He’s right about the Alawites position. If a minority people rules a nation, they must be absolutely ruthless, or they will quickly lose their power, or worse, they will be exterminated. This is no truer than in the Mid-east.
Right now, the situation is as about the best Israel could imagine. A weakened Assad will depend on the Russians for survival, and have no stomach for adventurism. ISIS and Al Qaeda are caught between the Russians and Iran, and all of Israel’s enemies are spilling their blood on each other.
All the more reason for the US to stay out of the Syria fight.
Syria & much of the ME needs brutal tyranny to end the fighting & terrorism. The politically correct Western solutions have failed miserably in Afghanistan & Iraq.
You cannot democratize savages. You must remove the savagery from them first. The solution is often deadly. The savagery of Nazi Germany was only ended after the vast majority of the savages were exterminated. Same for Japan. Both were forced to surrender unconditionally. Strict martial law over several years, not voting booths, turn these countries back to civilization.
A brutal Putin MAY be a better solution for the ME. If not, it will be Russian lives & assets wasted AGAIN trying to civilize the savages.
What is sure is that decades of Western strategy has only yielded a very dangerous, more savage ME with nuclear capability.