by Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Irina Tsukerman
How does Irina Tsukerman explain political short-termism, human nature, and the unintended consequences of government decision-making?
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 interviewed Irina Tsukerman about political foresight, unintended consequences, immigration policy, international conflict, and human nature in governance. Tsukerman argued that voters and leaders often struggle to anticipate second- and third-order effects, while political incentives, cognitive biases, and emotional decision-making frequently undermine long-term planning. She examined U.S. foreign policy, Trump-era immigration and conflict management, and emphasized that effective governance ultimately depends on self-discipline, accountability, reason, and evidence-based judgment.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: All right, so this week we covered a wide range of topics, from India to Iran to various heads of state and parts of the administration in the United States. We discussed, among other things, the Iranian government’s need to save face from its own perspective. You also had some thoughts about the consideration of consequences and how people do not necessarily take them into account. That reminded me of a meaningful point made by Viachok. She noted that we are living in the world of Obama, but what she meant was that we are living with the consequences of the Obama administration. Why do people vote based on present realities, which is understandable, but often remain short-sighted when it comes to the likely consequences of political decisions? How should heads of state think about this issue?
Irina Tsukerman: There are at least two issues here, as I see it. One is that few people can predict the second- and third-order effects of even the policies they support, especially when it comes to wars. Wars can have unintended consequences in addition to predictable ones.
Take the argument about the Thucydides Trap. I would say the issue is not whether China is right, or whether the United States should be concerned about one specific scenario. Rather, the broader point is that any conflict can get out of hand and be overtaken by other realities and intervening factors that no one can fully foresee in advance, no matter how carefully an operation is planned. This is even more true when a plan is poorly conceived or when escalation occurs incidentally rather than as part of the original design.
That is one example. People are often unable to predict outcomes that are not immediately foreseeable, and some cannot even anticipate consequences that are relatively predictable. The other issue is that politicians sometimes misrepresent their intentions, and situations arise that are not necessarily related to the issues voters originally had in mind.
When people voted for George W. Bush, they did not expect 9/11. More generally, people vote for politicians based on their current circumstances, not on events that might occur several years later. Once those unforeseen events happen, however, they are left dealing with whoever is in office at the time.
Another issue is that politicians can say one thing during campaigns but later change their positions, producing consequences voters did not anticipate. Sometimes they change their positions because reality intervenes. Upon entering office, they may realize that they cannot fulfill their promises without causing significant harm, or they may encounter new developments that require them to respond to information unavailable during the campaign. At other times, politicians deliberately manipulate public opinion. They tell different stories to different groups of constituents, hoping to gain enough support to win power, and then determine their course of action based on what seems advantageous at the moment or where their own interests lie.
In Trump’s case, one clear example of how his immigration policies went beyond the narrower mandate many voters may have understood him to have is immigration enforcement. He promised to crack down on illegal border crossings and strengthen border security, positions that had broad public support. Even many Americans who did not vote for him believed stronger border enforcement was necessary. Biden, toward the end of his presidency, also shifted toward stricter border measures, including limits on asylum access under certain conditions. However, Trump did not limit himself to the specific border-security measures that enjoyed broad public support.
He then allowed narrow interest groups within his administration to run amok in cracking down on immigration in many of its manifestations, including legal migration and even tourism, which is not migration at all but rather a matter of visa policy. That was not something most of Trump’s supporters voted for. In many cases, they were not even thinking about anything beyond illegal migration and border security.
They were not necessarily focused on migration fraud in the business sector. It was not a major issue for many people. By the time the discussion reached some of the more recent policy proposals, including proposals that could affect the status of certain permanent residents and require some immigration processes to occur from outside the country, many Americans became concerned about the potential consequences.
Many people have family members who are green card holders or operate businesses that employ permanent residents. Significant disruptions to those populations could have serious effects on industries, private lives, and local economies. That is one example where, for whatever reason, the administration has gone well beyond the campaign parameters that many voters believed they were supporting.
Another example is the gap between campaign rhetoric and outcomes. Trump claimed that he would be a peacemaker. However, several major conflicts have remained unresolved during his presidency.
The war in Sudan has received limited attention from the administration. The Russia–Ukraine war was not resolved quickly, despite campaign statements suggesting that a rapid resolution was possible. Critics argue that some administration policies and pressure tactics have weakened Ukraine’s position, while supporters contend that they were intended to push both sides toward negotiations.
The conflict involving Iran escalated significantly during Trump’s presidency, including direct U.S. military involvement. The long-term strategy for resolving that conflict remains a matter of debate. Concerns have also been raised about potential second-order effects, including threats to maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and broader regional instability.
That is aside from other military operations and regional confrontations that some observers attribute to a lack of sustained diplomatic engagement. In my view, the administration often displayed a reactive rather than strategic approach. Various actors with longstanding grievances may have interpreted this as a sign that the United States was either unwilling or unable to remain consistently engaged in diplomatic conflict resolution. They may also have viewed Washington’s attention as divided among multiple crises, creating opportunities to test limits through military interventions or escalatory actions.
None of this is what many voters expected from Trump. They expected him to build on the agenda of his first term. Many of his supporters voted for him as a result of both dissatisfaction with Biden and their generally favorable memories of Trump’s earlier presidency, without necessarily examining in depth who Trump was, how he operated, or how some policies that initially appeared successful may also have been driven by ulterior motives or implemented in ways that created long-term problems.
In many cases, there is also a cognitive bias at work. People are often reluctant to admit that they may have made a mistake and therefore feel compelled to defend policies that appear counterproductive, even when those policies may ultimately backfire.
It is not always that people fail to understand what may happen eventually. Sometimes they do not want to admit it. They may not want to jeopardize their current interests. If they are involved with the U.S. government, they may fear losing opportunities by criticizing the administration. Others may not wish to alienate friends or political allies. Some have simply embraced an ideological framework so completely that they no longer question its assumptions. They follow what feels emotionally satisfying in the moment, even when it may produce undesirable consequences later.
Let us not forget that, for much of the twentieth century and into the early twenty-first century, the United States was a society in which most citizens paid relatively limited attention to foreign policy except when it affected them economically. To a significant extent, that remains true today. You cannot expect many people who view the world primarily through the lens of their immediate economic and business interests to suddenly develop deep, long-term foresight regarding complex geopolitical realities. That does not happen overnight. It requires education, experience, and sustained political engagement across generations. Those conditions are often absent or unevenly distributed within society.
Jacobsen: There was a science fiction writer who had a quote that I am recalling. If I remember correctly, he had a ponytail and a long beard. He said something to the effect that the truly terrifying possibility is not that something is secretly in charge, God, aliens, or a hidden government conspiracy, but rather the more unsettling reality that no one is fully in control. I think this lack of responsible leadership and the fragmentation of serious consideration of consequences speaks to that idea to some extent.
Tsukerman: Look, even many religious believers would agree that human beings possess free will. As long as free will exists, most human agency rests with human beings themselves. People may choose to follow religious principles or other ethical frameworks, or they may choose not to. At the end of the day, however, they are responsible for their own actions, whether good or bad, not some deity operating in the background.
The issue is not that no one is fully in charge. Rather, the issue is that good governance—including self-governance—requires a pragmatic, realistic, and self-correcting view of the world. Human beings are fundamentally emotional and reactive creatures. The Enlightenment, often called the Age of Reason, produced a set of intellectual principles and philosophical traditions designed to help people overcome some of those instinctive, fear-driven, and reactive tendencies.
That does not mean, however, that people will actually exercise the judgment and moral agency required to make those philosophical choices. Most of the time, it is easier to follow instinct, groupthink, and convenient social heuristics than it is to apply systematic, consistent, law-based, and evidence-based reasoning.
Whether one lives under a monarchy, a military dictatorship, a representative democracy, a constitutional republic, or some hybrid system of governance, human nature remains fundamentally similar across all of these arrangements.
Different systems may provide different mechanisms for reducing bias, limiting incompetence, and advancing the public interest. However, no political system is better than the willingness of human beings to restrain their own impulses. We can create the best constitutions and institutions imaginable, but if there is no consistent effort toward accountability, self-policing, and reinforcement of those values, people tend to revert to their more instinctive tendencies.
Those tendencies often include fear, emotionalism, short-term thinking, and self-interest—not necessarily self-interest in the sophisticated sense of pursuing long-term well-being, but rather a reactive desire for immediate gratification: “I want this now.” It is a more primitive and less reflective form of self-interest.
Jacobsen: That is all I have for today, or tonight.
Tsukerman: Thank you.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen is a contributor to The Washington Outsider. He is the Founder and Publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978–1–0692343; 978–1–0673505) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369–6885). He writes for International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN, 0018–7399; Online: ISSN, 2163–3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), Humanist Perspectives (ISSN: 1719–6337), A Further Inquiry (SubStack), Vocal, Medium, The Good Men Project, The New Enlightenment Project, The Washington Outsider, rabble.ca, and other media. His bibliography index can be found via the Jacobsen Bank at In-Sight Publishing comprised of more than 10,000 articles, interviews, and republications, in more than 200 outlets. He has served in national and international leadership roles within humanist and media organizations, held several academic fellowships, and currently serves on several boards. He is a member in good standing in numerous media organizations, including the Canadian Association of Journalists, PEN Canada (CRA: 88916 2541 RR0001), Reporters Without Borders (SIREN: 343 684 221/SIRET: 343 684 221 00041/EIN: 20–0708028), and others.