein has been working in Uganda for the last twenty years. During that time, the region has received some $20 billion of foreign aid, yet the quality of education, health care, and basic standards of living remain low. Epstein’s analysis of the situation centers on Uganda’s longtime dictator, Yoweri Museveni. She argues that his support for the West’s War on Terror has allowed him to channel funds ...
Italy's financial dysfunction and rise of populism
June 05, 2018 16:15 - 28 minutes - 54.4 MBFinancial analyst Emanuele Minotti joins Robert Amsterdam's Departures podcast this week to discuss the recent anti-establishment upheavals in Italy and what it means for Italian and European equity markets.
To rise as the most angry, forceful critics of the system
May 24, 2018 16:04 - 38 minutes - 61.5 MBRobert Amsterdam is joined this week by Professor of History Benjamin Carter Hett, whose new book "The Death of Democracy" examines how Weimar Germany marched toward authoritarianism and the events that led to the rise of Hitler. Bob and Prof. Hett discuss a number of broad similarities between this period and the toxic politics of our current scenario.
More Tsarist than Soviet
May 18, 2018 12:51 - 40 minutes - 77 MBAnders Aslund of the Atlantic Council joins Bob to discuss Putin's lack of a succession plan, his impact on Europe, the global reaction to Trump and his trade war, and what we can expect next from the populist wave upsetting Western democratic systems.
A Nobel Prize for Trump?
April 28, 2018 00:41 - 45 minutes - 85.5 MBRobert Amsterdam and political risk expert Dante Disparte discuss the breakthrough on the Korean peninsula, the rise of China and demise of US influence, Russia, and numerous other key risk factors in the new international system.
Once you believe in the impossible, Russia starts making sense
March 14, 2018 12:46 - 48 minutes - 92.4 MBJournalist and author David Satter joins Robert Amsterdam at the studio in Washington DC to discuss Russia, the targeted assassination attempt against ex-spy Sergei Skripal in the UK, and broader issues of the Kremlin's use of political violence.