Our view: White House punts on sanctions against Russia
Less than one year after Japanese forces launched a surprise air attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States had punished the empire with an air raid on Tokyo and a tide-turning victory in the Battle of Midway.
Yet some two years after the Kremlin launched an electronic Pearl Harbor — a massive cyber and disinformation attack to disrupt the 2016 U.S. presidential election — the Trump administration has managed to punish Russia ... well, not at all.
An impatient Congress acted with near unanimity last July to hurt Moscow where it meddles with sanctions on anyone doing major business with Russia’s defense or intelligence agencies.
The deadline for action was Monday, and the Trump administration’s response? Pretty much a big goose egg: no sanctions.
State Department officials offered ambiguities about the threat of sanctions killing “several billion dollars” worth of “potential deals” for Moscow’s military and spy departments. But how many deals? How much money? Officials won’t say.
The sanctions law also required the Treasury Department to provide a “name and shame” list of Russian officials and billionaire oligarchs friendly to President Vladimir Putin who could face future sanctions.
Treasury complied, but only little more than 10 minutes before Monday’s midnight deadline, and only by cribbing from Forbes’' ranking of wealthy Russians and the Kremlin’s Englishlanguage directory of public officials.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, one of those named, joked that not being included on the list “provides grounds for resignation.”
All of this signals to Moscow that Trump doesn’t take Congress and its law seriously. There followed a Kabuki- like Kremlin rejoinder that Putin was angered by this “hostile act” from America but had no plans to retaliate.
The goal of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, as its name plainly indicates, is to punish malign behavior by U.S. adversaries. That’s not happening.
Russia continues competing with the United States for major arms contracts around the world. Members of Congress worry that the Kremlin will interfere in Mexico’s elections in July. And CIA Director Mike Pompeo told the BBC that Putin will target the American midterm elections.
In the weeks after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt urged Americans to “reject the turtle policy” and warned against an isolationist impulse to ignore the threat from abroad.
In Tuesday’s State of the Union Address, President Trump finally referred to Russia as a “rival.” But for reasons that remain murky, he prefers to keep his head in his shell rather than confront Moscow directly about its attack on American democracy.