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Departures with Robert Amsterdam

Dec 22, 2021

The saber-rattling from Moscow over Ukraine has grown deafening in recent weeks. Hours before we recorded this episode, Vladimir Putin appeared on television threatening "retaliatory military-technical" measures while amassing some 175,000 troops on the border of Ukraine, asserting that Russia "has every right"...


Dec 14, 2021

In early December, the administration of US President Joe Biden convened a mostly virtual democracy summit, in which some of the world's largest economies were invited to participate and provide a clear framing of the agenda - and a clear poke in the eye of China and Russia.

In response, Chinese state media trolled...


Dec 2, 2021

Faced with challenging and intractable problems from climate change to civil conflicts to terrorism, it is tempting for many of us to look to the heavens, with billionaires pouring their resources into space exploration, expansion, and even dreams of colonization. 

But this is a major mistake, argues Professor Daniel...


Nov 19, 2021

Yoweri Museveni's 35 years of iron-gripped ruthless authoritarianism in Uganda did not take place in a vacuum. It has instead been a years-long process of converting the country's institutions into instruments of arbitrary power, which has been fueled by a series of targeted moves to destabilize the social coordination...


Nov 5, 2021

It was once the dream of starry-eyed proponents of globalization that the increasing pace of trade, travel, and exchanges of ideas would lead to a "borderless" world of reduced conflict and cosmopolitanism. Instead, the opposite has happened, as the lines and demarcations between nations struggling to manage...