Nation contributing editor and ACEWA Founding Board Member Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. Pointing to the torrent of American political and media denunciations of Russian President Putin’s increasing of Moscow’s longstanding military support of the Assad regime in Syria, along with Putin’s dramatic offer to join the US-led air war against ISIS in Syria, Cohen concludes that Washington seems to prefer an Islamic State takeover of Damascus to any cooperation with Putin’s Russia.