So the Fall of Syria appears to be a major victory for the neocons, a last-minue win snatched from the jaws of defeat in the darkening twilight of Biden’s lame-duck term. The most suggestive remaining unexplained questions surround the inexplicable reason why the Syrian army simply melted away, allowing the “rebels” to snatch up the entire country in about ten days with almost no opposition, and why Russia and Iran more or less stayed out of the fight and let just it happen.

I can’t shake a wild theory I came across on social media this weekend: Russia traded Syria for Ukraine. There’s zero direct evidence, but it offers lovely explanatory power. We don’t know, and we will never know. So, we shall wait and see what happens next on the Ukraine front in the Proxy War. But I sense this is bad news for Zelensky.