RUSSIA had some real economic problems even before the Ukrainian crisis led the United States and European countries to threaten sanctions on the country after the Russian flag was raised in Crimea, a part of Ukraine, and troops who spoke Russian appeared to take over a significant part of the region. Russia’s growth had slowed to almost nothing: Its real gross national product in the third quarter of 2013 was just 0.6 percent larger than it had been a year earlier. The ruble was weak. Its manufacturers appeared to be doing much worse than competitors in other countries. Its stock market has trailed markets in most other countries over the last year. If this is a new incarnation of the Cold War, it will be very different from the old one. Back then, the Soviet Union and the members of its empire were in some ways in their own […]