Russian Nationalism Vs. Globalization

David Herszenhorn, in his April 12th article from Moscow titled "a Xenophobic Chill Descends on Moscow", beautifully contrasts the Russian isolationist vibe that has come with Vladimir Putin's divisive rhetoric with the modern nature of major Russian cities. "Moscow today is a proudly international city, where skateboarders in Gorky Park wear New York Yankees hats they bought on vacation in America, and where the designer French or Italian handbags might just as well have been picked out in Paris or Milan as in one of the boutiques in Red Square. Apple iPhones and IPads are nearly as common on the subway here as they are in Washington." Moscow is as culturally "West" as any other major city in the former Eastern Bloc. The technology has become involved in their lifestyle just as it has in America, so much so that the isolationist, "us against the world" rhetoric that has come from the Kremlin seems incredibly odd and even a bit hypocritical. Herszenhorn refers in the article to the level of rhetoric as even more potent than anything that came in the era of Brinksmanship. "One of the country’s most prominent television hosts, Dmitry K. Kiselyov, declared during an evening newscast last month that Russia remains 'the only country in the world capable of turning the U.S.A. into radioactive ash.'" Also incredibly odd is the plan of action from the West. Being that the state of the world economy makes us all interdependent, the idea of using economic sanctions that would damage Russia not only harm overall global growth (Russia is a top 10 economy that provides much of the worlds natural resources), but they also contribute to Russia's isolation in that it gives leaders like Putin a platform to look abroad for the source of their problems rather than looking at their own policy. The idea of pushing an integral country (with veto power on the U.N. Security Council) to isolation would seem to undermine the amount of progress that we see in Herszenhorn's brief picture of modern Moscow. Its hard to distinguish what the ultimate cause is, and though The West often immediately look to The Russian Federation as the aggressor and the cause of their own problems, they need to realize their role and become aware that they may be contributing to a cyclical problem of angry nationalism. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/world/europe/xenophobic-chill-descends-on-moscow.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0 Mitch Wood