by Scott 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 the publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and 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.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What are you hoping to get out of this series that we are going to be writing?
Tsukerman: Different perspectives. We keep hearing many of the same voices, and even when they are technically different people, they repeat the same talking points. That results from reading the same sources and discussing the same angles within identical echo chambers and social media bubbles. We see the same factions. There is not much nuance, diversity, or perspectives that fall outside of Washington-centric spaces and the narrow corridor between transatlantic elitism and populism.
Quite frankly, many people seem tired of hearing the same commentators take uncritical views of their own ecosystem and push tropes that don’t work. These approaches are not working for the United States’ politics nor for its influence on the international stage.
Jacobsen: I wanted to add to and build on your point. There is increasingly caustic commentary, even toward political commentators who are comedians. People are tired of those familiar, staid voices—the ones who have occupied traditional late-night talk, comedy media, and political commentary for decades. That fatigue appears broadly across the cultural landscape. There is a flight not only from liberal comedy but also from conservative corporate media. People are signaling this shift. People are seeking independent voices, and there is a shared momentum. It reinforces your point across the traditional political and social context in the United States.
Tsukerman: Meritocracy also seems to be fading. Today, Trump was awarded the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize by an individual associated with an institution long marked by corruption and bribery scandals connected to the Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022 World Cup hosting decisions. However, although Trump claims to prioritize peace, he has not secured durable, long-term peace in the conflicts where he asserts major breakthroughs. Gaza remains devastated and under a fragile ceasefire, and Hamas has not been dismantled. Russia and Ukraine remain fully embroiled in active conflict.
Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo continue to experience bouts of conflict and border-area violence despite signed peace agreements that have been repeatedly celebrated as milestones. Thailand and Cambodia have also continued to face recurring clashes along their disputed border despite ceasefire arrangements. Meanwhile, Trump receives a peace prize for efforts that amount to more claims than to lasting results.
This is precisely the kind of phenomenon conservatives once criticized—rewarding participation rather than outcomes. And this shift extends beyond politics. There has been a broader cultural movement toward performative diplomacy, politics, governance, research, and business.
Everything has become performative, including philanthropy—philanthropy that values gestures and appearances over measurable results. I want to dig deeper into that and understand where this culture of participation is coming from, because none of it is actually solving global issues.
Despite all the trillions spent on climate change funding, ecological problems persist. Iran is on the verge of an environmental disaster. The entire region is suffering from water shortages. And where has all that money gone?
This is the sort of issue I want to explore further—understanding how words and actions are not aligned with reality or with actual need.
Jacobsen: What do you think about critical domestic policy commentary that seems missing from the American media ecosystem?
Tsukerman: I like the straightforward style of the title, Statecraft and Faultlines, because it highlights the reality that there is a great deal of talk and very little action from various groups. Populists and anti-populists alike seem unable to produce real results.
Statecraft itself appears to be a lost art. All of these groups—the so-called populists, anti-populists, moderates, and centrists—engage in the same patterns: blame-shifting, a complete lack of accountability, and an absence of solution-oriented thinking.
Jacobsen: As a Canadian looking at the American landscape, I often note that Americans love placing themselves into polarities. In our landscape, we have traditional, conservative, often religious Republicans on one side. On the other side, we have broadly progressive, liberal, secular Democrats and others. These are large umbrella categories, but within those two clusters, you essentially have the framework for about ninety-five percent of American politics.
It shapes much of American life, whether it is young people dating or older people evaluating policies around redistribution or its absence.
Jacobsen: Economic outcomes—quality of life. It affects everything. We could even extend this to commentary culture at places like Oxford. How do you see Americans forming their perspectives when they consume commentary? Many of them are reading the same analysts, then build their own commentary—or joke commentary—on the same prototypes. How do you see that shaping people’s views rather than encouraging them to engage with any original or rigorous commentary at all?
Tsukerman: Is it just commentary for its own sake, or does it actually have any impact? Does it help? I think many young people have been exposed to little more than social-media-style commentary. There is a decreasing number of college, law school, and graduate students who have actually read the original texts of the United States’ founding documents or the primary sources for major historical events, whether international or domestic.
That is a real problem. If you cannot read original sources, you cannot distinguish between strong and weak arguments. You do not understand the basic premises well. You are limited to second-order interpretations—interpretations of interpretations.
Jacobsen: Yes, that is another issue. How many people are actually familiar with the background of the issues they are discussing—the roots, the fundamentals—rather than simply recycling online gossip? My own expertise is largely synoptic, and through conversations with you and others who are experts across various fields, I can reach deeper levels of understanding. But many people do not do that, or do not have access to individuals with extensive expertise across a wide range of disciplines.
Tsukerman: Not only that—expertise itself seems to be dying. We now have this cynical proposition that “you have your own truth,” whatever that phrase even means. That mindset allows anyone to be considered an expert—or the opposite. No one counts as an expert if you choose not to agree with them.
The depth of objective standards for in-depth knowledge, and the basic premises that even people who strongly disagree can still share, have eroded. That has become a real problem.
Jacobsen: What else?
Tsukerman: That is all I have for today. I think we can explore how the fundamental issues underlying today’s political and foreign policy controversies are being misunderstood. The effects of the United States’ policy on other countries are also distorted because these discussions are filtered through commentators who are unfamiliar with the roots of the debates. They recycle second- and third-order arguments without grounding themselves in the origins of these policies.
Jacobsen: Thank you very much for your time today. Have a lovely evening, and we will be in touch.