Departures Podcast with Elizabeth Shackelford

By Editor | Published: August 11, 2020

As a career foreign service officer, Elizabeth Shackelford was seen as a rising star in the US State Department, a recipient of the Barbara Watson Award for Consular Excellence. But in 2017 she resigned from public service, publishing a stinging indictment of a letter which brought to light the extraordinary mismanagement and strategic drift under […]

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Departures Podcast with Luke Harding

By Robert Amsterdam | Published: August 4, 2020

With assassinations taking place on foreign soil, widespread hacking and disinformation campaigns aimed at undermining democratic elections, and provocations of armed conflict across multiple theaters, Russia’s role in the post-Cold War international system under President Vladimir Putin has been that of a disrupter. But they’ve likely never had a more powerful weapon at their disposal […]

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Departures Podcast with Philip Zelikow

By Editor | Published: July 27, 2020

As an attorney, distinguished diplomat, academic and author, there are few public officials with careers as varied and impressive as Philip Zelikow. He served as the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, was the author of the “Zelikow memo” disputing the legal grounds of torture of terrorism detainees, and the co-author along with former Secretary […]

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Departures Podcast with Matthew Kroenig

By Robert Amsterdam | Published: July 21, 2020

The United States has enjoyed a position of relative primacy in the international system since the end of World War II, but are those days numbered as China and other powers continue to rise? Or does Washington still have a few more decades left in the tank? Matthew Kroenig, a political scientist and the Deputy […]

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Departures Interview with Scott Turow

By Robert Amsterdam | Published: July 17, 2020

I’m going to go ahead get this out of the way at the beginning – I’m a ridiculous fanboy of Scott Turow. Those who came here looking for a withering takedown of the bestselling author, continue browsing. For those visiting for the first time, considering signing up to my newsletter for occasional updates about my […]

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Departures Interview with Mira Rapp-Hooper

By Robert Amsterdam | Published: July 14, 2020

The United States has risen to its position of primacy thanks to a carefully constructed system of alliances with numerous other countries. That system, however, has suffered significant damage in recent years, is under increasing attack both at home and abroad, and desperately needs rebuilding, argues Mira Rapp-Hooper, a Senior Fellow at the Council on […]

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Departures Podcast with William Burke-White

By Robert Amsterdam | Published: July 10, 2020

Last month, the White House issued an executive order to apply terrorism-style sanctions such as bank account and asset seizure orders against members of the International Criminal Court (ICC), presumably as a response to express disapproval of a war crimes investigation related to events in Afghanistan. William Burke-White, a law professor at the University of […]

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Departures Podcast with Jonathan Kaufman

By Robert Amsterdam | Published: July 7, 2020

For 175 years, well before the young Mao Zedong began his Long March, two rival Jewish dynasties dominated Chinese business and politics, accumulating massive wealth and power while navigating the tumultuous history of the period before losing nearly everything once the Communists swept into power. Jonathan Kaufman, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and the author of […]

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Departures Podcast with John Campbell

By Robert Amsterdam | Published: July 3, 2020

For many years, Africa’s natural resource wealth, young population, and vibrant societies have raised many hopes for a rapid emergence on the world’s stage – but the development of these opportunities has often slow and uneven. So what is holding the region back? John Campbell, a former US Ambassador to Nigeria, Senior Fellow at the […]

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Departures Podcast with Michael Kimmage

By Robert Amsterdam | Published: June 30, 2020

So much of the peace and prosperity achieved following the end of World War II and past the end of the Cold War was rooted in a common civilizational grammar driving foreign policy, an imagined community of nations referred to as “The West” based on a set of Enlightenment ideas. But then we lost confidence […]

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