It is no secret that unpopular president Donald Trump is a big fan of Russian oligarch Vladimir Putin and not a big fan of the concept of “checks and balances.” When the predominantly Republican-controlled Congress was compelled to vote through measures to sanction Russia for its continued “bad behavior,” Trump tried very diligently to block it. Since that time, Trump and his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have dragged their heels in doing the State Department’s job of giving guidance on the upcoming sanctions.
The State Department, facing bipartisan scrutiny from Congress, issued long overdue guidance on which Russian individuals and entities will be subject to sanctions under recently passed legislation -- 25 days after it was due.
The notice, required by the law, was due Oct. 1 and is meant to put potential stakeholders -- including US companies -- on alert in advance of the implementation in January. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sent the list to Congress Thursday, State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.
William Browder has helped drive and inform our country in the service of creating the Magnitsky Act, named after Browder’s former attorney who died a very troubling death in a Putin prison. The 2012 Magnitsky Act has been a very powerful sanction against Vladimir Putin’s specific brand of kleptocratic power—giving our country the ability to freeze potentially dubious Russian officials from entry to the U.S. and more importantly, to wealth they may have in our banking system. For his expertise and service in this matter, Browder has been harassed by Vladimir Putin’s goonery and more recently by our own country. Late last night, Browder sounded the alarm once again.
Foreign Policy explains that one of the possible reasons for the “delay” in doing its job is that Tillerson and Trump have downsized a few important positions in our State Department.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson eliminated the Coordinator for Sanctions Policy office, which had been led by a veteran ambassador-rank diplomat with at least five staff, as part of an overhaul of the department, former diplomats and congressional sources told Foreign Policy.
Instead, the role of coordinating U.S. sanctions across the State Department and other government agencies now falls to just one mid-level official — David Tessler, the deputy director of the Policy Planning Office. The Policy Planning Office, which previously operated as a small team providing strategic advice to the secretary but did not manage programs or initiatives, has grown in power under Tillerson’s “redesign” of the department.
Now, this doesn’t mean that there is nobody technically doing this job. It just means, like the rest of our government’s departments, that the reorganization efforts of Trump, Bannon, and the Republican Party are causing as much damage to efficiency and effectiveness as one might imagine.
“They messed up on this. They scrapped this when they could’ve taken it further,” said a former State Department official. “They said, ‘We’re just going to back to the point where there’s no clear coordination.’”
Another former government official familiar with sanctions said, without the office, there’s a danger of bureaucratic turf battles cropping up inside the State Department and with other agencies on sanctions. “This could be a real problem,” the former official said.
There are a few things at work here. There is the general conservative view that streamlining our government’s agencies and turning them into corporate-style entities will save money, money that can be given to wealthy donors. There is the conservative concept of turning our governmental agencies into puppet edifices that only give off the facade of working, while corporations and billionaires control the show. And there is the fact that Trump and Tillerson don’t want to implement meaningful sanctions on Russia. For Tillerson it may simply be connected to the hundreds of billions of dollars the former CEO was charged to make for his old company ExxonMobil. ExxonMobil was already fined for breaking sanctions in order to deal with Russia behind all of our backs.
For Trump it’s probably a variety of amorphously narcissistic things. Maybe Trump wants to be Vladimir Putin. Maybe Trump owes Vladimir Putin something for some reason. Maybe Trump needs a place to live after the White House, protected by Vladimir Putin.