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Departures with Robert Amsterdam

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    Africa's unique ideological history and its impact on unity
    In our latest episode we speak with the author and academic Frank Gerits, whose most recent work explores the history of the intense ideological battle which took place in the 1950s and 1960s for Afri...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    28:13
    How race and identity became sacred taboos
    Following an early Spring hiatus, we're pleased to bring the Departures podcast back with a very special guest, the Canadian author and Adjunct Fellow at the Manhattan Institute Eric Kaufmann. Eric jo...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    31:59
    A discussion on religious freedom with Robert Destro
    Issues of religious freedom, in theory, should not be controversial or disputed - there is a general consensus among public opinion that all peoples should have the right to worship according to their...
    • 3
    • 1 year ago
    29:12
    Identities, Rivalries, and Schisms in the modern Middle East
    The Muslim world, despite its sprawling and complex history, is largely understood by outsiders to fall within the Shia or Sunni category, or among the conflict between. This is not just misleading, b...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    24:50
    Why Sanctions Often Backfire
    The imposition of economic sanctions has become Washington's preferred method of expressing disapproval over the conduct of other states. But how effective are sanctions in changing behavior or achiev...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    24:20
    Our relationship with the past is in big trouble
    There's an old Soviet joke that goes something like "the future is certain; it's the past that is unpredictable" which continues to have an eerie resonance today, as revisionism seems to be on a const...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    27:12
    The ignominious track record of Africa's foreign saviors
    Throughtout the post-colonial period in Africa, there has been no shortage of economists, non-governmental organizations, diplomats, and aid organizations flying in from the United States and Western ...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    31:17
    Reconsidering the Western Response to China's Global Rise
    A popular meme in Kenya goes something like this: everytime China visits, we get a hospital. When the US visits, we get a lecture.  That's of course not an accurate picture of the competition between ...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    29:07
    Kant, Borges, Heisenberg and the Nature of Observation and Knowledge
    What does it mean to perceive reality? How do art, science, and philosophy converge in shaping our understanding of the world? In this episode of Departures with Robert Amsterdam, we sit down with Wil...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    28:51
    How the Ukraine war has altered the direction of globalization
    As this coming February will mark the third anniversary of Russia's invasion and occupation of Eastern Ukraine, there is already a clear and tangible impact upon the geopolitical challenges faced by t...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    29:14
    A pivotal election brings uncertainty to Japan
    In a week in which most eyes are on the US election, there are other meaningful elections which also merit close examination. On October 27 Japanese voters expressed their pent-up frustration with the...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    26:59
    Fears, miscalculations, and mistakes which led to the war in Ukraine
    As the war in Ukraine grinds into yet another brutal winter, narratives are shifting in Western capitals regarding the nature of the conflict, its goals, and the longer term meaning of the war in term...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    27:00
    The great rebalancing of the West
    Perhaps one of the most meaningful facts that illustrates the sweeping changes taking place in global affairs is the following: In 1950, nearly one in three people in the world lived in a Western coun...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    26:55
    How the Congolese view their relationship to the global big tech supply chain
    The modern world's bottomless demand for precious metals originating in the mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo is covered daily in the news, from the supply chains underpinning the most common ...
    • 1
    • 1 year ago
    27:43
    Russia's burning ambition for global power
    Following the end of World War II, Josef Stalin and Russia's leadership had a certain vision of the postwar order, one which ended up being quite different from reality. They had expected to maintain ...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    27:45
    The beginning of the end of the old Ottoman world order
    In the early 19th century, the Ottoman empire was facing rebellion, decline, and increasing competition for influence with Europe. The leadership in Istanbul implemented desperate plans to preserve th...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    28:33
    Ukraine and its challenges to the international system
    There is a certain trend of narratives regarding the Russia's invasion of Ukraine that are understood as gospel in the West. And when analysts or academics stray outside those narrative lines, they ar...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    30:14
    When nothing is important, everything is at risk
    The tremendous velocity with which modernity and technology has encroached on our social lives is underappreciated, shaping our understanding not only of critical events but also ourselves, as the wor...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    28:52
    A Bold New Era for Japan
    On this week's episode of Departures with Robert Amsterdam we're pleased to invite our friend and colleague of many years Jakob Edberg, the co-founder of The GR Company, a government relations consult...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    28:26
    The devastating human toll of Russia's war in Ukraine
    Among the slew of books that have come out recently on the war in Ukraine, there are few which take as broad a scope of the human experience of the soldiers, victims, and communities living on the fro...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    31:28
    Vienna and the birth of the knowledge economy
    From the late-nineteenth century until the mid-1930s, Vienna was Europe's undisputed powerhouse of ideas. But along with the exhilirating achievements of Freud, Wittgenstein, Mahler, and Klimt, there ...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    26:58
    How the Ukrainian Left Views the War
    The tremendous velocity of history that Ukraine has experienced since independence to the Maidan revolution to the catastrophic war brought on by Russia's aggression often tends to be sold and told in...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    31:42
    The Future of Taiwan's Silicon Shield
    It was just three years ago when the Economist magazine ran a cover story on Taiwan, describing it as "the most dangerous place in the world." With intensifying competition with China and deterioratin...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    28:13
    Understanding the Ukraine War through the Lens of Greek Tragedy
    As the war in Ukraine rages on into its second year, there remains little consensus or understanding of how the conflict could be resolved outside of military outcomes, and a persisting misunderstandi...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    30:22
    You can't understand the Soviet system without understanding the daily lives of its people
    From the Russian Revolution of 1917 to the chaotic disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, there is a dazzling and disorienting array of histories. While many books detail the lives and politics o...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    36:06
    The enduring legacy of the Great Arab Revolt
    There is a strong argument to be made that the root of Palestinian identity can be traced back to the 1936-1939 Great Revolt, which united rival families and communities, melded urban with rural, and ...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    31:23
    When China gave up on its peaceful rise
    Formulated by PRC think tanks in the mid-1990s, China's official slogan of the "peaceful rise" sought to calm Western fears regarding its blossoming economic, military, and political power as the nati...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    28:08
    The more a Canadian academic learned about China, the less the West wanted to hear
    As 2023 draws to a close, it has become increasingly clear that there are profound misunderstandings and misapprehensions running amok in Western media narratives regarding the pecularities of the cur...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    27:28
    How a decade of street protests changed the world
    In June 2013, the journalist Vincent Bevins found himself covering a mass street protest in São Paulo, originally sparked by a rise in bus fares. As the tear canisters rained town and violent clashes ...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    28:45
    The US is trying to get the Cold War band back together
    Following the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas terrorists, President Joe Biden began to refer to America's support for the Israeli offensive into Gaza as one that was equally aligned with US suppo...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    32:54
    The Economic Aims of Russia's Invasion of Ukraine
    As Russia's conflict with Ukraine grinds deep into year 2, there are signals of impatience and exhaustion among the country's key supporters in the United States and Europe, and increasing chatter abo...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    31:00
    An assassination, a coup, and thwarted independence in Congo, 1960
    The early period of the Cold War in Africa includes some of the most shocking episodes of foreign intervention by the US Central Intelligence Agency, to the point that many of these histories would se...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    29:11
    What does the post-neoliberal world order look like?
    In an increasingly complex and fractured international system, the norms and expectations of how nations and markets interact is changing from one era into the next before our very eyes.  That is the ...
    • 0
    • 2 years ago
    29:59
    Crisis at the Ukrainian Orthodox Church
    This week we're doing something different at Departures - Robert Amsterdam surrenders the host chair and joins as the interviewee to discuss Amsterdam & Partners LLP engagement on behalf of the Ukrain...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    15:50
    A dispatch from Israel
    In the weeks following the October 7 Hamas terror attacks against Israel, Departures with Robert Amsterdam welcomes special guest Prof. Ron Robin, the President of the University of Haifa in Israel, w...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    37:54
    What We Know 50 Years after the Yom Kippur War
    In October of 1973, Israel's existence as an independent state was shaken to its core when Egyptian and Syrian forces crossed into the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights, triggering a conflict of spraw...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    29:16
    The weaponization of memory and nostalgia in Russia
    As Russia's catastrophic war in Ukraine lurches its way toward another winter, an interesting debate is emerging regarding some of the fundamental ideas of Russian nationalism which has underpinned Vl...
    • 1
    • 2 years ago
    27:34
    The fragile ties that bind Eastern Europe
    Eastern Europe, from the northernmost reaches of of the Baltics and down to the Balkan statelets strung along the Adriadic Sea, is one of the most perplexing, conflicted, and interesting regions of th...
    • 1
    • 3 years ago
    27:35
    The legal wasteland of UN sanctions
    In the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, a sweeping transition took place across the international counter-terrorism space. Instead of responding to threats with law enforcement, numerous multilateral ...
    • 1
    • 3 years ago
    32:58
    The fallacy of empires
    For more than one thousand years, the Roman Empire ruled over a vast territory that was  unprecedented in both scope and scale. When it finally did fall under pressure from barbarian invasions and int...
    • 1
    • 3 years ago
    27:25
    Inside the mind of George F. Kennan
    George F. Kennan is arguably the most important American diplomat of the modern era, whose "long telegram" and strategy of containment shaped the Cold War and postwar period. And yet, at critical mome...
    • 1
    • 3 years ago
    25:36
    Is China challenging the world order or contributing to its stability?
    As China and the U.S. increasingly compete for power in key areas of U.S. influence across the Middle East and African continent, competition has grown in linear succession, and is increasingly advers...
    • 0
    • 3 years ago
    30:46
    MAGA Stands for 'Make Attorneys Get Attorneys'
    There is no historical precedent for a former US president who is facing a more complicated web of both civil and criminal liabilities than Donald Trump, let alone for a former president who again int...
    • 1
    • 3 years ago
    36:21
    Russia's fragile but important presence in Africa
    Amid a slew of headlines highlighting Vladimir Putin's efforts to expand Russia's footprint in Africa since the beginning of the Ukraine war, a certain narrative is emerging regarding Moscow's aims, t...
    • 1
    • 3 years ago
    33:05
    The brazen deceptions of wartime collaborators
    It takes a certain kind of person to become a collaborator for Axis powers during World War II - a level of self-delusion and survival instinct that is off the charts. In Ian Buruma's latest book, "Th...
    • 1
    • 3 years ago
    26:54
    A toolkit for defeating dictatorships
    Democracy, in terms of its branding, has had a fairly rough decade. Numerous authors we have had on this podcast have highlighted and explained its global decline, discussed the expansion of nationali...
    • 1
    • 3 years ago
    31:29
    The Murderous Ideology of Franco's Spain
    The story of the rise of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco in 1936 is often overshadowed by that of the country's civil war and its entanglement across the other major developments in Europe at the ti...
    • 1
    • 3 years ago
    23:04
    Surviving Putin
    Marina Litvinenko has seen a lot in her life. In 2006, her husband, the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, was assassinated by radioactive poisoning by agents of the Russian government. Her unre...
    • 1
    • 3 years ago
    24:45
    Italy's indulgent nostalgia for Mussolini
    The period during which 'Il Duce' Benito Mussolini ruled Italy as prime minister from 1922 to 1943 remains as confusing and contested today as it did during the disastrous postwar years, due mainly to...
    • 1
    • 3 years ago
    26:54
    Nobody wants a war fought over the South China Sea
    It may just be a smattering of insignificant rocks and reefs along the Nine-dash line between the Philippines and China, but in recent years this area has become the focus of the world's most complex ...
    • 1
    • 3 years ago
    24:23
    English