"Syrian civil war is over; U.S. should reach out to Russia"

"Syrian civil war is over; U.S. should reach out to Russia"

Once this is done, they will "move to eliminate the remaining pockets of resistance, notably around the northern city of Idlib," he writes.

"While Iran has been Mr. Assad’s most important military ally, the Syrian regime would still want to have Russian airpower to finish its reconquest of the country’s populous west," Galbraith says, adding that "the Assad regime has prevailed through tactics of unspeakable brutality - barrel bombs, starvation, the targeting of hospitals and rescue workers and the suspected use of chemical weapons - but it has prevailed."

And while U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power "has rightly focused attention on these war crimes, these denunciations will make no difference to the situation on the ground," continues Galbraith.

"There is an absolutely counterproductive idea favored by Washington’s foreign policy elites of both parties, recycled recently by President Bill Clinton’s secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright and Stephen J. Hadley, national security adviser to President George W. Bush, for providing additional military support to the moderate Syrian opposition. Such aid cannot possibly now change the trajectory of the war, but will certainly get more people killed. Though the outcome is clear, how the war ends matters greatly. The United States has an interest in a result that allows as many Syrians as possible to go home, that ensures the total defeat of the Islamic State and other extremist groups, and that safeguards the Syrian Kurds, who have been America’s principal ally against the Islamic State," the former ambassador writes.

"Achieving these goals will require close collaboration with Russia, whose intervention enabled Mr. Assad to turn the tide of the war. Fortunately, Russia shares many of America’s objectives, even if its Syrian ally does not," argues Galbraith, adding that the the U.S. and Russia could start by negotiating terms that would end the fighting between "the regime and the moderate opposition."

"President-elect Donald J. Trump has stated his intention to work with Russia and Mr. Assad to defeat the Islamic State. The sooner America reaches out to Russia, ideally before January’s handover of administration, the better," Galbraith concludes.