Senate Slaps New Sanctions On Russia

The Senate voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to punish Russia for its interference in the 2016 election with an amendment that codifies existing sanctions on Moscow, imposes new ones, and establishes that Congress alone has the authority to remove them. The Washington Examiner explains: 

The amendment would sanction Russia for a variety of misdeeds, including the nation’s encroachment into Ukraine and aggressive actions in Syria, by codifying punishment put in place under the Obama administration. But the recent Russian cyberhacking into the Democratic National Committee is what primarily pushed Democrats and Republicans to seek additional sanctions. […]

Democrats had threatened to block the Iran sanctions bill unless lawmakers included an amendment to punish Russia.

The amendment includes new sanctions on “key sectors of Russia’s economy,” according to the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, including mining, metals, shipping and railways.

The sanctions would also target “corrupt” Russian individuals, such as those perpetuating human rights abuses or supplying weapons to Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The sanctions measure could go to the House as early as tomorrow, and from there swiftly to the President’s desk.

But the Trump Administration has already made clear its distaste for the amendment. In Senate testimony yesterday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson argued that the new sanctions were “ill-timed” and could close off promising new channels recently opened with Moscow. He repeated the message in the House today, asserting that the president should “have the flexibility to adjust sanctions to meet the needs of … an evolving diplomatic situation.”

Some may be inclined to see Tillerson’s opposition as more vague evidence of nefarious wrongdoing between Trump and Russia. But it’s actually an argument that would have found a happy home in the Obama Administration, circa 2012. Then as now, the White House was pursuing rapprochement with Russia while Congress was pushing hard for legislation that would punish Russia—in that case, the landmark Magnitsky Act. The Obamans fought Magnitsky tooth and nail, arguing that the bill was redundant, unnecessary, and inappropriately handicapped the executive’s ability to punish Russia of its own accord. Ultimately, Obama signed the measure into law in part because Congress had shrewdly tied it to a repeal of the Soviet-era Jackson-Vanik amendment, a priority that Obama was unwilling to cast aside to veto Magnitsky.

In many ways, the same dilemma is playing out today. Trump, like Obama, clearly wants a more cooperative relationship with Russia; Trump, like Obama, does not want to derail that agenda by provoking Moscow’s ire. And today’s Congress, like that in 2012, shows no attention of complying with those priorities. Even tying the new sanctions to a larger Iranian bill is an echo of the past: Congress is effectively daring the President to derail another foreign policy priority and overrule an overwhelming bipartisan majority, all for the sake of a Russia-friendly veto.

Will Trump take that dare and veto the bill anyway? Given the current political firestorm around Russia, probably not: with half the country eager to prove Trump is a Kremlin stooge, Trump has far more to lose from conceding to Russia than Obama ever did. But the whole episode is another reminder of what we have been saying all along: Trump’s fervent hopes for a better relationship with Russia, just like Bush’s and Obama’s before him, are likely to be dashed when confronted with political realities and the abiding skepticism of a Congress that is all too eager to tie his hands.