The new cold warriors, as analyst James Carden calls them, are worried: the Syrian ceasefire, brokered by Moscow and Washington, could lead not only to a stable peace process in the war-torn country, but also to a thaw between Russia and the United States.

This is not what US hardliners, like NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Philip Breedlove, look forward to. If intra-Syrian peace talks succeed, "the prospects for the new cold war that they are so desperate to wage will be dealt a serious setback," Carden explained in an opinion piece for the Nation.

The analyst, who served as the advisor to the US-Russia Presidential Commission at the US State Department, maintains that US hawks would opt for a time–tested method to prevent Moscow and Washington from getting closer together. They will resume their campaign of painting Russia as a dangerous enemy.

© REUTERS / Jonathan Ernst NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Philip Breedlove

This is exactly what happened. Several days before the Syrian ceasefire came into effect General Breedlove told the House Armed Services Committee that "Russia has chosen to be an adversary and poses a long-term existential threat to the United States."Breedlove, like other high-ranking NATO officials, has previously made similar comments.

US hardliners want to achieve two goals: they seek to "derail the next round of Syria peace talks while further undermining US-Russian relations," Carden noted. They are also ready to recruit anyone, who shares their goals.

"The tendency of the new cold warriors to praise anyone thought to be standing up to Russia, no matter how noxious, can be seen in their fulsome expressions of solidarity with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan," the analyst detailed. "Indeed, Turkey's by now well-known collusion with [Daesh] is studiously ignored in favor [of] a narrative that paints Turkey as the latest target of Putin's Russia."

© REUTERS / Reuters TV/Haberturk A combination picture taken from video shows a war plane crashing in flames in a mountainous area in northern Syria after it was shot down by Turkish fighter jets near the Turkish-Syrian border November 24, 2015

Moscow's relations with Ankara went south after a Turkish fighter jet shot down a Russian bomber over Syrian territory. Turkish authorities cited airspace violations as the reason behind the move, but failed to provide proof that they took place. For their part, Russian defense officials and the Su-24 pilot released data showing that the plane never crossed into Turkey.