Bad Days for Iran and Russia—But Will the U.S. Seize the Opportunity?
These members of the Axis of Autocrats are weakened and spread too thin.
BISMARCK PROBABLY DID NOT REALLY SAY that “God had a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States,” but the aphorism has survived because it so often appears true.
We are at such a moment now. The combination of Eastern Europeans’ refusal to submit to Vladimir Putin’s imperialist ambitions and the fracturing of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” proxies has created a huge window of geopolitical opportunity that the Biden administration did very little to create. And, alas, it is likely to be a window that the Trump administration will slam shut. Nonetheless, providence is smiling on us just now.
Let’s tour the horizon, beginning in Eastern Europe. A few months after Russia’s renewed attempt to conquer Ukraine, Finland (formally neutral since World War II) and Sweden (neutral since the Napoleonic era) applied to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Their accession to the alliance adds close to a thousand miles of allied border with Russia and all but ensures NATO dominance of the Baltic Sea. Both countries are substantial military powers.
Speaking of the Baltic, the small littoral states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have long punched above their weight. Along with Sweden and Finland, the Balts have contributed the largest shares of their gross domestic product to the support of Ukraine. More importantly, they have long sounded the klaxon about Putin’s plans and goals for expansion and oppression.
Yet the real rising star of NATO’s eastern front is Poland, which is well on the way to building a formidable military. The Center for European Policy Analysis exaggerated only slightly when it concluded in September 2023 that Poland had become a “defense colossus.” The Poles are now spending 4 percent of GDP per year on their military, doubling the size of their army to 300,000 soldiers. They are making huge purchases modern weaponry, including 366 Abrams tanks and 96 Apache helicopters from the United States, 980 K2 tanks and 648 self-propelled howitzers from South Korea, hundreds of U.S. HIMARS rocket launchers, many more Patriot air defense systems, 22 U.K.-made air-defense batteries and three U.K.-designed frigates, as well as 48 South Korean FA-50 combat aircraft from and 32 U.S. F-35 stealth fighters, complementing Poland’s existing fleet of 48 F-16s. This is a force capable not only of defending Poland itself but projecting power throughout Eastern Europe.
Resistance to Russian revanche is also remarkably strong in Southeastern Europe. Moscow intervened heavily to promote the “ultranationalist” Călin Georgescu, who led the first round of Romania’s presidential voting in November, only to see the constitutional court cancel the election and opposition parties of the left and center-right form a coalition to prevent Georgescu’s coming to power. In Tbilisi and other major cities in Georgia, thousands have taken to the streets to protest the announcement by Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze of the newly (and fraudulently) re-elected “Georgian Dream” party—another Putin-backed group—to suspend negotiations to join the European Union.
NOWHERE IS THE DESIRE for a Western-style European future more powerful than in Ukraine. And nowhere else is the essential weakness of Putin’s Russia on greater display, though many in Western Europe and the United States refuse to see it. In three years of stymied invasion, Russia has lost somewhere at least 600,000—by Ukrainian estimates, perhaps as many as 750,000—troops killed and wounded. As a result of the Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region, Russia has lost almost as much territory as it has gained. In the attempt to reduce the Kursk salient, Russia has imported some 10,000 North Korean troops to make up for Russians’ apparent unwillingness to enlist and resistance to another mobilization, as well as the ongoing out-migration from Russia estimated in the hundreds of thousands and likely including some of the best-educated citizens. While economic sanctions have yet to push Putin to relinquish his goal of destroying Ukraine, the Russian economy is wracked by inflation and soaring interest rates. Putin has further distorted the Russian economy by elevating defense spending to about 6.3 percent of Russia’s GDP.
Then there is the Assad debacle in Syria. For a very modest investment of several dozen combat aircraft in 2015, Putin reclaimed access to the Tartus naval base and Khmeimim air base, giving Russian forces not only access to the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa but a staging base for adventures elsewhere in Africa by mercenaries and other Russian assets. Putin has made overtures to the leaders of the Hayat Tahrir al Sham, or HTS, the Islamist rebels who were most prominent in the overthrow of the Syrian regime. But the Russians hold a less-than-powerful hand in any deal-making and it’s unclear whether or how HTS can govern Syria, always a fractious state—a legacy of imperial horse-trading after World War I—filled with people who do not trust one another, tenuously united in their hatred of the Assads and Russia’s brutality. Both the Russian naval and air bases are located in populous areas, making them inviting targets for irregular forces of all sorts. Even if Putin tries to hang on to them, whether HTS can provide the kind of security that the Syrian dictators did is an open question.
But if Putin’s balloon is leaking badly, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s is plunging toward a catastrophic crash. The fall of Assad punctuates—again—what has been a very bad stretch for the Islamic Republic. As others have observed, the October 7th attack had unintended consequences, not only for Yahya Sinwar and Hamas but also for Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah, for Assad’s Syria, for Russia, and especially for Iran itself, which not only saw its proxies defeated and deposed, but exposed the weaknesses of Tehran’s strike force of drones and missiles and invited Israel’s the evisceration of Iranian air defenses. Sinwar and Nasrallah are but the marquee names; the list of killed and wounded leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah is a long one, and both have suffered devastating blows as military organizations. Contrary to many predictions, the Israel Defense Forces’ campaigns in Gaza and southern Lebanon have been quite effective, and Israeli domestic support for these costly efforts seems solid. Indeed, no Israeli batted an eye when the IDF moved to seize the neutral zone on the Golan Heights in the wake of the collapse of the Assad government.
One also has to wonder what Xi Jinping and Company are making of all this. They have signed up with partners—“no limits” partners in Russia’s case—who look like losers. Even if the Chinese had very little skin in the game, and got some cheap oil from Russia, this should be a moment of reassessment in Beijing. That may well mean accelerated aggression toward Taiwan and a downplaying of other, global interests. Or Xi may choose to sit tight while things develop. But it seems less likely that the Chinese will double down on its support for Russia and Iran.
TAKEN TOGETHER, THE SWINGS OF FORTUNE against Tehran and Moscow give the United States major geopolitical opportunities. The White House’s timidity and self-deterrence has been long observed; the immediate chance to exploit Putin’s blunders of 2022 was squandered. Attempting to revive the Iran nuclear deal and move toward normalized diplomacy repeated the follies of the Obama administration. The best one can say is that Biden provided the Ukrainians with enough to support to keep them in the fight.
Regarding support for Israel, the Biden administration never allowed its discomfort with the ugly fighting in Gaza and the resulting humanitarian horrors to stand in the way of the Israeli campaign. And, to be sure, U.S. armed forces and intelligence service were essential in blunting the Iranian missile and drone strikes. But, by a large measure, Washington’s windfall is not the result of successful and energetic policy but a gift from the Ukrainians and Israelis.
Still, the opportunity is upon us, particularly when it comes to rolling back Russian influence in Eastern Europe. The United States has always been wary of organizations that might compete with NATO, but now may be the time to organize a smaller coalition, centered on Poland but including the Nordics and the Balts, deepening ties to Romania and along the Black Sea shore and encouraging Britain to rebuild its land forces. Such a coalition would be more agile and effective not just in denying the Russians the hegemony they seek but in punishing them for seeking it. Likewise, admitting that America cannot really withdraw from the Middle East—despite the efforts of the last three presidents—would mark a renewal of strategic wisdom.
Can Donald Trump and his lieutenants open the geopolitical gifts that providence has so fortuitously offered? In the immortal words of the Magic Eight Ball, “Outlook not so good.” Trump world’s animosity toward Ukraine is deep, eternally connected to his (first) impeachment. And upon the fall of the Assad regime, he was quickly up on social media saying the United States should have “NOTHING TO DO” to influence Syria’s future and to stay out of contest that is “NOT OUR FIGHT.” He does not seem to recall the chaos that ensued upon his 2019 withdrawal of most U.S. troops from eastern Syria or that we still have 900 or so there. And strategic imagination is not his forte.
Moments this propitious can’t be arranged by any amount of smart planning and preparation. But with poor strategic thought they can all too easily be squandered. To put it another way: At a time when American foreign policy seems adrift, conflicted, mercurial, it’s lovely to find Providence smiling down upon the United States. But Providence can be fickle, and even at its most benevolent, it might not like having its gifts returned to sender.
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