Trump’s possibly treasonous Russia collusion backfired, bigly. It was too galling even for most members of today’s Republican Party. With its sanctions bill, Congress has hobbled Trump with respect to Russia.<\/p>\n
It’s somewhat surprising that Trump didn’t decide to force the issue with a (doomed) veto. He’s certainly immature and short-tempered enough to do just such a thing. His handlers probably had to argue with him quite a bit to get him to acknowledge the inevitable, and accept today’s humiliation of having to sign a hated bill into law rather than tomorrow’s humiliation of an overwhelming veto override.<\/p>\n
In the short term, definitely. Even through the medium term, quite likely. That really sucks, but with the successful (and unrepentant) Russian interference in the US (and other nations’) political systems, non-sucky immediate-term outcomes simply don’t seem possible.<\/p>\n
Of the sucky outcomes possible, a new Cold War seems to me the least sucky. It exerts consequences on the Putin regime, whose domestic economy is quite weak already and which was counting on a Russia reset in the West to end sanctions, create domestic economic growth, and boost the regime’s popularity.<\/p>\n
Now all Putin gets is a short-term opportunity to rally Russians around the flag while he copes with a long-term set of economic constraints that will act to undermine his regime’s popularity.<\/p>\n