by Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Irina Tsukerman
Irina Tsukerman is a human rights and national security attorney based in New York and Connecticut. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in National and Intercultural Studies and Middle East Studies from Fordham University in 2006, followed by a Juris Doctor from Fordham University School of Law in 2009. She operates a boutique national security law practice. She serves as President of Scarab Rising, Inc., a media and security strategic advisory firm. Additionally, she is the Editor-in-Chief of The Washington Outsider, which focuses on foreign policy, geopolitics, security, and human rights. She is actively involved in several professional organizations, including the American Bar Association’s Energy, Environment, and Science and Technology Sections, where she serves as Program Vice Chair in the Oil and Gas Committee. She is also a member of the New York City Bar Association. She serves on the Middle East and North Africa Affairs Committee and affiliates with the Foreign and Comparative Law Committee.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen is a contributor to The Washington Outsider. Also, he is the publisher of In-Sight Publishing(ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and the Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for The Good Men Project, International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN 0018-7399; Online: ISSN 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), A Further Inquiry, and other media. He is a member in good standing of numerous media organizations.
In this wide-ranging exchange, Scott Douglas Jacobsen examines Lee Kuan Yew’s views on U.S. creativity, Chinese governance, and the “Singapore model,” asking whether diplomacy and economic statecraft can manage China’s rise. Irina Tsukerman argues that diplomacy without credible military deterrence is insufficient, citing Russia’s resurgence, China’s long-standing nuclear status, and expanding military reach. She contends that U.S. inconsistency weakens strategy, while selective uses of force and deterrence have prevented worse outcomes. Tsukerman contrasts U.S. power with that of economically driven states like Qatar and stresses that small-state models cannot be scaled up to great powers. She concludes that without de-radicalization, economic incentives alone cannot produce lasting peace.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I came across a clip of Lee Kuan Yew talking about the United States and China. In the U.S. case, he argued that America’s strength is its creativity—driven by a freer contest of ideas and a capacity to draw on global talent—whereas China’s political culture can constrain that kind of innovation.
At the same time, he suggested the United States should rely more on diplomacy and economic statecraft than on force in managing China’s rise—especially because Chinese leaders can plan over longer horizons than U.S. election cycles typically allow. He also described China’s ascent as structurally robust—at least in economic scale—even if he doubted China would match the United States in creativity.
There has also been discussion of Lee’s influence on Chinese governance thinking via the “Singapore model”—the idea of combining authoritarian rule with high-capacity administration and growth—though calling him the template for modern China is more a matter of debate than settled history. Singapore’s transformation into a high-income state over a few decades is fundamental, even if “third world to first world” is rhetorical shorthand rather than a formal category.
So what are your thoughts on his commentary on the United States, his framing of contemporary China, and the posture he suggested the United States should adopt toward China—diplomacy rather than force? How does that compare to the current situation?
Irina Tsukerman: I was going to start with the current situation, because, in my opinion, the last 20 to 30 years have shown that diplomacy alone—no matter how muscular or coercive—is not enough without a formidable military force to back it up. That does not mean intervening in every skirmish around the world, but it does mean being prepared for the likelihood that aggressors and threats may arise independent of the effectiveness of one’s political and economic position.
As we have seen, many Western policymakers underestimated Russia as a long-term strategic threat after the collapse of the Soviet Union, even though Russian security institutions and methods showed significant continuity. It was only a matter of time before an increasingly centralized, authoritarian system reasserted itself, shaped by elite networks and security-state power rather than a clean democratic consolidation.
China, too, while it focused for a significant period on building economic influence, used state-backed tactics—technology acquisition, industrial policy, and trade leverage—that many countries experienced as aggressive. China did not become a nuclear power recently; it first tested nuclear weapons in 1964 and has maintained nuclear forces since then. What has changed more recently is the scale, modernization, and global reach of its military capabilities.
While some argue that Xi has overstepped through personalist rule, the longer arc suggests that China’s political vision and economic power were likely to translate into a much stronger military capacity over time. When a state holds hegemonic ambitions, economics and political doctrine alone are rarely sufficient counterweights. For the United States, abandoning credible military deterrence in favour of markets alone would be strategically self-defeating.
That does not mean the United States could not have done much more effectively. The current U.S. foreign policy, inconsistent, semi-isolationist, semi-kleptocratic, and entirely incoherent, is the opposite of what any serious strategist would have advocated. However, had Trump, for example, focused exclusively on economics in a serious, consistent, Reagan-esque way while simultaneously abandoning defence funding and effectively writing off military power projection, that approach would have been just as ineffective as his actual policy.
In fact, it is mainly because he was willing to use force on several specific occasions that the United States avoided far greater trouble during his administration. The elimination of Qasem Soleimani is one such example. Another is the maintenance of a deterrence posture in the Middle East, the willingness to supply Israel with weapons and to continue arms sales, and the continued development of innovative military technologies.
All of this makes the United States not merely an actor that can articulate policies or purchase support. If you want a model of almost exclusively economic and political power, consider Qatar—a tiny country with limited military capability that depends heavily on the United States, Turkey, and others for its defence. Qatar has projected significant influence through economic and political means, nevertheless.
I am not suggesting this influence is positive; I am stating it as a fact. In Qatar’s case, it has little choice. Its small population prevents it from building a serious national military force independently, forcing it to rely heavily on foreign personnel, which would be dangerous for a Gulf monarchy.
The United States cannot replicate that experience and does not need to. It has a large population and its own strategic model. Projecting Singapore’s experience as a small state onto a country the size of the United States would have been dangerous—a misapplication that ignores the differing needs and geopolitical realities of both countries. Singapore’s model may make sense for smaller states, particularly those trapped between great powers, but even then, it is not always viable.
Israel is an instructive example. Without a formidable military force, it would not have survived long enough to develop economically. Events over the last two years have shown that relying exclusively on economic incentives in a region where radicalism persists can lead to existential disaster.
Jacobsen: Do you agree that the United States stands out in that regard, as a country dynamic enough to adapt to extreme circumstances?
Tsukerman: Yes, I do. Geography is a significant factor. The United States is difficult to invade through conventional means. The threats it faces are more likely to target its interests abroad or to arrive through asymmetric means rather than through direct invasion.
It also has a large, diverse population and a flexible economic and political system that tolerates considerable diversity, divergence, and even hostile currents of thought without necessarily collapsing into dysfunction. Despite significant tensions, the United States has survived major upheavals and near-revolutionary changes without suffering the same degree of social breakdown or economic reversal that Europe has experienced under similar pressures.
That said, no matter how flexible or dynamic a society may be, failure to renew its capacities, reassess past failures, and regroup will lead to deterioration—socially, politically, and economically—if it remains on self-destructive, polarizing, and unsustainable paths in politics, the economy, and the military. We are seeing that threshold tested by Trump’s unaccountable and kleptocratic governance, decades of political polarization, and systemic weaknesses in U.S. education. Added to this is an insufficiently critical approach to countering foreign malign influence, combined with deepening domestic polarization.
Jacobsen: In a period when a region is experiencing a spike in radicalization and violence driven by that radicalization, are there conditions under which overwhelming economic incentives can bring about peace talks that lead to genuine peace with radicalized actors or quasi-organizations?
Tsukerman: Unless those organizations are willing to de-radicalize, or are at least open to that process, so-called peace talks will amount to little more than truces or ceasefires—temporary pauses in violence or frozen conflicts. If the underlying ideology remains radical and violent, it will sooner or later lead to the resumption of hostilities.
We have seen this repeatedly with groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and even the Muslim Brotherhood, which moved from a relatively dormant state several years ago to a much more active posture across the Middle East and North Africa and elsewhere globally. Radical ideology does not lend itself to good governance, pro-civilian priorities, or the advancement of sustainable peace initiatives.
When radical ideologues are elected to office, they tend, over time, to become entrenched in personal and political corruption, prioritizing ideological objectives over state responsibilities and grassroots needs.
Jacobsen: Thank you very much for the opportunity and your time, Irina.