The Syrian ceasefire agreement has shifted the balance of power to Assad | Patrick Cockburn
▻http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-russia-turkey-ceasefire-agreement-bashar-al-assad-shifted-balan
But the present ceasefire is not solely the result of Syrian and regional developments. The last hope of the non-Isis opposition in Syria and its foreign allies was that Hillary Clinton would win the presidential election and switch US policy to one more committed to getting rid of Assad and more hostile to Russia. Instead, they were horrified by the election of Donald Trump, a candidate even more dismissive of the non-Isis rebels, focused on destroying Isis and more favourable to a Russian alliance than President Obama.
Will the US acceptance of Russia playing a dominant role in Syria be capsized by new US sanctions against Moscow and the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats? Probably not, because what Trump is proposing to do openly in Syria is not much different from what Obama was doing without publicity. It is a long time since the US was seriously interested in getting rid of Assad — it has instead been concentrating on defeating Isis. This is likely to continue under Trump and might even have done under Hillary Clinton, if she had become president. At this stage, US policy in Syria and Iraq would in any case be difficult to unglue.