Play Putin to protect his Naval Base in Syria and sideline Bashar al-Assad

Mike Morell on Charlie Rose tonight declared Hillary to be tough in foreign diplomacy because she is willing to back words with military force, the crux of many people's objection to her candidacy.  What this country needs is a State Department that thinks and acts with its tools rather than subcontracting the job out to the Defense Department. Mike talks of Putin playing Trump, how about our side playing Putin in Syria? There is no love lost between Vladimir Putin and Syria's Bashar al-Assad. A cold assessment of Syria shows its hopeless for Bashar's Alawite Shiite sect to control all of Syria as it used to and that he should retreat to his region by the sea where Russia's only Mediterranean naval base happens to be located.  Putin's ego can be stroked as a World leader who protects his military assets and controls his ally's excesses, just as he did a few years ago by taking out his chemical weapons. With al-Assad out of the way the current ceasefire would allow Sunnis and Kurdish sects to further partition the country into more workable self organized, it won't be pretty, political unions.