British Secretary of Defence Michael Fallon scans the oversized maps that lean against his office wall, examining portraits of a world on fire.
Atop the pile is a closeup of the city of Aleppo, and Mr. Fallon uses his finger to trace the shrinking part of the city that is controlled by anti-regime rebels. The fighters, some of them Western-backed, are surrounded on the ground by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces while the enclave is pummelled from the air by Russian warplanes.
