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Although the Alawite tribes now have the upper hand in the seesaw Syrian civil war, they remain desperate. They know that, if they lose, they will be mercilessly slaughtered, just as Assad is mercilessly slaughtering those who would overthrow his Alawite regime. Surrender is unthinkable.

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The Alawites’ only thinkable option, apart from continuing to fight, is retreating to their mountainous stronghold along the Mediterranean coast. Before the Russians decided to risk an intervention and rescue Assad’s regime from what appeared to be sure defeat, Assad had in fact prepared, with Russian support, an Alawite retreat to what would become a well-armed Alawite state.

An Alawite state where Alawites could defend themselves, and rule only themselves, would remove them from the civil war and begin a needed untangling of peoples — Syria, originally formed as a federation of six mini-states, is an artifice created after World War I by the colonial powers. A further untangling would result from letting the Kurds rule over themselves in their traditional homelands, and the Druze in theirs.

This untangling, which would allow for the self-determination of peoples and the prospect of relative stability, should be the West’s goal. Because the cash-strapped Russians have no interest in a protracted war in the Middle East, this untangling should also be a Russian goal.

Russia’s overriding interest lies in maintaining its Mediterranean naval base on the Alawite coast, protected from the Sunni Arab majority that wants to overthrow Assad, as well as from the Iranians, who want all of Syria as a client state. An easily defended Alawite state, allied with Russia and hosting Russian military facilities, affordably achieves Russian interests. By resisting Assad’s overthrow and remaining his steadfast ally, Russia secures Assad’s support and that of the Alawites. Russia also maintains its reputation of remaining loyal to its allies, a geopolitical asset that the U.S., to its discredit, has lacked.