Professor Michael Howard, the eminent British historian, frequently stated , "Wars are not tactical exercises writ large… They are conflicts of societies, and they can be fully understood only if one understands the nature of the society fighting them." The professor must have anticipated the Syrian Civil War.

In Syria, the civil war that killed as many as 400,000 people is over. Moscow's ally in Damascus, President Bashar al-Assad, is the victor.

It's true that the predominantly Sunni Arab opposition— virtually indistinguishable from a broad range of Sunni Islamist terrorist groups—to Assad clings to life inside Syria's Idlib enclave , but its days are numbered. Thanks to an agreement reached between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Sunni jihadist forces will eventually leave the demilitarized zone, patrolled by Russian and Turkish forces.