Idiocracy: Trump to impose new sanctions on Russia over Skripal poisoning

RFE/RL
Fri, 02 Aug 2019 17:11 UTC

© Leah Millis / Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on August 1 that indicates he is imposing a fresh round of sanctions on Russia for its involvement in the March 2018 nerve-agent attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Britain.

The State Department determined in August 2018 that Russia violated the 1991 Chemical and Biological Weapons (CBW) Act in the Skripal case, and imposed a first round of sanctions targeting foreign aid, the sale of defense and security goods, and U.S. government loans for exports to Russia.

Comment: It must be good to be government - unhampered by that little thing known as the rule of law, or that other little thing called evidence.

In his letter to both the speaker of the House of Representatives and president of the Senate, Trump said that his order was "pursuant to section 307...of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991."

The same 1991 law requires the president to impose a second round of sanctions if he cannot determine whether the country in question has stopped using chemical weapons within three months.

Moscow strongly denies it was behind the poisoning, which has added tension to already severely strained ties between Russia and the West.

The Skripal poisoning led to additional U.S. and European Union sanctions on Moscow and to diplomatic expulsions of Russian and Western officials.

Trump has lagged on putting the restrictive measures into force and has refrained from publicly criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Both spoke over the phone on July 31 and discussed the widespread forest fires in Russia and "trade between the two countries."

The president signed the executive order after a bipartisan letter sent to the White House earlier this week by leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee urged him to take action.

The letter said that "well over a year has passed since the [Skripal] attack," yet the "CBW Act mandated the second round of sanctions to be imposed within three months...Therefore we urge you to take immediate action to hold Russia accountable for its blatant use of a chemical weapon in Europe."

Comment: Governments don't make reality-based decisions, they shape reality into the form required to support their decisions. Kind of like this:

• U.S.: "So, who was responsible for these poisonings?"
• UK: "Russia."
• U.S.: "So has there been a trial or anything like that?"
• UK: "Nope, we just know."
• U.S.: "So no evidence, or anything like that?"
• UK: "We are highly confident it was Russia."
• U.S.: "Good enough for us! Sanctions it is."

Here's Russia's response to the latest sanctions:

The new sanctions will see the US opposing loans and any other assistance to Russia from international financial organizations, while also banning American banks from lending money to the country. Ironically, Trump made his move a day after what he called a "short, but good" phone call with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

The Skripal affair wasn't the real reason for the new sanctions as "everything [the US does] in relation to Russia should be put in the context of the growing campaigning in the run-up to the election" in America in 2020, Ryabkov pointed out.

It's most unfortunate that the rest of what has been called the US-Russian partnership some years ago is now being sacrificed because of the demands of some, who simply use relations with Russia as a tool in domestic US infighting.

The deputy FM said that Russia had long-since "adapted" itself to US sanctions and even managed to make parts of its economy, including agriculture, more effective because of them.

In order to further minimize the negative effect of the restrictions, Moscow is "first and foremost going away from the US financial system and departing from the dollar as a universal number one means of payment in the world."