I never understood this mentality that when the US is between launchers everyone suddenly has a renewed appreciation for last-gen achievements. We did the LEO psce bucket with the ISS. It leads to nowhere and had questionable space science utility. Its not a stepping stone to anywhere[1]. We're building the SLS and investing in SpaceX, Blue Origin, ATK, Sierra, and ULA to get out of LEO and to have a variety of spacecraft on tap. Nations still stuck in LEO with 60+ old launch systems are going to be left behind and they shouldn't be applauded for it.
A few years of downtime will be forgotten the same way we've forgotten the time between Apollo and the STS. Meanwhile, anti-US biased people will dance during this peroid and project questionable attitudes like the US not being interested in space (No one comes close NASA's achievements, missions, and budget) or how the US is declining because a pig like Soyuz can still fly to LEO.
[1] by the time the ISS was built we had enough know-how to do things like permanent moon bases and other achievements that were within our technical grasp but not within our political one. Its very easy to vote for splitting the bill on a space station with a bunch of other countries. Its a whole other thing to propose risky things like moonbases and to have them funded by Congress. Thankfully with the SLS and SpaceX we're back to doing risky things.