This is CVSI and the world. I'm John Bachelor.

Escalation. It's a logic in war. It spans back thousands of years.

You can answer the other side's build up or success with one of your own.

It goes back and forth until somebody loses.

I welcome Katrina Vanenhoy.

She is the editorial director as well as the publisher of the nation magazine,

posting a column at the nation.com

about what the Biden administration and others have called a wider war,

escalation underway.

Katrina, a very good evening to you when I saw the photograph of Mr. Putin and Mr. She shaking hands in Beijing. I believe we now have

evidence that the war has grown. Is this escalation manageable or has it gotten away from us?

Good evening to you.

Thank you, John.

I think we've talked about this now for several years,

certainly since the war launched by Russia.

But I think what we've seen a moving goalposts not to be

sports like about it, but that what we're seeing is an escalation of NATO and US

involvement in Ukraine and increasingly inside Russia, a perception

stoked by the Kremlin, but a perception that Russia is not at war with Ukraine

as much as it's at war with NATO and the west and I think that pushes China and

Zijingping closer to Putin and Putin obviously closer to China.

It's worth noting that it was the first trip Putin took after his

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