Departures with Robert Amsterdam

This week we are pleased to be joined by Kurt Andersen, a polymath Peabody-award winning journalist, novelist, and radio host to talk about his latest book, "Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America."

But before we get into the prerecord discussion of the book, we couldn't resist bringing Kurt back on the show for an update following one of the wildest weekends in American politics, as President Donald Trump was hospitalized for his COVID-19 infection and all the bizarre behavior that has ensued.

Asked by host Robert Amsterdam what he makes of this bewildering but not unexpected turn of events, Andersen compares the experience to watching a television series, as Americans are left to wonder why the writers are trying to cram too much incident not just into the last episode, but the last 30 minutes.

Judging by the video of the maskless ceremony in the Rose Garden last week, Andersen argues that Republican elites had "convinced themselves that the fantasy they were purveying, that this isn't really a problem, was true."

Andersen's book "Evil Geniuses" spans a much broader section of recent American political history well before the election of Donald Trump, focusing on the early 1970s, highlighting many events and trends that made it possible to arrive to our current moment. Much of the book focuses on the willing role played by later Democratic administrations of advancing and consolidating a version of liberal economic policy that would later decimate social equality in the country, right at the same moment that the country began to stagnate culturally, with an emphasis on deepening nostalgia for decades past.

Andersen discusses with Amsterdam why he chose to focus on this particular inflection point, when America stopped becoming more progressive and equal, and turned toward rolling back the New Deal consensus and put in place a different system that prioritized "market-based solutions" for all social problems.

Like no other president before him, Donald Trump and his inner circle have sought to monetize the White House - but has it been a good business?

Dan Alexander, a journalist at Forbes and the author of the new book, "White House Inc.: How Donald Trump Turned the Presidency Into a Business," joins the podcast to discuss in detail the assets and revenues of the Trump empire, and how what's been presented in the New York Times' reporting on his tax returns may not be the complete picture.

Shortly before we recorded the episode, the bombshell news broke that President Trump had tested positive for COVID-19. Alexander offers his analysis on how he believes that will impact the election.

FDR and Churchill. Kennedy and Macmillan. Reagan and Thatcher. Bush and Blair. Trump and Johnson.

The so-called "special relationship" enjoyed between the United States and the United Kingdom in the past 75 years since the end of World War II, often guided by the personalities of the respective individual leaders, has come to define so much of what we understand about the liberal world order. And yet today we now find a US and UK who are turning their backs on that order with an uncertain future ahead.

Ian Buruma joins Robert Amsterdam on the podcast this week to discuss his new book, "The Churchill Complex: The Curse of Being Special, from Winston and FDR to Trump and Brexit."

Speaking on the podcast, Buruma says that his book presents a history that challenges many of the myths of Churchill as a wartime hero and likewise Chamberlain as a failed symbol of appeasement.

"Out of the glory of winning the war, with of course the vital help of the Soviet Union, the British and the Americans got rather high on the idea of using military force to spread freedom and democracy all over the world, and Winston Churchill became the model for a lot of US presidents to follow," Buruma says.

This unfortunate tendency has led to a lot of foolish wars, perhaps most notably the ill-fated adventure into Iraq under Bush-Blair, which in turn has brought the special relationship to the breaking point.

Buruma and Amsterdam explore the questions of how we got here and what comes next.

There are few other countries in history with Russia's record of foreign intrigue. High-level assassinations of prominent dissidents, including the nuclear poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London, Sergei Skripal in Salisburg, the most recent poisoning of Alexei Navalny presumably in Siberia followed by his recovery in Germany, have come to shape global perceptions of Russia - perhaps based in fear, but also characterized by instability.

Andrei Soldatov, one of Russia's most revered and deeply sourced journalists specializing in the intelligence services, joins Robert Amsterdam on the podcast this week to discuss his latest book co-authored with Irina Borogan, "The Compatriots: The Brutal and Chaotic History of Russia's Exiles, Émigrés, and Agents Abroad."

Soldatov argues with Amsterdam that the choice of poisons such as Novichok, a highly controlled substance, to carry out these attempted assassinations is not accidental, and is instead actually quite strategic.

"It's actually very smart. It's only about the message, and only partly about removing a troublemaker. It's about how to make it absolutely clear to a very big crowd that now the rules are changing," Soldatov says. "Poisoning means that the tragedy is lasting, sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks. And not only is the target suffering, but people around him or her are also suffering. It sends a very powerful message."

Soldatov also relates an amusing story of recording a mockumentary with the US television host Stephen Colbert, when they visit room 1101 of the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Moscow, the location cited in the Steele Dossier on potential kompromat held against Donald Trump. What they accidentally find is quite interesting.

For many years now, China and Japan have not enjoyed very good relations. In fact, highly volatile and emotional issues of territory, history, and identity have escalated dangerously. But are these historical issues largely a political construction, and do in fact the two nations have more in common in terms of interests and history than they are able to see?

Professor of International Relations Barry Buzan joins the podcast this week to discuss his fascinating new book coauthored with Evelyn Goh titled: "Rethinking Sino-Japanese Alienation: History Problems and Historical Opportunities."

Dr. Buzan argues that China and Japan exhibit foreign policy behavior that prioritizes domestic politics, with little regard for the outside countries.

"Most countries are 'autistic' in their foreign policy behavior, in the sense that their behavior is much more internally driven than externally driven, think of Brexit in Britain or what's going on in the US at the moment," Dr. Buzan says. "But in Japan and China, it is pretty extreme. These countries are not taking each other into account as an audience. Quite a bit of the Chinese rhetoric practically demands an unconditional surrender of identity from Japan, they don't give the Japanese the chance to have a self-respecting identity or history that they can embrace with honor."

Dr. Buzan argues that there are actually very strong historical similarities between China's rise since the 1970s and Japan's pre-war empire - there's just 100 years in between them, and the many small differences, which are more and more intensely felt, have made it impossible for the two countries to come to terms with each other.

Amsterdam and Buzan further discuss what Sino-Japanese relations may mean as the US role in the region continues to deteriorate, and how Japan may find itself being placed in an unenviable position between Washington and Beijing unless they can overcome some of these longstanding historical problems and make a breakthrough.

The deepening economic inequality being experienced in the United States has brought with it considerable cultural and political problems, the most interesting being the popularity of the Republican Party among lower income groups, despite a policy agenda that is decidedly hostile to their own economic interests.

The answer, argue political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson in their new book "Let Them Eat Tweets," resides in the plutocrats using more and more aggressive instrumentalization of resentment and racism to push through their unpopular platform.

Hacker and Pierson join Robert Amsterdam on the podcast to discuss the main arguments of the book and how the United States has arrived to this dangerous precipice, with the ominous approach of the 2020 presidential elections this fall.

Over the past number of years, Washington has come to regard strategic competition with China through a rather narrow lens of trade, national security, and diplomacy, while paying much less attention to Beijing's ambitions to increase its influence across the Eurasian basin, from Pakistan to Kazakhstan and Iran.

Daniel Markey, a professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and a South Asia expert who previously worked at the Council on Foreign Relations and the US Department of State, is the author of the new book "China's Western Horizon: Beijing and the New Geopolitics of Eurasia."

In this conversation with Robert Amsterdam about his book, Markey explains that China has become more and more aggressive in its campaign for influence in this part of the world, while Washington has yet to adapt to the new reality.

Markey pays specific attention to how the Chinese are received in these countries - and it is not always with open arms.

"The Chinese are not loved in Iran by the public, and increasingly, they are seen in even more skeptical terms as the Iranian regime has cozied up to the Chinese state," Markey says. "Technology, surveillance, political repression - these are all things the Chinese are very capable of doing and sell to Iran," which creates a "cleavage" between Iranian elites and the public in terms of how they regard China.

We often discuss Russia's actions during the 2016 US election as though it were something "unprecedented." But in fact, there is a long established history of Russia, the Soviet Union before it, and the United States engaging in widespread efforts to interfere in elections around the world. The more important question is what to do about it.

David Shimer, a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center, joins the podcast to discuss this question and more from his latest book, "Rigged: America, Russia, and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference."

Speaking with host Robert Amsterdam, Shimer argues that we need to restore the historical perspective on covert election interference in order to formulate an effective response - to understand that no, this is not anything new, but that there are clear actions that can be taken. Shimer discusses the important distinction between Russia's intentions to covertly influence US public opinion vs. attempts to physically change or alter ballots and voting systems infrastructure. The crucial failure of the Barack Obama administration was to be overly concerned about the latter risk, and to fail to act preventively to deter the former, he argues.

While we have seen many examples around the world of political leaders openly seeking Washington's or Moscow's support during an election, it is more rare for a US leader to invite that interference as then-candidate and current President Trump has done.

"Donald Trump has openly solicited foreign help, he also has been very reluctant to confront Russia over its interference in our elections, he has at times sided with the assessment of Vladimir Putin over that of our own intelligence service and that matters, because what that signals to Russia is that they can push farther without experiencing any consequences," Shimer says.

"If you are Russia right now, you do have to make a calculation about where to interfere, how to interfere, but you know for sure that America is already a mess in terms of its actual societal functioning. So it's not like we will have a unified response if Russia does push forward, and Russia also knows that the president has been deferential to Russia's president for the last four years, which is a recipe for a pretty bad outcome for America's perspective, but it remains to be seen just how far Russia will choose to go in subverting this election."

The proliferation of nuclear weapons during the Cold War in a way served as a deterrent for conflict between nations - the power of these weapons was so overwhelming and the potential consequences of any action so irreversible, it was possible to sustain a long period of détente. But as technology evolved, and micro-aggressions of state-sponsored hacking became the norm, the logic was flipped and we found ourselves with almost no restraint in terms of acts of cyber warfare among nations.

Ben Buchanan, a professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, joins Robert Amsterdam on this episode of Departures to discuss his new book, "The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics."

Buchanan argues that we can see just how extensive the hacking wars have gone by examining the details.

"If you are looking for scenarios of planes crashing and cities burning, you miss some of the activities that matter most," Buchanan says. "This is a book about the stories that actually happened, the events that have shaped global affairs over the last two decades where nations have hacked one another."

Amsterdam and Buchanan discuss how the lack of policies, treaties, and law to regulate cyber warfare have created a Hobbesian chaotic environment in which unpredictable, dangerous, and costly outcomes become more and more likely.

"I think every nation of a certain degree of sophistication looks at hacking tools right now, and says I can use these to advance my interests, I don't trust the other side not to use them, and you get into this dog-eat-dog world, in which everyone is continually struggling for advantage in trying to shape the environment, just a little bit every single day, into their favor," Buchanan says.

"These events are extraordinary ones, but daily ones."

Following the demise of the Nazi regime in Germany at the end of the second World War, European nations set about a series of reforms to their political systems which would continue to entail popular representation expressed through a stronger set of institutions, bureaucracy, and law to constrain the potential abuses which sparked the war.

Oxford historian Martin Conway has recently published a fascinating study of this period in his book, "Western Europe's Democratic Age 1945-1968."

In this conversation with Robert Amsterdam, Conway explains that we have been remarkably fortunate with the success of these efforts, as we often forget that there was never any sort of preordained roadmap for Europe to follow. The democratic models that evolved during this period were the result of complex social forces, economic interests, and historical experiences and could have easily failed.

Conway said that the lessons that most European elites drew from the Weimar Republic was that there had been "too much democracy," and that there should be measures in place to check politicians from exploiting the worst instincts of the public.

"The democracy that is brought in after 1945 is one that is deliberately intended by its architects, essentially elite figures, was to produce a rather managed and controlled form of politics. An they certainly didn't look to America for that - they looked to America and they saw a demagogic, corrupt politics that they really wanted to avoid," Conway says.

Reflecting on the more recent period, Conway offers his perspective that we are already living in a different age in which we have no consensus about the political regime we should all be supporting.

"We now live in a rather post-democratic age where we no longer entirely have confidence, faith, engagement in the institutions that rule us," he says.

One wonders what changes the next phase of democracy will bring.