Departures with Robert Amsterdam

For the past 70 years, the United States has toyed with interventionism in the Middle East on numerous occasions, from Iran to Afghanistan (twice), Iraq, Egypt, Libya, and Syria, among others. And yet, despite the consistently disastrous consequences of these efforts, the same policies continue to attract support, as US decision-makers consistently underestimate the costs and fail to learn the lessons of the past.

Dr. Philip H. Gordon, a former diplomat and a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, joins the podcast this week to discuss his excellent new book, "Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East."

Although one can sympathize with those suffering under a brutal, tyrannical regime engaged in atrocities, there seems to be a common failure to grasp that when you remove a regime, a security vacuum is opened up where chaos thrives, which is very hard to fill.

"The costs are almost always much higher than anticipated, and there are always many unintended consequences. And that's the history I think we need to keep in mind as we think about it today," Dr. Gordon says. "This is not history for history's sake. This is an active agenda item [as the Trump administration has discussed pursuing regime change in Iran]. Before we do that, we should really think about how we've done it in the past, why we've done it in the past and how it worked out. So maybe we can avoid some of those mistakes in the future."

Instead, Dr. Gordon argues, diplomacy, deterrence, and engagement are much more effective tools to achieve positive outcomes for US interests in the regime. Sanctions, he says, have a limited use in US foreign policy only for specific purposes - however that's often not how we see them used. In the case of the Iran nuclear deal, sanctions were effective because they were broadly implemented internationally and made the negotiation possible. When the goal of sanctions is regime change, Gordon says, it never works. Massive sanctions for decades on Cuba, North Korea, without a specific goal short of regime change, it has been a total failure.

"What I'm opposed to when it comes to sanctions is this fantasy that if you just squeeze hard enough, the regime will actually go away. Most of these regimes, especially the most brutal ones, are willing to see the population suffer infinitely before they're willing to turn over power to someone else," Gordon says.

Having gone through the tumultuous experience of this past election in the United States, with provocative propaganda, disinformation, fake news, and pervasive and extreme distrust, many feel like we're experiencing an unprecedented moment. But arguably, we've been here before.

This week we are joined by Prof. Heidi Tworek, author of "News from Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900–1945," for a fascinating conversation about the very early days of information warfare, back when when the great powers competed to control and expand their empires through the support of media.

Tworek explains how her years of archival research revealed a concerted effort taking place over the course of 50 years as Germany struggled to gain control over global communications - and nearly succeeded.

Her book News from Germany is not a story about Germany alone. It reveals how news became a form of international power and how communications changed the course of history.

President-elect Joe Biden has won the 2020 US Presidential elections, but outgoing President Donald Trump is continuing with a show of defiance.

Right from the heart of Philadelphia where the final votes are being counted, we are joined by constitutional and international law expert, Prof. William Burke White, who shares his view of what's been happening throughout the long process of the election count, the unexpectedly strong performance of downticket Republican candidates, and President Donald Trump's limited legal remedies to contest the outcome of the election.

Up until his recent resignation due to health concerns, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe cast a long shadow as one of the most remarkable global statesman, shaping the country's alliances and leadership position in an extremely difficult and threatening region of the world.

Journalist and author Tobias Harris, author of "The Iconoclast: Shinzo Abe and the New Japan," joins the Departures podcast to discuss the complexities of the legacy he leaves behind, and the challenges his successor Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga will face.

Harris argues that one aspect of Abe's legacy will be his transcendence of partisan factions, as the coalitional nature of the Liberal Democratic Party allowed the organization to internally battle over policy positions and cabinet positions as opposed to the Prime Minister dictating policy to his party. And yet, despite the cross-factional consensus Abe was able to develop and the nationalist pursuits of great power status and the reforms of Abenomics, "his legacy is one of failure, at least by his own terms," says Harris.

On Wednesday, October 28, 2020 the Republic of Tanzania held presidential elections. Though many feared that it would be neither free nor fair, what came to pass was much worse than could have been imagined.

Robert Amsterdam, the host of this podcast, acts as an international attorney for the main opposition candidate in this election, Tundu Lissu, so consider that a disclaimer that we are not objective.

We did however seek out an expert voice to talk about what is happening in Tanzania and why. Dan Paget, a professor at the University of Aberdeen and the author of numerous academic articles on President John Magufuli and the politics of Tanzania.

"My reaction is one of shock, whether we predicted it or not," says Paget in the interview with Amsterdam. "It's a 'pinch yourself moment' when an election appears to be rigged on this scale and rigged with such audacity, rigged in some ways so blatantly, and in many cases so amateurly, while on top of that, while the election results are still being counted."

"The day-to-day oppression and harassment of the opposition has been a constant feature of Tanzania politics, but never on this scale, not since 1995," says Paget. "So I think that there has been a sea change in the degree of authoritarianism."

During the podcast interview, Paget highlights the view that Magufuli is seeking to make opposition to the state party "inconceivable." Why else would the government move to decapitate the most well known opposition leaders in their own strongholds with so little credibility of doing so?

From 1976-1983, a brutal military dictatorship disappeared some 30,000 citizens and arrested and tortured scores more in Argentina. As a young lawyer at the time known for representing dissidents and political prisoners, Juan Méndez himself was arrested and subjected to torture.

The story of his career, rising to become the Special Rapporteur on Torture to the United Nations, Special Advisor to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and also Co-Chair of the International Bar Association Human Rights Institute, is a remarkable example of personal experience translating into powerful global advocacy.

Méndez joins the Departures podcast this week along with Alfredo Forti, a member of Amsterdam & Partners LLP, for a discussion on what it was like to live through the dirty war, some of the key cases they've worked on, and the Istanbul Protocol - a new set of proposed guidelines for documenting torture.

A professor of Human Rights Law in residence at the American University – Washington College of Law, Méndez is the author (with Marjory Wentworth) of "Taking A Stand: The Evolution of Human Rights."

Korea is a deeply unique, complex, and interesting place in the world. Upended by repeated waves of war and occupation throughout its history, the modern nation has propulsively launched itself in the stratosphere culturally and economically and grown perhaps faster than any other. This presents undeniable benefits and prosperity, but also a number of accompanying social discontents, from racism to identity fissures to pervasive mental health issues.

Theodore Jun Yoo, an associate professor in the Department of Korean Language and Literature at Yonsei University in Seoul, joins the podcast this week to discuss his very interesting new book, "The Koreas: The Birth of Two Nations Divided."

Jun's book presents a "demythologized history" of the North Korea-South Korea split, with a focus on a number of deeply compelling personal stories and interviews with subjects supported by broad multidisciplinary empirical research.

Why is it that a country that has been so incredibly successful, prosperous, and dynamic should continue to be haunted by such complex social issues? Jun's own family story is just one beginning to a series of interesting ideas exploring the complexity of Korean identity and the impact of "compressed modernity."

We often defer to superlatives when describing our current political age, but the truth is that in many respects, we have been here before.

In the summer of 1901, the tycoon JP Morgan was assembling a merger that would give him a monopoly position over America's railroads. His strong supporter in the White House, President William McKinley, was then suddenly assassinating, bringing a less hospitable interloper into power, President Theodore Roosevelt.

In Susan Berfield's new book, "The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism," the reader is brought into close contact with the characters, personalities, and ambitions which would come to define the role of money and raw financial power in US politics.

Speaking with Amsterdam on the podcast, Berfield says she was drawn to the question during this period that is still relevant today - how do we hold business to account and create a version of capitalism that is fairer and more equal?

The story of Roosevelt's first years in power as told by Berfield, coming into direct conflict with one of the world's most powerful business figures, is given an interesting and detailed treatment, and the results sometimes conflict with some of the portrayals we have become accustomed to.

For more than 20 years, Mike Masnick has been writing prolifically on the intersection of technology, freedom of speech, IP law, and politics at the award-winning blog Techdirt, helping to elevate awareness of how these crucial issues are impacting society.

Joining the podcast with Robert Amsterdam today, Masnick discusses the recent drama around the Trump administration's peculiar intervention against the popular Chinese-created video app, TikTok, and what this means for the future free and open internet and innovation in Silicon Valley.

Following last month's executive order to effectively "ban" TikTok from US users (which is now held up in appeals), a number of potential buyers have come forward, interestingly some with close financial ties to the president's re-election campaign.

Masnick is not buying the argument that TikTok represents a unique national security threat to the United States, at least not a threat any different from the common data brokers collecting information from a wide variety of apps.

"There are lots of apps that collect too much data, and there's no evidence that they are doing anything particularly nefarious with it," says Masnick. "If there are concerns about that data and China getting access to it, there are lots of ways that they could get access - for example by just walking up to one of many, often American owned, data brokerage firms and laying down a credit card and pretty much obtaining access to that same data."

Masnick and Amsterdam also discuss the Trump administration's recent interest in repealing Section 230, the cornerstone legal framework that allows for free expression online, as well as the lobbying power of the copyright industry, state-sponsored efforts to spur innovation, and what policies and practices by the big social media companies could have an impact on the upcoming election.

Only a few years after the Arab Spring failed to convert Middle Eastern dictatorships into democracies (with the exception of Tunisia), many scholars and analysts stopped talking about it entirely, as if to pretend these events never took place. Harvard law professor and constitutional scholar Noah Feldman set out to change that with his latest book, "The Arab Winter: A Tragedy."

"Why not try to think through what was good about it, what went wrong in its aftermath, and try to draw some lessons before we just end up in world where it's as though there just never was an Arab Spring," Feldman says.

In his analysis of why for many states democracy failed to take root following these massive public uprisings and cries for self-determination, Feldman argues that most were unprepared for the management of deep divisions in the society.

"The biggest challenges in the aftermath of a democratic transition are how to manage deep social division," Feldman says. "In Egypt, all of the parties were looking for outside actors, to Saudi Arabia, to the United States, and ultimately, the army, having allowed a takeover of a democratic government, changed its mind, and with the collusion of the public, got rid of the democratic government which had been elected."

Amsterdam and Feldman also take the opportunity to discuss the recent death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the politically fraught prospects for the Republican nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett with just weeks to go before the elections.