A year and a half ago, at the beginning of 2024, a short article appeared under the provocative title “The Future of Irregular Warfare: The United States is Winning, Now What?”. For decades, the prevailing narrative was consistent U.S. failure in irregular warfare (IW) and consistent adversary success. Since both narratives are false, it was long past time for an article like that one to set the record straight. The first months of the second Trump Administration are producing a barrage of dramatic daily news that makes it hard to predict the future of U.S. performance in IW. However, one can still see the past clearly and data is available to assess IW performance in 2024. Did the U.S. continue to outperform its adversaries in IW in 2024?
In ranking the U.S. and its main adversaries, from worst to best, here is how nations performed in IW in 2024.
Iran: The Biggest Loser
In 2024, the IW performance of Iran and its self-proclaimed Axis of Resistance was catastrophic for Iran. One year ago, Iran could claim that it controlled (or at least heavily influenced) four Arab countries: Syria (through the Assad regime), Lebanon (through Hezbollah), Iraq (through the Iraqi militias it sponsors), and Yemen (through the Houthis). Iran could also take pride in the ability of its Palestinian proxies—Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the rest—to shock Israel and the world on October 7, 2023. In 2024, however, Iran lost its two most important assets, Syria and Hezbollah, and Iran now appears to be one of the many victims of the October 7 attack.
Starting with Syria, the conventional wisdom a year ago was that Assad had won the Syrian civil war thanks to assistance from Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia. However, when Turkish-backed anti-Assad forces launched an offensive in late November of 2024, Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia were unwilling or unable to rescue the Assad regime. This was a disaster for Iran in many ways. First, Syria was Iran’s most valuable asset, and it was now gone. Second, the fall of Assad means Iran will never receive any return on its enormous investment in Syria. Third, Iran’s previous success in rescuing Assad made Iran a valuable partner that could and would rescue its friends, but the fall of Assad destroyed that narrative and revealed Iran to be a weak and feckless ally. Fourth, Syrian territory and the Syrian state were enormously helpful for supporting Hezbollah and advancing Iranian interests in Lebanon and elsewhere. That link is broken, and Syrian state resources are no longer available to Iran. The loss of Syria is probably permanent since Iran’s support for Assad leaves Iran with few friends and many enemies in Syria – including Syria’s new rulers. The new regime also enjoys support from Turkey, which has double Iran’s GDP and, unlike Iran, has a long border with Syria. Why would Turkey let Iran elbow its way back into Syria? Going forward, European countries will probably provide significant reconstruction aid to Syria in return for Syria facilitating the return of millions of Syrian refugees, but the refugees fled Assad and hate Iran for supporting him. Taken together, these factors make it hard to imagine how Iran can ever regain the influence it once had over Syria.
Hezbollah made a catastrophic mistake when it decided to support Hamas after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7. Israel took the opportunity to massacre Hezbollah leadership, eviscerate Hezbollah’s rocket, missile, and drone capabilities, and eliminate Hezbollah’s ability to invade northern Israel. Hezbollah is crippled, but unlike the Assad regime, it still exists, and it will eventually regain some of its former strength. Unfortunately for Iran, rebuilding Hezbollah will be much more difficult without Syrian help. Unfortunately for Hezbollah, its performance in 2024 proved that it was much less valuable to Iran than everyone thought. The tunnels under the Lebanese-Israeli border were never used and have now been destroyed, and Hezbollah’s vast arsenal of rockets, drones, and missiles proved to be no more than an inconvenience to Israel – an arsenal that no longer exists. Hezbollah’s claim to protect Lebanon from Israel proved to be a sham when its actions dragged Lebanon into a disastrous and unnecessary war with Israel. Hezbollah’s claim to lead the fight against Israel proved to be a sham when it abandoned Hamas and accepted a humiliating separate ceasefire with Israel. Through its corruption and misrule, Hezbollah made many enemies in Lebanon, who will complicate its recovery. In the future, Iran will provide endless rhetorical support to Hezbollah, as well as some financial and military assistance, but even if Iran could rebuild Hezbollah to its former strength, Iran will probably not bother, given the enormous cost and the lack of return on previous investments in Hezbollah.
Iran’s investment in Palestinian proxies like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad turned out even worse for Iran. With its October 7 attack, Hamas dragged Hezbollah off a cliff and took Assad with it. The Hamas attack also dragged Iran into direct attacks on Israel and Israeli retaliation. The exchange of direct attacks between Iran and Israel exposed Iran’s hopeless inferiority to Israel, left Iran helpless when Israel decided to attack again, and demonstrated that Israel can count on support from Western and Arab nations, whereas Iran will receive no similar assistance from anyone.
At the end of 2024, Iran retained its influence in Iraq and Yemen, but Iran’s Iraqi and Yemeni proxies are trivial threats to Israel, and Iran’s current weakness and failure to support Assad may invite challenges in Iraq and Yemen. Attacks on U.S. interests by Iran’s proxies have been totally ineffective since the Houthi hubbub in the Bab al-Mandab led to zero change in policy by Iran’s adversaries, and the one attack by Iraqi proxies that killed Americans led to immediate backtracking by Iran and its proxies. Overall, Iran’s IW approach of building proxies to threaten Israel and the U.S. was a disaster in 2024, forcing Iran to reconsider its entire strategy.
The destruction of Gaza reminded millions of Arabs that they do not like Israel, but that has not translated into love for Iran, and when Arab nations helped defend Israel against Iranian attacks, it proved that Arab governments like Iran even less than they like Israel. Iran continues to build closer relations with Russia, but Russia did nothing to save the Assad regime in 2024, nothing to protect Iran from Israeli attacks, and will not save Iran if Iran gets in trouble.
Russia: Doubling Down on Stupid
For Russia, 2024 brought another year of Putin’s disastrous war in Ukraine. Russian personnel and equipment losses have been enormous, and territory gained in 2024 was trivial (Russia captured 0.67% of Ukraine in 2024), but the worst part for Russia was that it became even less competitive with the West. Two decades ago, when Putin came to power in Russia, it seemed obvious that Russia needed to shift away from the old Soviet mistakes of ruthless information control and an economy over-reliant on defense spending and oil and gas exports. However, instead of improving the education system, opening information flows, and building a modern and diversified economy, Putin followed the familiar, and doomed, Soviet path. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine radically accelerated these negative trends for Russia, and each day the war continues puts Russia further behind.
As was pointed out in last year’s assessment, Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine proved that thirty years of post-Soviet Russian IW against Ukraine failed, forcing Putin to choose between watching Ukraine join the West or launching the largest and most expensive war in Europe since World War II. Russia’s expensive war effort left it with no resources in 2024 to retain its former position in the Caucasus, where former ally Armenia is pulling out of Russia’s orbit, or in Syria, where Russia failed to save the Assad regime. Russia is receiving useful assistance from Iran and North Korea, but these partners will demand payment for their assistance.
In 2024, Putin responded to his failures in Ukraine by launching more aggressive IW attacks against European nations that supported Ukraine, including cutting undersea cables, assassination plots, and sabotage attacks. In its broad outlines, Russian IW in Europe 2024 resembles the Russian IW campaign that failed in Ukraine. These IW efforts are too small and ineffective to force the targets to change policy in Russia’s favor, but are threatening and aggressive enough to increase hostility to Russia and to force the target countries to take defensive measures to protect vital infrastructure. These new IW attacks in Europe, therefore, seem counterproductive as they harden the anti-Russia positions of European countries. Additionally, they force the potential targets of future Russian attacks to build defenses against such attacks, eliminating that option for Russia in any future conflict.
It is important to remember just how far and how fast Russian influence has fallen in Europe. As recently as 2021 Germany signed the Nord Stream 2 pipeline agreement voluntarily increasing its economic and energy dependence on Russia. That same year French President Emanual Macron was still trying to build a personal relationship with Putin and bring Russia into a “shared security architecture” with Europe. Russia should be trying to build bridges back to the relationships it enjoyed in 2021. Instead, Russia’s new IW efforts in Europe seem guaranteed to lock in the current adversarial relationship for the foreseeable future.
In 2024, Russian IW was more successful in Africa, where Russian influence is increasing, often at the expense of Western nations. Lingering anti-colonial resentments and fond memories of Soviet support to resistance movements during the Cold War make many African nations particularly vulnerable to Russian messaging, and a dramatic recent increase in Russian disinformation in Africa seems to be paying dividends. However, Russia’s gains in a place like Burkina Faso are less important than its losses in a former Soviet Republic like Armenia. It remains to be seen how much Russian gains in Africa will matter and how long they will last. The African countries where Russia is making progress are some of the poorest in the world, and Russian assistance will solve few, if any, of their problems.
China: Turning Friends into Enemies
Compared to the fireworks from Iran and Russia, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been relatively quiet in IW in 2024. China continued to pressure Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan, etc., inspiring pushback by the victims of Chinese IW pressure and forcing the targets of PRC aggression into closer relations with each other and with the U.S. In other words, no change from previous trends. The biggest change has been a broader acknowledgement of Chinese support of Russia in its war in Ukraine. For much of Europe, Russia’s war in Ukraine is the most serious security and foreign policy threat in more than thirty years. They are hosting millions of Ukrainian refugees and enduring substantial economic hardship to impose sanctions on Russia. For the Europeans, Chinese support for Russia feels like a direct attack on them and further cools relations that were already strained by the PRC’s predatory economic policies. This is leading to an EU focus on “de-risking” rather than integrating with China, and the de-risking policy will weaken the PRC economically and diplomatically. Since Europe’s GDP is almost ten times that of Russia, the PRC is making a bad bet by choosing Russia over Europe.
The US: Winning By Not Interrupting
Napoleon is credited with saying, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake,” and this aptly characterizes U.S. IW successes in 2024. The U.S. did not launch many bold, new IW initiatives in 2024. Instead, the U.S. refrained from interrupting Iran, its proxies, and Russia while they made terrible mistakes. This restraint deserves more credit than it receives. For example, the U.S. could have, perhaps, taken initiative and achieved early ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon, but that would have rescued Assad, Hezbollah, Iran, and maybe even Hamas. By failing to interrupt, the U.S. benefitted from the destruction of Assad, the crippling of Hezbollah and Hamas, and the weakening of Iran. By the same token, a ceasefire in Ukraine would have stopped Russia’s astronomical losses and left it free to use those resources in places like Syria. The U.S. administration resisted the temptation to pursue a counterproductive ceasefire and instead allowed Russian mistakes to proceed uninterrupted.
The new regime in Syria is not led by friends of the United States, but Syria has been either a Soviet or Iranian proxy since the 1950s. If Syria is now a Turkish proxy, it will still be the best Syrian government in 70 years, from a U.S. perspective. More importantly, the Assad regime and the Syrian Civil War created a refugee crisis that destabilized U.S. allies in Europe. The end of the regime and the end of the Syrian Civil War create an opportunity to decrease refugee pressure on Europe and stabilize European politics.
2025: Storm Clouds on the Horizon?
How will the U.S. and its adversaries perform in IW in 2025? Many are already panicking, and the new U.S. administration does have a bias for action that seems to border on hyperactivity. The U.S. may interrupt its enemies and thereby rescue Putin from his Ukraine quagmire and save Iran and its Axis of Resistance. This would be unfortunate, but the dangers must be kept in perspective. The worst-case Iran IW scenario would have the U.S. administration allowing Iran to rebuild its proxy network, but that would take decades, and even then, the new Axis of Resistance would be much weaker than it was in 2023, since Iran will not regain control of Syria. Likewise, rescuing Russia from its Ukraine quagmire will not make Russia as strong as it appeared before the 2022 invasion, or nearly as strong as it was in 2013. Militarily, Russia has destroyed at least a half-million of its soldiers and burned through its old Soviet stockpiles of ammunition and equipment. Economically, it has spent three years doubling down on stupid. Diplomatically, Russia has burned its bridges with Europe, Russia’s natural trading partner. These facts will remain, no matter when or how a ceasefire comes to Ukraine. There is also a glimmer of hope in the fact that the new U.S. administration prides itself on hard bargaining with everyone. If the U.S. rescues Russia and Iran, what will the U.S. receive in return? There is reason to believe the answer will not be “nothing”.