The crisis in Ukraine has taken on a global bent in the last few months, drawing Russia, the United States, NATO, and even China into its web. While many political pundits initially considered war with Russia to be an unlikely consequence of Ukrainian strife, a clash between the United States and Russia is now widely acknowledged as a serious possibility.

The Nation’s Stephen Cohen visited The John Batchelor Show this week to reflect on how the conversation has changed.

“When you and I first started talking about the Ukrainian crisis earlier in 2014,” Cohen told Batchelor, “I began framing it as so dangerous that it could slip toward actual war.… I think we probably sounded like alarmists then because nobody else was saying that. But here we are ten months later, and…you’ve got a whole series of centrist people telling us what you and I worried about ten months ago, that war with Russia is now something we have to think about.”

—Cole Delbyck