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well, not quite. Stalin winning or Trotsky winning were both losing hands for the west. In fact trostky winning would have been worse since he was smarter and had a better strategic sense than Stalin AND he was fully committed to comitern, to spread communism to the west. He would have been able to do this -- he nearly DID do it with Tukachev's help in 1920 when the Bolshevik's seemed poised to over-run even Western Europe but were stopped by Marshal Piłsudski's Polish forces in the Miracle on the Vistula

If Trotsky won, then all of Western Europe including the UK would be communist in 1921.

But this case differs from the above -- T v/s S was a winner take all

When Assad wins, he's still going to have to constantly watch his back PLUS, he now knows that the rest of the "Arab League" openly hates him, so he'll split that and tag-team with IRaq. That leaves him as one dictator who has to constantly focus on keeping his Sunnis down AND it makes for a constant antagonism between the Iran-Iraq-Syria axis v/s the SAudi-Qatar-Turkey-Pakistan team

Assad winning is better than the jihadis winning and is better than Assad in 2008 -- he's weaker and will remain so and will also be constantly fighting internally and with the other Arabs.