Not a single book, but you could get a series out of the Chronicles of Prydain.

I meant the US and post-Soviet Russia.

Meanwhile, of course, Marco Rubio - instigator of Boris Nemtsov Plaza, the man who used to call Putin a war criminal, and whose maiden speech in the Senate was all about American exceptionalism - remains a senior figure in the administration that's aligning the US with Putin's Russia.

It's both shameful and deeply humiliating for what was until recently the world's most powerful democracy to be reorienting itself so that it can be more like, and closer to, a second tier criminal autocracy like Russia.

In the decades since the end of the Cold War, US policy has fluctuated between disengagement, distrust, and - at the start - the aspiration that Russia could be encouraged to align with the US. Now the White House aspiration is that the US could align with Russia.

...Trump himself has consistently expressed personal admiration for Putin. Some, no doubt, have a mix of these motives. But whatever the reason, for the first time in US history, the most influential figures in a presidential administration are trying to align the US with Russia.

Some in and around the Trump administration appear motivated by the prospect of making a lot of money with Russia (for themselves, not the US); some appear motivated by shared ideology: authoritarianism, great power fantasies; aversion to NATO and to European values...

It's important to recognise is that this *isn't* about the US getting "back" to business with Russia, because there's never been much US-Russia business of any kind beyond arms control. What the Trump admin is pushing for is an unprecedented alignment of the US with Russia.

Tl;dr: the Trump administration lifting sanctions against Russia in the week that Russia escalates its campaign of war crimes against Ukrainian civilians is disgusting but it shouldn't be remotely surprising. It's what Trump and his circle have always wanted to do.

The only significant Russia-related sanctions the Trump administration have imposed were secondary sanctions which, of course, targeted US competitors rather than Russia itself.

For many months, the Trump administration held off movement in Congress on the Russia sanctions bill by periodically telling everyone it wasn't needed because Trump was just about to act.

For almost all of Trump's 2nd term, the Graham-Blumenthal sanctions bill was stalled because - unlike the GOP-led Congress in 2017 - they were clearly unwilling to put even mild pressure on Trump.

After Trump grudgingly signed CAATSA, he dragged his feet on implementing it and imposing new sanctions on Russia in 2018.

It was so well-known that Trump wanted to list sanctions against Russia in his first term that early in his 1st term, in 2017, Congress passed CAATSA to stop him doing it. After a delay, Trump signed it, but he hated it.

There was an expectation before Trump took office in Jan 2017 that he would lift sanctions on Russia. This expectation was strengthened by things like Trump praising Putin for delaying a response to new sanctions in late 2016.

Trump began his 1st term by appointing a Secretary of State who'd been CEO of an oil company that had lobbied against, and violated, sanctions against Russia. (He turned out to be a much better Secretary of State than his record suggested he would be.)