Trump broke Putin’s empire. Congress is handing it right back

Kazakhstan then announced it would join the Abraham Accords, the first country added in five years. In January, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan signed on as founding members of the Board of Peace. Congress, meanwhile, has kept two Soviet-era statutes on the books that do nothing except remind these governments that Washington’s goodwill has an expiration date. The first is the Jackson-Vanik amendment, Section 402 of the Trade Act of 1974, which denied normal trade relations to nonmarket economies that blocked emigration. It had one purpose — forcing the Kremlin to let Soviet Jews leave — and it worked. Then the…