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By APD Writer Lu Jiafei
For an increasingly partisan U.S. Congress where lawmakers are working across the aisle far less often than they used to be, a growing hostility towards Russia has turned otherwise rivals into a cohesive force.
That, unfortunately, is a headache for U.S. President Donald Trump.
On Tuesday, by a vote of 419-3, the House of Representatives of Congress overwhelmingly approved a bipartisan bill which imposes new sanctions on Russia, Iran and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
Unlike most sanctions legislations, the bill specifically gives Congress veto power to stop Trump from easing or even lifting sanctions without lawmakers’ consent despite month-long White House lobbying to change the content.
Though it remains unclear when Senate leaders, stuck in a legislative swamp to repeal and replace Obamacare, will bring the bill to the floor, an easy passage of the sanction bill in the upper chamber is widely expected.
After all, an early version of the sanction bill originated from the Senate and was approved overwhelmingly by a vote of 98-2 last month.
The House version of the sanction bill adds the DPRK to the package and seeks to address U.S. companies’ concern that they could be frozen out of energy projects with Russian partners.
Apart from those changes, the Russian provisions, especially the congressional restriction on Trump’s ability to unilaterally ease sanctions on Russia, remains intact.
After the near-unanimity vote, House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, said in a statement that the sanctions bill “tightens the screws on our most dangerous adversaries in order to keep Americans safe.”
Trump would gladly agree with Ryan and his Republican colleagues to punish Iran and the DPRK.
But out of his narcissistic ego and a fledgling foreign policy agenda that appears to stress collaboration with Russia on solving the Syrian crisis, new sanctions against Russia and the deprivation of his power to waiver sanctions if necessary are anything but favorable.
Despite long-term bipartisan hostility towards Russia in U.S. Congress after the Ukraine crisis, Trump to some extent has only himself to blame.
One of the main rationales behind new sanctions against Russia is to retaliate against Moscow’s alleged meddling in the 2016 election, in which Trump was the winner.
Shortly before Trump's inauguration in January, the Office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence released a report in which the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency all concluded that Russia attempted to influence the election to help Trump.
While even Republicans in the Congress agree with the findings, six months in his presidency, Trump still remains unconvinced that Russia sought to influence the 2016 election, new White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci said on Sunday.
By repeatedly casting doubt on the findings by the U.S. intelligence community, Trump himself spurred his own party into action to check his ability to ease sanctions against Russia in the future.
So far, it remains unclear whether Trump would sign the bill, and the White House was sending mixed messages these says.
On Tuesday after the House vote, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the White House “is reviewing the House legislation and awaits a final legislative package for the President’s desk,” despite the fact that only two days ago, she told U.S. media that the White House was also on board with Congress on the sanction bill.
For Trump, he is now stuck in a no-win situation.
If he vetoes the bill, a resolved Congress has far enough votes to override his veto and force the bill into law. It would also be a PR disaster for the Trump camp, still scrambling to fend off Russian collusion allegations.
If he signs the bill into law, it could represent a setback for a U.S. president who has made it a priority to mend relations with Russia.
With the dilemma in mind, Trump, who never shies away from public confrontation, again resorted to Twitter to lash out his anger.
“It’s very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their President,” Trump wrote on Sunday.
After spending one year in Palestine covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict between 2013 and 2014, Jiafei Lu moved to Washington, D.C. in 2015 and started covering the U.S. presidential election till the very end of Donald Trump's upset victory early November, 2016. Since then, he has been working as a diplomatic correspondent for Xinhua.
(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)
