Russia Hawks Outmaneuvered by the White House on Defense Bill

C ongressional Democratic leaders, in a compromise version of the National Defense Authorization Act (the annual must-pass defense bill), blocked a trio of Russia sanctions measures targeting the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, 35 oligarchs identified by Russian dissident Alexei Navalny’s foundation, and American purchases of Russian sovereign debt, Republican aides told National Review. Amid a lobbying effort from the White House, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Gregory Meeks, and House Armed Services chairman Adam Smith were among the senior Democrats who purportedly worked to block the proposals.

After consideration of amendments in the Senate stalled last week, bipartisan negotiators finalized a new NDAA draft that omitted the three sanctions amendments. They completed the draft amid a flurry of diplomacy surrounding Russia’s massive military buildup on Ukraine’s border and President Biden’s call with Russian president Vladimir Putin on Tuesday. Throughout all of this, top Biden-administration officials have threatened to impose severe financial sanctions on Russia were it to invade Ukraine, but they’ve signaled that they would not impose the penalties as a preemptive move. Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported that Washington could pressure Kyiv to give up some of its hold on eastern parts of Ukraine that are currently held by Russia-backed forces.

Russia hawks in Congress sought to use the NDAA to force the administration to impose new sanctions intended to deter Russia, which it has so far declined to do. But the hawks came up short.

The compromise version of the NDAA, which the House approved Tuesday night and which the Senate is expected to take up soon, did grant $300 million in arms transfers to Ukraine — more than the $250 million that had previously been agreed to. But the compromise bill cut a proposal that had been included in the House version to impose sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 corporate entity. The White House has defended its half-hearted opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which Ukraine says will make current gas-transit routes through its territory obsolete, thus posing an existential threat to its security. Kyiv maintains that once gas is routed through the pipeline, which goes from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea, Moscow will face one fewer obstacle to launching an assault on Ukraine. But after the Biden-Putin call this week, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the White House believes that holding back on tougher pipeline sanctions will give the West leverage “because if Vladimir Putin wants to see gas flow through that pipeline, he may not want to take the risk of invading Ukraine.”

Two tough-on-Russia amendments proposed by Democrats and included in a version initially passed by the House similarly failed to make it into the final draft. One proposal would have required the Biden administration to determine whether 35 Navalny-identified oligarchs must be sanctioned under the Global Magnitsky Act, while the other would have prohibited Americans from trading in Russian sovereign debt.

In September, Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian government, said, “We will have to answer wisely,” if the measures were to become law. The Kremlin was saved the trouble.

Representative Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was the first lawmaker to publicly accuse the White House of pressuring congressional Democrats to kill the House-approved Nord Stream 2 sanctions proposal, which he authored. In a Wednesday afternoon statement, he expressed “frustration.”

McCaul’s claim that Biden officials lobbied lawmakers to back off sanctions proposals lines up with what sources have told National Review. Multiple people also blamed Schumer, Meeks, and Smith, accusing them of acting on behalf of the administration to oppose the Russia-sanctions amendments. In addition, a congressional aide told NR that Republican staffers asked five times why House Democrats wanted to cut the Nord Stream 2 sanctions; no one would reply in writing, the aide said.

A House Foreign Affairs Committee majority aide did reply to NR’s questions about Meeks’s role in all of this, however, panning Republicans’ accusations as “misleading” and based on a misunderstanding of the NDAA process: “Nord Stream measures fell apart because the Senate couldn’t come to agreement on a compromise, before [it’s] reached the House.” This aide also said that Meeks, “from the beginning,” supported Navalny’s oligarch list and the sovereign-debt amendments. The aide told NR that “multiple committees across both chambers” opposed McCaul’s Nord Stream 2 sanctions proposal because of the “unprecedented nature of creating mandatory sanctions without a waiver.” But Meeks was “open for reaching a compromise,” the aide said, before the Senate talks collapsed.

Separately, Representative Tom Malinowski (D., N.J.) told Politico that two top Senate Republicans might have blocked the Navalny sanctions, in addition to other amendments he proposed, though he couldn’t say for sure. The Washington Post also reported that the administration lobbied against that oligarch-sanctions provision.

Asked if State Department officials lobbied against the three amendments, a spokesperson said that the department “is working with Congress on a legislative package of sanctions in the event Russia invades Ukraine further, looking at how to maximize potential costs to Russia.”

The spokesperson also offered sharp criticism of detractors of the administration’s Russia policy: “We’re seeing some members of Congress press for sanctions that that don’t actually deter Russia but do threaten Transatlantic unity, in order to score political points at home — all while holding up critical national security funding on a range of unrelated issues. It makes no sense.”

Staffers for Schumer, Smith, and the State Department did not reply to NR’s request for comment. A White House spokesperson declined to comment on the record. The administration hasn’t spoken out publicly about any of the three amendments.

Congressional success in forcing the administration’s hand on Ukraine and Russia via the NDAA would have complicated the White House’s current approach as it undertakes a delicate set of talks with Moscow, Kyiv, and U.S. allies in the region. The administration seems to have gotten its way for now, almost certainly to the chagrin of the Ukrainian officials facing an imminent Russian attack.

Update: This piece was updated to reflect comment from the State Department received after publication.