ZH) At a moment of widespread acknowledgment that the short-lived Islamic State is no longer a reality, and as ISIS is about to be defeated by the Syrian Army in its last urban holdout of Abu Kamal City in eastern Syria, the US is signaling an open-ended military presence in Syria.On Monday Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon that the US is preparing for a long term military commitment in Syria to fight ISIS "as long as they want to fight."

Mattis indicated that even should ISIS lose all of its territory there would still be a dangerous insurgency that could morph into an "ISIS 2.0" which he said the US would seek to prevent. "The enemy hasn't declared that they're done with the area yet, so we'll keep fighting as long as they want to fight," Mattis said. "We're not just going to walk away right now before the Geneva process has traction."

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis stands in front of a map of Syria and Iraq.

Mattis was referring to the stalled peace talks in Geneva which some analysts have described as a complete failure (especially as the Geneva process unrealistically stipulates the departure of Assad), as the future of Syria has of late been increasingly decided militarily on the battlefield, with the Syrian government now controlling the vast majority of the country's most populated centers.