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In Trade Deal With Russia, U.S. Plans Sanctions for Human Rights Abuses

New York Times

In the two decades since the end of the cold war, the United States has extended its economic reach to the far corners of the old Communist world, establishing full-fledged trade ties with the likes of Ukraine, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. Even still-Communist nations like China and Vietnam have been granted full trading status. But not Russia.

That seems about to change. For the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union, a bipartisan coalition in Congress has agreed to normalize trade relations with Russia, the onetime adversary in the long struggle between capitalism and communism. But at a time of renewed tension with Moscow, lawmakers have decided to grant the status with one large caveat — that Russian officials be held responsible for human rights abuses.

Legislation moving through the House and Senate with support from both parties would lift restrictions imposed in the 1970s under the so-called Jackson-Vanik law, permanently establishing normal trade relations with Russia, one of just a handful of nations left in the world still denied them. In doing so, Congress would potentially double Russian-American trade and fulfill a goal that eluded Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Yet in imposing sanctions for human rights violations, lawmakers are defying not just the Kremlin of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, but also President Obama, who while embracing the normalization of trade lobbied against mixing the issues. In effect, foreign policy experts said, the legislation represents a judgment by Congress that in his effort to repair relations with Moscow, Mr. Obama has not paid enough attention to freedom and democracy.