Slowly and then all at once. That was the take I saw again and again on what happened with the rapid collapse of Bashar al Assad's regime in Syria. In a stunning 12-day campaign, the Syrian government almost uniformly surrendered its positions and dissolved itself. At the end of a nearly 14-year-long civil war that saw at least half a million people killed and up to half the Syrian population displaced, including some 6 million who had to flee to Turkey and Europe, the collapse of the Assad regime has upended the regional strategies of virtually every major power in the Middle East and beyond, requiring rapid strategic adjustments for each of these countries. But how they adjust will not be entirely theirs to decide: Syria, the geopolitical proving ground for so many of these powers, may be hobbled and damaged, but it still gets a vote in its destiny....
