Departures with Robert Amsterdam Amsterdam & Partners LLP

There is a certain trend of narratives regarding the Russia's invasion of Ukraine that are understood as gospel in the West. And when analysts or academics stray outside those narrative lines, they are targeted with intolerance and all sorts of unfounded accusations. The fact is that we don't seem to be able capable of a wide range of debate of events in Ukraine during wartime given the extraordinary stakes of the conflict and the immoral, expansionist violence propagated by Vladimir Putin's Kremlin. But this extreme position robs of further understanding.
This week's Departures podcast features Glenn Diesen, a Norwegian professor of political science and the author of "The Ukraine War & the Eurasian World Order."  In this conversation with host Robert Amsterdam, Prof. Diesen discusses Russia's war in Ukraine from different perspectives, seeking to understand how the conflict has placed new pressures on the international order. Diesen argues that we have entered into a period of absolutism, with social divisions being ignored within Ukraine, and both Russia and the United States increasingly acting within a zero-sum game of total victory or total defeat which disincentivizes peace, which is very unfortnate and very dangerous for the wider world.

The tremendous velocity with which modernity and technology has encroached on our social lives is underappreciated, shaping our understanding not only of critical events but also ourselves, as the world is flattened. A teenager in France or Brazil may see violent footage of the Ukraine war fed to them on TikTok, only to be replaced a moment later with dancing, music, and comedy, whatever they want - to the point that nothing matters, there is a lack of reaction, and there are no clear system of signals of do's and don'ts, and our society becomes untethered from collective community and public live.
These are some of the questions that the renowned French intellectual Olivier Roy wrestles with in his fascinating new book, "The Crisis of Culture: Identity Politics and the Empire of Norms."
In this interview with Robert Amsterdam, Dr. Roy discusses how in modern culture people no longer seek meaning, no longer seek explanation, and how there is no longer any desire to think in terms of values. The perceived correlation of two disparate events or traits is simply accepted with interrogation, the very concept of meaning is missing, and this presents a psychological crisis, Roy argues. 
In the absence of a shared culture, identity gets whittled down to a handful of traits, and everything becomes an explicit code of how to speak and how to act. And this becomes the driving engine of the politics of culture, polarization, and, in some cases, political extremism.

On this week's episode of Departures with Robert Amsterdam we're pleased to invite our friend and colleague of many years Jakob Edberg, the co-founder of The GR Company, a government relations consultancy headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, and with offices in Osaka, Seoul, London, and Washington DC.
Jakob's unique perspective on the rapidly evolving leadership role of Japan in the region and, increasingly, in global affairs are shaped by more than 20 years of experience advising some of the world's largest companies on politically sensitive matters in the region.
According to Edberg, Japan's new role as a primary actor and top ally of the United States has been an intentional and gradual process dating back to before Shinzo Abe's ascedency and the current diplomacy-forward administration of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

Among the slew of books that have come out recently on the war in Ukraine, there are few which take as broad a scope of the human experience of the soldiers, victims, and communities living on the front than the latest entry written by the war correspondent Christopher Miller.
In his book, "The War Came To Us: Life and Death in Ukraine," Miller bears witness to the brutality of this remarkable, unprecedented conflict, bringing the stories of those involved with profound empathy and vivid detail - not only from pivotal scenes on the front, but also going back more than a decade to the seeds of the war, the meaning of Ukraine's struggle for nationhood, and the propulsive resilience that binds the survivors from Bucha to Bakhmut and Mariupol and beyond.
In this conversation about his book with Departures host Robert Amsterdam, the FT correspondent comments: "I think this is a war that is more black and white than any war we have experienced since the Second World War. I do think this is a war that is more 'good vs. evil' than anything we have seen in the last 80 years."
In explaining his approach to war reporting and the complexity of objectivity in the midst of violent conflict, Miller comments: "I think it is powerful enough in some cases to explain what you are witnessing. In the book, I was able to do some things that I am not able to do in my daily reporting, which is to provide some context, some personal context and analysis based on my personal experiences and knowledge. (...) I do try to separate myself from the events, but there are moments where you just can't. Sometimes you do have to help, sometimes that means carrying someone. (...) At that point you can't say, 'sorry, I am a reporter.'"
A truly outstanding book from one of the greatest young war correspondents of our current era, we hope that listeners of Departures will pick up a copy.

From the late-nineteenth century until the mid-1930s, Vienna was Europe's undisputed powerhouse of ideas. But along with the exhilirating achievements of Freud, Wittgenstein, Mahler, and Klimt, there were also darker forces emerging in parallel which have had their own negative impact on modernity, from organized anti-Semitism to ethnonationalism ideologies.
These complex tensions are explored in detail in Richard Cockett's excellent new book, "Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World." In this discussion with Robert Amsterdam, Cockett explains how the Habsburg emperor, Franz Joseph, permitted such intellectual flourishing to occur, as the rapid influx of Jews and other groups and their assimilation into the Austrian middle class via commercial and educational success augmented intellectual curiosity, discovery, and experimentation throughout the city.  Viennese café and salon culture also helped to foster schools of thought, as students and professors would furiously debate disputed major questions of the day into the wee hours.
The conditions for this fervent intellectual incubation of course was not to last, and we're all aware of what followed. Cockett's thoughtful history of the city in this period highlights what we can learn about encouraging greater intellectual vitality, pluralism, and civilizational development.

The tremendous velocity of history that Ukraine has experienced since independence to the Maidan revolution to the catastrophic war brought on by Russia's aggression often tends to be sold and told in neatly packaged narratives to the West - a heroic tale of a plucky democracy breaking from from the yoke of an authoritarian past. But the reality, as always, is much more nuanced, complex, and messy.
This week we are pleased to feature an interview with Volodymyr Ishchenko, the author of the fascinating collection of essays, "Towards the Abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to War." Ishchenko, a sociologist based at Berlin’s Freie Universität, offers a critical examination of Ukraine's trajectory post-Maidan revolution and asks probing, intimate questions about moral leadership and the future political model that the people of this nation at war are still seeking and negotiating.
While making no excuses for Russia's brutality in the war, in this conversation with Robert Amsterdam, Ishchenko brings criticism to bear on the leadership from the left-leaning school of thought, examining the costs of ignoring history, misrepresenting identities, and other factors which have fed the growth of nationalism in Ukraine at the cost of other sectors of the society.