As Trump Readies to Return, He Faces a Weaker Russia, China, and Iran.

In Roman myth, two-headed Janus, from whose name the month of January is derived, is the god whose likeness guards the city, a god of beginnings and transitions. Janus symbolizes duality, the prospect that events can tip either way, that all is a passage, not a status quo. 

As 2024 ends, the world is amid a tectonic change. There is the stunning overthrow of the Assad dynasty in Syria, leaving the country on the precipice—on one side, stability and a better future. On the other, there could be more repression or utter chaos. There is the reinvigorated China-Russia axis against the West seasoned by Iran and North Korea as bit players. But America’s adversaries are weaker as the Biden era ends. There is Russia’s economic strain, China’s slowing growth, Iran’s loss of proxies, and North Korea remaining a hermit outlier. The fragile state of the world order that has kept the peace in the 80 years since the end of World War II is threatened by Russian expansionism and Donald Trump’s isolationism; at the same time, NATO has never been bigger, stronger, and more united in its 75-year history. Janus would understand our times.  

Consider the rebel victory in Syria led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham—and other Turkish-backed groups over Bashar al-Assad. It swiftly and unexpectedly ended 53 years and two generations of brutal family rule. Assad had hardly settled into his new home in Russia earlier this month before the argument broke out among foreign policy wonks over who could take credit for ousting him. The back and forth is not unimportant, although it obscures the looming issue of how the Trump administration will manage not only Syria but the China-Russia axis but also the dangers that a loose enemies-of-freedom alliance poses going forward. 

Trump will want to take credit for Assad’s ouster as surely as he does for uptick in the Dow Jones averages and every downtick in the inflation rate. But that would be absurd. Just before Assad fled the country, Trump tipped his hand on Syria, trumpeting on Truth Social that the American strategy should be—to do nothing. 

“Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!” 

That approach is consistent with Trump’s “America First” philosophy, which would have abandoned Ukraine but continue to arm Israel and our Mideast Arab allies to the hilt. In his first term, Trump was fortunately dissuaded from his instinct to withdraw the small number of American troops in eastern Syria that fight ISIS. For the degradation of ISIS, Trump can take considerable credit through the continuation of Barack Obama’s belated but effective assault on the Islamic State, even though he almost missed the boat.  

So far, Trump has not tried to reconcile his caps-lock warning with making sure Syria does not become a snake pit for terrorists or jihadists—an Afghanistan on the Mediterranean.  

What Trump ignores is that the Assad regime’s fall is of importance not only to the U.S. but also to Russia and China, which gets most of its energy from the Persian Gulf and ships much of its manufactured exports through the Red Sea and Suez Canal. Russia’s sole military port on the Mediterranean is its base in Tartus, Syria.  

President Joe Biden and his aides say they deserve credit for Assad’s downfall and the weakening of Iran because they succeeded in neutralizing Syria’s principal backers, Russia and Iran. None of Assad’s allies came to the tyrant’s rescue in his hour of maximum danger, and Biden has taken some credit for that. 

Israel would like to take credit as well. John F. Kennedy said, “Success has many fathers.” Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu argues that the only reason Assad fell was that Israel eliminated Hezb Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, in a targeted killing that “Bibi” called “a turning point in the collapse of the axis.” Israeli officials have gloated that Netanyahu ordered that attack over the objections of Biden, who feared that pursuing Nasrallah would risk a wider war, just as the U.S. warned against the invasion of Rafah in Gaza. 

Netanyahu claimed the clincher was his decision to resist Biden’s pressure “to stop the war before we accomplished all of our goals” against both Hamas and Hezbollah. In Netanyahu’s worldview, there would have been no American-brokered cease-fire with Hezbollah if there had been no crushing response to the steady Hezbollah assault on Israel that began within hours of the October 7, 2023, slaughter of Israeli civilians. The Hezbollah bombardment of Israel’s north has caused some 80,000 Israelis to become internal refugees. The unity government’s response, featuring the ingenious explosion of Israeli-planted pagers, cellphones, and two-way radios that killed some members of the terror group’s leadership, deeply unnerved its fighters. Then came the destruction of much of Hezbollah’s stockpile of missiles and the decapitation of its leadership. 

Had he listened to Biden’s warnings, Netanyahu sniggers, Assad would still be luxuriating himself in his Damascus palace instead of shopping for fur-lined Ushanka winter hats in his new home, Moscow? 

A more balanced view came from the Brookings Institution’s Suzanne Maloney, who noted that Biden may rightfully take credit for creating some pressure on the Syrian dictator. Still, she said there was no American plan to oust the Assad government. Whenever we have tried regime change, it hasn’t worked.  

But she added, “It is probably untoward for the Biden administration to take credit—it was ultimately Syrians who took the actions that freed them from this brutal regime.” 

Still, the enormous American supplemental aid to Israel since October 7 helped weaken key Iranian proxies, diminish its air defenses and military manufacturing, and helped Israel handily rebuff direct attacks from Tehran. And, even more importantly, American aid to Ukraine—arguably less robust than what has been needed but still an enormous achievement for the Biden administration and NATO—managed to pin down the Russians and limit Moscow’s capacity to help its longtime client, Assad, who is also its last real ally in the region. 

“For years, the main backers of Assad have been Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia. But over the last week, their support collapsed—all three of them—because all three of them are far weaker today than they were when I took office,” President Biden said this week. “For the first time ever, neither Russia nor Iran nor Hezbollah could defend this abhorrent regime in Syria. And this is a direct result of the blows that Ukraine and Israel have delivered upon their own self-defense, with unflagging support of the United States.”  

This makes sense. Israel and Ukraine fought for survival, often chafing under U.S. restraint, but were enabled by its generosity, and their courage and vehemence weakened Russia and Iran. 

The stunning collapse of the Assad dynasty was not just a defeat for the tyrant. It was also a humiliating setback for his two biggest patrons: Iran and Russia. For years, both countries had propped Assad’s brutal government, with Russia offering air power and Iran lending it the manpower of its proxies. Now, even Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, allows that Iran is on its back foot. Bolton supposes Iran must be terrified of what Israel may do to its nuclear weapons program.  

Similarly, on Sunday on CNN, Fareed Zakaria made the case for Russian weakness as the Biden term ends: 

Think about it: if Russia were winning in Ukraine, would he threaten to use nuclear weapons? Two scholars, Mark R Devore and Alexander Mertens, note in Foreign Policy that Russia is losing around 320 Tank and artillery cannon barrels a month and producing only 20. Citing open sources, they note that Russia has lost almost 5000 infantry fighting vehicles since invading Ukraine. Russian defense contractors can only make around 200 a year, its labor shortages are acute in virtually every sector, something even Putin has acknowledged to the military. The starkest sign is that the Russian army has had to invite North Korea to send in troops to help it out. Noel Foster of the Naval War College writes that Moscow’s desperation can be seen in the rising salaries and bonuses it has to offer to new recruits. As of July 2024, recruits from Moscow received a $21,000 enlistment bonus and wages amounting in total to just under $60,000 in their first year of service, effectively earning more per month than privates enlisting in the U.S. Army at the same time 

Not only has Russia abandoned a long-standing ally, but the Assad collapse has also sullied the reputation of Vladimir Putin. Success abroad is the key to any Russian ruler’s legitimacy.  

Syria was a member of what some have called “the axis of autocracies” or “the axis of upheaval,” the loose group of authoritarian states that have quick to challenge the U.S. and its democratic allies. The abdication of Assad demonstrates how porous this unholy alliance was. Both Iran and Russia were too strung out to ride to Assad’s rescue, in the case of Iran with Israel and, in the case of Russia, with Ukraine. 

While axis loyalty to Syria turned out to be as ephemeral as Assad’s regime, the relationship between China and Russia, the two central players in the axis, is closer than ever. In a special report by the Council on Foreign Relations, experts Robert Blackwill and Richard Fontaine make the case that the Moscow-Beijing partnership is stronger than ever. In a joint statement earlier this year, Putin and President Xi Jinping said that Chinese-Russian relations were “experiencing the best period in their history.”  

Perhaps most alarming is their increasingly close military cooperation. China has helped Russia rebuild its military-industrial sector, and there are concerns that Russia might be providing China with submarine expertise and jet engine technology in return. The two countries hold joint military exercises. In July, a formation of Chinese and Russian planes probed Alaska’s air defense identification zone for the first time. And then there is the appearance of North Korean troops in Ukraine. 

Also, there is the close personal relationship between Xi and Putin—who have met one-on-one, Blackwill and Fontaine remind us, more than 40 times. Xi has called Putin his “best friend,” the two leaders have characterized their partnership as having “no limits.” 

The two are determined to alter the U.S.-led world order, which, they believe, serves as little more than a smoke screen for American hegemony.  

That said, both China and Russia have been significantly weakened. And China’s patience may well turn out to have limits. As we saw with Russia’s abandonment of Assad, at the end of the day, stressed authoritarian powers will only go so far to help an ally in need. 

Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski issued a prescient warning nearly 30 years ago. “Potentially, the most dangerous scenario,” he said, “would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an ‘anti-hegemonic’ coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances. It would be reminiscent in scale and scope of the challenge once posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc, though China would likely be the leader and Russia the follower this time.”  

This coalition has emerged today, bound by shared opposition to a U.S.-led international order. Visiting Moscow in March 2023, Xi Jinping said, “Right now there are changes—the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years—and we are the ones driving these changes together.” In a lengthy May 2024 joint statement, Xi and Putin made their long-term goals abundantly clear. “Russian-Chinese relations,” they wrote, “stand the test of rapid changes in the world, demonstrating strength and stability, and are experiencing the best period in their history. . . . [We] intend to increase interaction and tighten coordination to counter Washington’s destructive and hostile course towards the so-called ‘dual containment’ of our countries.”  

As for the toppling of the Assad regime, recent events could be tremendously beneficial to neighboring Arab countries, most notably Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan. But a destabilized, more fragmented, and chaotic Syria could spread further unrest into those three countries, revitalize terrorism and extremism, and prove a disaster. 

A U.S. withdrawal from northeastern Syria is the kind of snafu Trump was dissuaded from undertaking during his first term but might attempt again early in his second term. It’s easy to imagine him citing the downfall of the regime and declaring ISIS long defeated as ample grounds to abandon Syria. He said as much when he bolded: “THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED.” 

But we know Trump likes to take credit. If a more stable, tolerant, and unified Syria emerges with a better future for the entire Arab world, Trump could see an opportunity to take a lot of credit for events during the Biden era, even if richly underserved.