Departures with Robert Amsterdam

Two 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 problem?

Robert Amsterdam is joined by Prof. Robert Patterson, PhD, the inaugural chair of Georgetown University's Department of African American Studies and the author of "Destructive Desires: Rhythm and Blues Culture and the Politics of Racial Equality."

We 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 spent the past eight years writing the authoritative biography on Henry Kissinger. Gewen brings invaluable insights about Kissinger's life and sensibility as a thinker, explores questions of power and morality, and how abstract notions of democracy and justice were seen as relatively meaningless in the absence of power as Kissinger reshaped the world in his role as Secretary of State from 1973-1977.

"Kissinger always refused to wear a little flag pin in his lapel," Gewen says in the interview. "What I take from that is that it reminded him of an enforced patriotism, a kind of denial of individual freedom. He was very sensitive to the ways in which democracy can, through the tyrannical majority, can impose itself on minorities and all people who dissented from that majoritarian view."

The 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In his conversation with Bob, McFate argues that the US has been obsessed with outdated conventional warfare, has fetishized technology and tactical battlefield victory, and has failed to understand that war has transitioned away for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, and the information level.

How can the US be successful in this new environment in which warfare is getting sneakier, in which victory goes to the cunning, and not just the strong?

There 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 latest episode of Departures, host Robert Amsterdam speaks with Smith about the trend of global democratic backsliding in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as their work together to support opposition figures such as Bobi Wine in Uganda and Tundu Lissu in Tanzania in their respective struggles against authoritarian regimes. For Smith, promoting democracy is critical because holding dictators to account within the international community has become increasingly difficult. "To be very blunt, modern authoritarians have learned to play this so-called 'reform game,' where they absorb massive amounts of external aid while avoiding genuine reform... and this often sets a country back for generations."

The 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 Alternative Foreign Policy for the Twenty-First Century."

Truly consolidated democracies are very difficult to build - they occur under specific structural conditions, when elites agree to have them in place, and more often than not, take hold due to luck more than assistance or planning.

Dr. Krasner provides a refreshing - and possibly not entirely politically correct - skepticism of the enduring belief in democracy promotion as a primary arm of US foreign policy, and instead argues that instead we should be focusing on governance and where possible working with quasi-democratic states in order to align them better with US interests.

Kim 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 technologies such as 5G and artificial intelligence, and debates what role technology will play in the post-pandemic world as much of us shift toward the work-from-home model.

Is 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 pervasive wiliness among the people he met through his reporting in Russia, from TV producers to zookeepers to human rights activists: people who engage in "quiet games of soft rebellion, acknowledging power and being outwardly loyal to it, while at the same time trying to undermine it and eke out personal benefit from it."

On 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 world" is one in which its relationship with The US and the EU is "adversarial," and its relations with the rest of the world have returned with a vengeance. Importantly, Stent employs a deeply historical perspective to inform her analysis of Putin's Russia on the world stage.

The discussion touches on Russia's relationship with key global players such as China - which she views as one of unequals - as well as the extent to which Russia helped Donald Trump in the 2016 election. In Stent's view, President Donald Trump has served a useful role for Russia especially as a driver of the disaggregation of the West, and therefore "it's not surprising that in 2016 the Russians favored Trump."

Across 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, and why we should indeed be very concerned about the absence of leadership to chart a path out of this crisis.

Brian 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 what it means for mass incarceration, and what are some of key rulings that didn't go his way over the years that still keep him up at night.