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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American power, politics and prejudices.

The election is over, but the Americano never stops, and there will be a lot to talk about with the second Trump administration.

And so we'll bring bringing you more

and more Americano, because judging from the feedback, that's what you guys want. So please

keep listening.

I am delighted to be joined by Michael Weiss, who is an editor at The Insider magazine, and our very own Owen Matthews, who is our Russia editor.

Michael, I'll start with you. I think what struck most people about this is the speed at which it's happened.

Assad may have been a brutal dictator.

He may have been very, very unpopular, but as far as we knew until recently, he had a pretty sizable army, strong support from Russia, and that appears to have collapsed dramatically

and suddenly.

Why has it been so sudden and so dramatic? I think historians are going to be studying this for years. If you had told me two

weeks ago that the Republican Guard, the fourth division, which are two of the most formidable

or seemingly formidable military units of the

Assad regime would simply melt into the air. Damascus was taken without much of a fight.

It was sort of given over to the rebels in advance of their invasion. It's extraordinary.

To be honest with you, I don't know. I think we all kind of have to

scratch our heads and wonder just how brittle, how fragile this regime was all along. But I want to

get into sort of how this came to be because it's quite interesting. There's a geopolitical sort of

set of circumstances and a very opportunistic moment that allowed

...