Departures with Robert Amsterdam

By Amsterdam & Partners LLP

What's Departures with Robert Amsterdam about?

International 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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Departures with Robert Amsterdam episodes:

04.19.2024
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 neatly packaged narratives to the West - a...
04.08.2024
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 deteriorating global security following Russia's invasion of Ukraine,...
03.11.2024
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 misunderstanding on behalf of the West regarding Ukraine's own...
02.02.2024
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 of Soviet leaders, Karl Schlögel invites us...
01.25.2024
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 joined rich and poor together in...
01.16.2024
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 nation resumed an outsized role in global affairs. However the...
12.28.2023
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 current state in China. That's precisely why there should be a...
12.20.2023
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 with police began, the protesters began...
12.14.2023
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 support for the war in Ukraine. This...
12.01.2023
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 about "stalemate" and pushing Kyiv to the negotiating table....
11.09.2023
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 seem a bit too farfetched for...
11.02.2023
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 main focus of inquiry for Gary Gerstle,...
10.24.2023
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 Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is facing an existential threat...
10.22.2023
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, who provides an assessment and analysis of what the...
10.11.2023
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 sprawling geopolitical scale. This week, in October of...
09.06.2023
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 Vladimir Putin's casus belli, often including specifically misleading characterizations of history...
08.23.2023
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 the world which still today remains the subject...
08.04.2023
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 bodies instead respond with preemptive actions based on uncertain information - lists...
07.17.2023
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 internal political divisions (among many other factors),...
06.29.2023
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 moments later in his career, he was cast...
06.09.2023
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 adversarial. Often cynical of Chinese involvement and intentions, the...
06.02.2023
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 intends to run in the upcoming...
05.26.2023
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, tactics, and results in this crucial but often neglected region....
05.17.2023
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, "The Collaborators," he paints...
04.24.2023
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 nationalist movements which have eaten away at rule of...
04.13.2023
Zelensky: From TV president to real president
Before becoming one of the world's most recognizable heads of state, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was a comic actor and entertainer, whose most famous show, "Servant of the People," imagined him in a role he would one day, unbelievably, come...
03.31.2023
The evolving history of the Holocaust
The gradual breakdown of the prevailing geopolitical order has brought to the fore numerous far right parties and politicians across Western democracy, bringing with them some very old (and very dangerous) tropes of anti-Semitism. In light of these frightening trends,...
03.22.2023
The legal cases that birthed the civil rights movement
The end of slavery in the United States was an arduously complex process, which beyond simply the issues surrounding cultural and social norms, not to mention the conflicts remaining at the end of the Civil War, the dismantling of established...
03.17.2023
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 time. But Spanish fascism was also...
03.09.2023
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 unrelenting quest for justice and answers has led through...
03.03.2023
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 a series of myths about the...
02.23.2023
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 and dangerous maritime dispute. China's...
02.09.2023
Manipulating Information and faking democracy
In the age of information and with growing calls around the world for democracy, Vladimir Putin, Lee Kuan Yew and Alberto Fujimori are redefining what it means to be a dictator in the 21st century. Through the manipulation of information,...
01.30.2023
Playing in the grey in the shadow economy
In international finance, the difference between what is legal and normal and what is criminal and corrupt is often unclear, a disparity made worse by an overlapping series of laws and regulations which in some cases can put U.S. competition...
01.20.2023
Inside the Kremlin Groupthink that led Russia into a disastrous war
As we approach the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a number of journalists and authors have published highly detailed chronicles from the battlefield, stories of resilience and heroism of the Ukrainian resistance, and geopolitical analyses across the spectrum....
01.12.2023
Drinking, sex, and journalism on the cusp of WWII
The role of foreign correspondents, especially during times of war, can be extraordinarily important not only in shaping public perceptions and strategic decisionmaking at the highest level, but also in informing on revolutionary shifts in social norms, as these reporters...
12.26.2022
Endgame for Vladimir Putin?
After almost 23 years in power, Russian President Vladimir Putin currently appears more weakened and vulnerable than during any other period of his presidency, thanks in large part to his disastrous decision to invade Ukraine. On this week's Departures, we...
12.14.2022
There is nothing inevitable about the war in Ukraine
When we talk about the gig economy, we usually are referring to rideshare drivers, errand runners, and all sorts of service industry freelancers. But we rarely think about the freelancers and non-state actors which take part in wars and armed...
12.09.2022
China's ambitious future in Central Asia
Though we often view China's increasingly activist foreign policy in its trade wars, territorial disputes, and frequent collisions with Western states, less attention is paid to its gradual and quiet expansion of influence in the 'Stans of Central Asia. But...
11.28.2022
In China's political history, numbers don't always add up
China's recent political history has taken place at breakneck speed. A historic economic transformation, the consolidation of centralized power not seen since Mao, and the eager but then later truculent participation in the global economy. How do we measure this...
11.22.2022
Mafias matter, especially with state formation
When we think of networks of organized crime, we tend to place them in their own category, occupying an "underworld" of its own rules separate from the norms and laws that guide our states operate in societies. In his new...
11.18.2022
Departures LIVE on Russia, Ukraine, and the future of the rules-based order
To celebrate the 150th episode of Departures, we held a live recording with a terrific group of invited guests in London. We're grateful to John Lough, a former NATO officer, a Senior Vice President at the consultancy Highgate, and the...
11.16.2022
How supply chain logistics are inseparable from daily life in Central Africa
Throughout the global supply chain, there are chokepoints where states and stakeholders exploit an opportunity to extract rents - and this includes nearby the origin of critical minerals, diamonds, and other natural resources in relatively ungoverned areas of Africa such...
11.09.2022
Not a "Red Wave," but a Ripple
Every day in the media we are told that the United States is irreparably polarized. That lines have been drawn, political opinions have been weaponized into tribal identities, and that apart from an ever-slimming section of undecideds, we are locked...
11.07.2022
Critical minerals and conflict in the DRC
With the global economy going through an unprecedented energy transition away from fossil fuels, demand is exploding for critical minerals essential for batteries and electrification, such as copper, cobalt, lithium, and rare earths. Accompanying this demand is a new geopolitical...
10.29.2022
Xi's the one
As Xi Jinping concludes the 20th Party Congress and becomes the first Chinese leader to secure a third term, there is arguably no one in a position quite so powerful and influential in global politics. But who is Xi Jinping...
10.18.2022
How we misunderstood China before Xi
Is Xi Jinping the most powerful political figure in the world? Or are his efforts to secure tighter control at home and project influence abroad more a sign of underlying weakness? As Xi sails toward an unprecedented third term at...
10.13.2022
The reactive sequence of authoritarian regimes
Some autocracies come and go, but others have a seemingly infinite shelf-life, showing a structural resiliency to any efforts at reform or democratic change that is strong, durable, and long lasting. More than 20 years ago, the rock star political...
10.06.2022
US domestic instability is undermining its global influence
The sharpening polarization taking place in the United States over the past several election cycles has gradually calcified the nation's institutions into obstructionist forces which are impeding Washington's ability to project its influence abroad. Now, many are asking, is the...
09.29.2022
Colonialism does not define Africa
In recent years, the theme of decolonization has become a thriving industry. It dominates academia, it frames historical narratives, and makes its way into the deepest corners politics and culture to the point that it is inescapable. But what has...

What's Departures with Robert Amsterdam about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Departures with Robert Amsterdam episodes:

How the Ukrainian Left Views the War

The Future of Taiwan's Silicon Shield

Understanding the Ukraine War through the Lens of Greek Tragedy

You can't understand the Soviet system without understanding the daily lives of its people

The enduring legacy of the Great Arab Revolt

When China gave up on its peaceful rise

The more a Canadian academic learned about China, the less the West wanted to hear

How a decade of street protests changed the world

The US is trying to get the Cold War band back together

The Economic Aims of Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

An assassination, a coup, and thwarted independence in Congo, 1960

What does the post-neoliberal world order look like?

Crisis at the Ukrainian Orthodox Church

A dispatch from Israel

What We Know 50 Years after the Yom Kippur War

The weaponization of memory and nostalgia in Russia

The fragile ties that bind Eastern Europe

The legal wasteland of UN sanctions

The fallacy of empires

Inside the mind of George F. Kennan

Is China challenging the world order or contributing to its stability?

MAGA Stands for 'Make Attorneys Get Attorneys'

Russia's fragile but important presence in Africa

The brazen deceptions of wartime collaborators

A toolkit for defeating dictatorships

Zelensky: From TV president to real president

The evolving history of the Holocaust

The legal cases that birthed the civil rights movement

The Murderous Ideology of Franco's Spain

Surviving Putin

Italy's indulgent nostalgia for Mussolini

Nobody wants a war fought over the South China Sea

Manipulating Information and faking democracy

Playing in the grey in the shadow economy

Inside the Kremlin Groupthink that led Russia into a disastrous war

Drinking, sex, and journalism on the cusp of WWII

Endgame for Vladimir Putin?

There is nothing inevitable about the war in Ukraine

China's ambitious future in Central Asia

In China's political history, numbers don't always add up

Mafias matter, especially with state formation

Departures LIVE on Russia, Ukraine, and the future of the rules-based order

How supply chain logistics are inseparable from daily life in Central Africa

Not a "Red Wave," but a Ripple

Critical minerals and conflict in the DRC

Xi's the one

How we misunderstood China before Xi

The reactive sequence of authoritarian regimes

US domestic instability is undermining its global influence

Colonialism does not define Africa