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 interview, Jacobsen and Tsukerman discuss how and why imperial wars come to an end. Tsukerman argues that expansionist conflicts rarely stop through diplomacy once ideology and regime survival override pragmatic constraints; instead, military defeat and the loss of capacity to continue fighting force cessation. Tsukerman examines Russia’s war in Ukraine as a contemporary case, noting that production bottlenecks, sanctions, and disrupted supply chains can gradually erode its ability to sustain high-intensity operations. She also outlines the role of propaganda, demographic pressures, and popular support in maintaining authoritarian ambitions, emphasizing that material constraints, not sentiment, ultimately break imperial projects.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I have a query about imperial wars, or mindsets around wars, in the contemporary period. The main question is: what makes an imperial war stop?
Irina Tsukerman: In one word, losing—primarily through military defeat. We saw what happened with Nazi Germany. Hitler saw that the war was on a losing trajectory and chose to kill himself in April 1945 rather than face capture and public defeat. That is not to say that every Nazi who ever supported him stopped being a Nazi. Quite a number survived, escaped, and plotted, at least in their own circles, to try to regain influence after the war.
But defeat definitively ended Germany’s ambitions as a state project backed by state resources. The Soviets were eventually in Berlin, which put an end to any realistic efforts to revive the Third Reich as a German state. We have seen a similar pattern with Imperial Japan. Its hegemonic trajectory was permanently disrupted by the combination of overwhelming U.S. conventional bombing, a naval blockade, the use of nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Soviet Union’s entry into the war against Japan in August 1945. These factors together created such a power differential and sense of inevitability that Japanese leaders saw no viable way to continue and agreed to surrender.
That is not to say that some wars cannot be ended through diplomacy. Civil wars frequently end through some form of negotiated political settlement. However, when dealing with an imperialist state—one with expansionist, imperial ambitions—logic, common sense, practical limitations, and strategic considerations eventually give way to ideology and to a drive for the survival of its leaders and regime at all costs.
Once a leadership reaches that stage, stopping becomes extremely difficult, because the only perceived path to political survival is to continue regardless of the cost. This is where Hitler found himself; this is where Putin finds himself now. He is structurally and psychologically constrained from stopping on his own. The only way to make such a project stop is to defeat it so thoroughly, through military and economic means, that there is no practical capacity to continue the war in its current form.
Jacobsen: Does production capacity, resources, or the economy—each tied together—become the first pillar to give way? We are seeing demographic crises, military overextension, and a lack of well-prepared forces, whether in terms of training or equipment. In the Russian war you are referring to, military spending has ramped up extensively. Current estimates suggest that defense now accounts for a very large share of the federal budget—on the order of a third—and a historically high share of Russia’s GDP, in the mid–single digits to around seven percent. Which of these factors is likely to begin slowing any potential military effort, given that the leader’s psychology will not simply weaken on its own?
Tsukerman: Most likely, the key constraints are production capacity and the broader ability to acquire weapons and critical components. Production capacity alone is not decisive if you can obtain weapons or crucial inputs from allies and partners—for example, artillery shells from North Korea, drones and drone designs from Iran, and dual-use components and technology from China and other states that do not fully enforce Western sanctions. However, if those channels of acquisition are significantly disrupted—through sanctions enforcement, interdiction, or political pressure—then a country that cannot reliably import materials or construct offensive and defensive systems will face serious problems sustaining a high-intensity war.
Russia is not at that collapse point yet. It is still capable of producing large quantities of artillery, missiles, and drones, transferring and co-producing systems with partners, and engaging in dual-use smuggling of assorted materials that it can repurpose for military ends. But the strain is visible: the economic burden is growing, energy revenues are under pressure, parts of the budget are increasingly classified, and long-term growth prospects are being sacrificed to fund the war. In terms of conventional advances inside Ukraine, Russian gains have been slow, costly, and achieved at an exceptionally high price in personnel and materiel. In terms of asymmetrical warfare—missile and drone strikes, energy grid attacks, long-range attrition—this is where Russia can continue longer, even under strain, because such methods require fewer troops and can be sustained with a mix of domestic production and external inputs for a longer period than large-scale offensive ground operations.
Asymmetrical warfare can continue for a longer period of time because it requires far less production capacity and fewer materials to keep causing disruptions. Moreover, asymmetrical warfare does not need to rely solely on a state’s own resources. Russia can make use of local refugees, infiltrators, agents of influence, and other operatives abroad to advance its agendas across Europe and along its borders.
This approach does not require large amounts of resources to carry out acts of sabotage. In some cases, weapons are unnecessary. Local materials can be used to start fires or create targeted disruptions. The supplies needed for asymmetrical operations can often be sourced locally, so they do not directly impose high costs on Russia’s production capacity.
In terms of conventional warfare, the situation is different. Opening another front would require Russia to reorganize and regroup its forces. It is running short on trained personnel and struggling to maintain equipment and supply levels sufficient to keep troops continuously armed and operational. Russia is not currently capable of fighting effectively on more than one major front outside Ukraine.
We are seeing that redirecting some of its military resources from Syria has weakened its support for Assad and reduced its influence there. Elsewhere, Russia’s position varies. It is not currently in trouble in Georgia because the Georgian government is strongly aligned with Moscow; if that were not the case, the strategic picture might look very different. In Moldova, Russia continues to maintain influence in the breakaway region of Transnistria, but its broader political leverage in the country has declined significantly.
Ultimately, Russia may have to rely increasingly on asymmetrical and hybrid methods rather than sustained conventional military advances. The current trajectory is unfavorable for Russia in the long term, even if it takes an extended period to reach a decisive point. The faster global supply chains feeding Russia’s war machine can be disrupted, the sooner that point will arrive. The European Union and other actors that have spent months focusing on political grand strategy with limited results should instead refocus on imposing material costs—through sanctions enforcement, export controls, and covert disruption—that make it unexpectedly expensive for Russia to continue arming itself at scale.
Denialism and propaganda are used not only to maintain domestic morale but also to reduce resistance abroad and influence international opinion. I can give a personal example. I once spoke with a postdoctoral fellow in Canada who worked in the sciences and was supportive of China. I acknowledged China’s long history of elevating intellectuals into leadership roles—an approach that has advantages, though not without flaws. Yet China and Russia share certain strategic goals, including pressure on Taiwan. China has a record, dating back to the 1950s and 1960s, of mobilizing the entire country behind high-stakes geopolitical aims. When I raised these points, the fellow responded by accusing me of simply trying to put China down, rather than engaging with the substance of the argument.
Jacobsen: That line of reasoning is similar to claiming that criticism of the United States for its disastrous conduct in the Vietnam War is merely an attempt to “put down” America. The United States has many admirable qualities, yet in terms of the historical record, Vietnam was not a sound strategic or moral decision. What I am getting at is that people in other parts of the world absorb state messaging and external propaganda, and some end up supporting even the complete annexation of another country for nationalist or imperial aims—and actively defend it. The person you mentioned has internalized that perspective. What role does this play in maintaining such regimes or centralized power networks?
Tsukerman: At the end of the day, no matter how authoritarian a regime may be, it still seeks a level of popular support, because that support reduces the costs of governance. Managing a dissatisfied population requires expending resources that may be limited—resources that would otherwise be dedicated to warfighting or state functions. If the population is supportive, they will tolerate a great deal of mismanagement and failure. This makes it easier for the leadership to avoid fighting an information war on two fronts—domestically and internationally.
That said, I am not entirely sure how many supporters are genuinely convinced and how many are motivated by career ambitions or material incentives. In the case of the scientist you mentioned, for example, it is possible that funding structures, institutional pressures, or professional advancement shape what he feels able to say publicly. He may not fully believe the talking points, but knows that open dissent could jeopardize his research funding or career path. That amounts to blackmail and leverage through soft coercion.
The difference is that committed ideologues are harder to reason with. They are not persuaded by evidence or logic; they will follow their leader off a cliff. Mercenaries and self-interested actors, however, can be motivated along alternative paths, especially if those align with personal benefit or survival.
Unfortunately, it is often hard to distinguish between true believers and opportunists, and in many circumstances the distinction is not operationally relevant. If someone is entrenched in their position—whether out of belief or fear—they may not see an exit, and they may believe that even discussing alternatives would put them in danger or expose them to consequences. In such environments, people exhibit loyalty reflexively in public regardless of what they think privately.
In general, there is a common Western assumption that popular support confers legitimacy. The problem is that authoritarian regimes are not democratic. Polling is often unreliable, and even if accurate, public opinion may not be grounded in informed understanding. It becomes difficult to separate genuine belief from propaganda, disinformation, or coercive persuasion. If people are not given accurate information, can we meaningfully consider their expressions of support as legitimate?
For example, if many Russians believe that Russia is winning the war—whereas objective military analysis indicates the opposite—their position will differ dramatically from what it would be if they understood the actual state of the conflict. That leaves aside the moral and ethical considerations entirely, and focuses only on the informational environment shaping their perceptions.
If there is a perception that the country is losing, support may decline regardless of moral or ethical considerations. If Russians, Chinese, or others see themselves as winning or believe they have a good chance of winning, they are more likely to dig in and entrench their positions.
So popular support and propaganda form a gray zone. This is why counter-propagandists trying to reach people in closed or authoritarian societies such as Russia, China, or Iran often focus on pragmatic, personal self-interest rather than philosophical concepts such as liberty, freedom, or human rights. Many people are either too constrained or too afraid to engage with those abstract questions. However, it is entirely ordinary and human for people to discuss the price of basic food items, how external events affect their families, or what happens when relatives serve in the military.
Jacobsen: Demographic decline is also relevant. China’s population began shrinking in 2022. Canada has experienced short-term declines in natural population growth despite gains from immigration. The United States has slowed as well. These trends reflect broader global patterns: in many countries, women choose to have fewer children, or the economic and social context for raising children is prohibitively difficult. Cultural pressures also reduce family size. If a country engages in a major war while experiencing demographic contraction, does that compel leaders to rethink imperial ambitions?
Tsukerman: Rather than reconsider their objectives, regimes are more likely to double down on policies encouraging higher birth rates. In China, the one-child policy has been fully abandoned. In Iran, access to contraception has been restricted and abortion is banned except in limited circumstances. In Russia, the state has implemented incentives for larger families and promotes earlier marriage, especially given lower male life expectancy. These are interventionist state measures intended to increase population.
But if you live in a country where the next generation is likely to be sent to war, where living standards are stagnant or declining, and where the risks of military service are high, how likely are you to embrace those measures? Aside from the most fervent supporters of official rhetoric, many people are more likely to respond with indifference—or active resistance. That applies to almost everyone except the most committed evangelists of the state line. Beyond those core groups, the most common reaction is apathy, and in many cases, people will do the opposite of what the state wants.
What people say publicly about raising the next generation of soldiers for a national cause and what they privately believe can differ profoundly. Opinion polls, and even private conversations among friends, may not reflect genuine views. That makes it difficult to assess where populations truly stand. Ultimately, people are more concerned with their own well-being than with grand national causes.
Jacobsen: The narrative around heroes, defenders, and aggressors is powerful. Have there been contemporary situations where mass protests or revolutions did not overthrow a government, but still forced leaders to reverse course or flee? There are leaders who ultimately leave for safety. Assad’s situation after 2011 comes to mind.
Tsukerman: He is now attempting to return to practicing ophthalmology, which he has described as his original goal.
Jacobsen: So, you could say he is finally seeing things clearly. Those were the major points I wanted to cover. Let us call it a day.