Congress approves bill barring any president from unilaterally withdrawing from NATO
Congress approves bill barring any president from unilaterally withdrawing from NATO
Congress has approved legislation that would prevent any president from withdrawing the United States from NATO without approval from the Senate or an Act of Congress. The measure, spearheade…
Congress has approved legislation that would prevent any president from withdrawing the United States from NATO without approval from the Senate or an Act of Congress. The measure, spearheaded by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), was included in the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which passed out of the House on Thursday and is expected to be signed by President Biden.
Preparing for the worst (or the return of the Worst)
Exactly my thought. This looks like the Biden admin taking steps against the return of Trump. The conventional wisdom unfortunately suggests Trump will return, but this is the first official thing I've seen that suggests perhaps official staffers think the same.
I think the return of Trump is the end of the USA as we know it, but also the Democratic establishment has been late to the party to avoid it, and the left remains far more fragmented than the right.
I don't think it suggests they believe he will return, but that it's a serious enough possibility they should do something to prevent a seriously bad outcome. With a 25% chance of a Trump win, this kind of prevention is worth doing.. and it's unfortunately probably above that.
No no you’re right this time will be much worse somehow
A second term trump? Of course it would be worse. A second term trump facing like a hundred different felony charges? Yes, definitely much worse.
Serious question, if the orange dictator returns to power does this actually...you know...stop him in anyway? What happens if he just does it anyway? It's not like there will be any consequences...
You’re not wrong.
What would he exactly do? This is basically saying he won't have the ability to order it on his own.
He won't be able to withdraw from the treaty itself.
He'll be able to publicly say he won't defend NATO allies, he'll be able to withdraw troops, withdraw diplomats, withdraw ambassadors, no longer have US personell attend meetings, refuse to continue funding NATO HQ, sabotage command and control, undermine leadership, and on and on, until the NATO treaty is barely worth the paper it's written on, leaving European NATO wholly unprepared for a potential invasion. It's too late to prepare for that if they start right now.
Russia might then take a gamble. A lot of people thought they wouldn't take that gamble in 2014. People thought they wouldn't take that gamble in 2022. People think they won't take that gamble if Trump gets re-elected.
Or Russia doesn't take that gamble. They simply engage in provocations. Military exercises near the border. Bomber runs which are aborted at the last moment. Some more extravagent extra-territorial assassinations. The chance of a miscalculation skyrockets, the chance of accidentally starting a war increases significantly.
They'll just ignore him like they did most of the time.
Gee, I wonder if they had someone in mind when they wrote it /s
Might as well call it the T.R.U.M.P. bill.
And if Trump wants, he asks his stacked SCOTUS to declare it unconstitutional, and withdraws from NATO. Zzz
Yeah, this is a hurdle, but that's all. Every law ever made can be unmade.
This bill violates the president's first amendment right to free speech because forcing him to do it is tantamount to forcing him to say he's okay with doing it.
Only a fascist trying to be a dictator would actually do this.
Sounds like rather than patchwork mini laws like this, they need to revamp the system to ensure no single person can take such drastic overreaching action.
Lets not forget that a president/prime minister isn't the singular person in charge, they're merely the figurehead/frontman of an entire government of elected people, as well add representing their party, and of course ultimately are a civil servant working at the pleasure of the people.
95% of the things the president does should go through proper democratic channels within the government and not simply rubber stamped by a single person, that path is the path towards dictatorship.
The few exceptions are rare things that can't be put to a vote or through regular channels, like launching nukes, etc. But these are exceptions only.
There should never have been a situation where it was possible for a president to personally decide to change the future of the entire nation and indeed world, in such a dramatic and drastic way, without any checks and balances to ensure that it is the will of the people, out even the will of anyone else in government.
Which is why it sounds to me like they need some significant reform, rather than just making this one little change :-(
Yes, past presidents have gradually expanded the power of the position beyond any reasonableness over time.
Which is why it sounds to me like they need some significant reform
Unfortunately the US founder had the same idea as you about reform. IE no one person or small group should be able to do so.
Now over decades Heck centuries. Power has migrated to the president. As groups continued to objects to slow change. So took the easy answer of trusting one elected member.
But any change to significantly limit power. Would need the constitution to be reworked to limit such power. Would require a huge approval. 66% of every state I think.
The very fact that Congress has to worry about such things. Is clear evidence such agreement is not and may never be possible.
This deterrent effect doesn’t come just from the NATO treaty ... Deterrence comes from the Kremlin’s conviction that Americans really believe in collective defense, that the U.S. military really is prepared for collective defense, and that the U.S. president really is committed to act if collective security is challenged. Trump could end that conviction with a single speech, a single comment, even a single Truth Social post, and it won’t matter if Congress, the media, and the Republican Party are still arguing about the legality of withdrawing from NATO. Once the commander in chief says “I will not come to an ally’s aid if attacked,” why would anyone fear NATO, regardless of what obligations still exist on paper? ... When I asked several people with deep links to NATO to imagine what would happen to Europe, to Ukraine, and even to Taiwan and South Korea if Trump declared his refusal to observe Article 5, all of them agreed that faith in collective defense could evaporate quickly. Alexander Vershbow, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and a former deputy secretary-general of NATO, pointed out that Trump could pull the American ambassador from his post, prevent diplomats from attending meetings, or stop contributing to the cost of the Brussels headquarters, all before Congress was able to block him: “He wouldn’t be in any way legally constrained from doing that.” Closing American bases in Europe and transferring thousands of soldiers would take longer, of course, but all of the political bodies in the alliance would nevertheless have to change the way they operate overnight. James Goldgeier, an international-relations professor at American University and the author of several books on NATO, thinks the result would be chaotic. “It’s not like you can say, ‘Okay, now we have another plan for how to deal with this,’ ” he told me. There is no alternative leadership available, no alternative source of command-and-control systems, no alternative space weapons, not even an alternative supply of ammunition. Europe would immediately be exposed to a possible Russian attack for which it is not prepared, and for which it would not be prepared for many years.
I’m sure he was promised the title of “Lord Trump” by Emperor Putin
e to an ally’s aid if attacked,” why would anyone fear NATO, regardless of what obligations still exist on paper? … When I asked several people with deep links to NATO to imagine what would happen
So should the president be commander-in-chief or not? Normally liberals aren't quite so mask-off and in favor of a military junta, but please, tell me how you square this circle.
Normally liberals aren’t quite so mask-off ... please, tell me how you square this circle.
Sorry, not American, so I found your question confusing.
From the article above:
The measure, spearheaded by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.),
Both parties seem to be in favour of limiting the power of the president to withdraw from NATO.
This doesn't seem to be a simple partisan issue, as this legislation has bipartisan support.
Permanently Deleted
fuck we might succeed and get trump back, quick put up the child safeties!
Damn, usually ml is at least SLIGHTLY better than hexbear, but not when it comes to anything that might be bad for Russia I see
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), was included in the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which passed out of the House on Thursday and is expected to be signed by President Biden.
The provision underscores Congress’s commitment to the NATO alliance that was a target of former President Trump’s ire during his term in office.
“NATO has held strong in response to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s war in Ukraine and rising challenges around the world,” Kaine said in a statement.
Biden has invested deeply in the NATO alliance during his term, committing more troops and military resources to Europe as a show of force against Putin’s war.
He has also overseen the expansion of the alliance with the inclusion of Finland and ongoing efforts to secure Sweden’s full accession.
The former president’s advocates say his tough talk and criticisms of the alliance served to inspire member-states to fulfill their obligations to reach 2 percent of defense spending, lightening the burden on the U.S.
The original article contains 343 words, the summary contains 164 words. Saved 52%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
NATO and OTAN are in the snippet. Is OTAN the French way to say NATO?
Yes; Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord
It's also OTAN in Spanish and Portuguese
Wow I've always just thought it just backwards as a design feature. I wore a NATO / OTAN patch for a year 😂
It would be nice if NATO stops existing, I know I’m a dreamer but I’m not the only one.
empire is non negotiable
That’s nice. Anyway, death to NATO
So who do you like?
the warsaw pact
I like the end of the Global North’s neocolonialism.
Hallelujah! Amen!
Doing something completely and plainly undemocratic to preserve "democracy" certified classic. I'm sure there's still some way to get out still, but, NATO forever no looking back I guess. The completely real and not totally contrived "north atlantic community" me and my closest friends across half the world.
How is this undemocratic? It was voted on and passed by Congress. Congress is made up of elected representatives by the citizens of the US.
Democracy is a popular vote for everything with no voter suppression. Not electing chumps to get bribed. Want to end war? End poverty? Let the people vote. Socialism here we come.
Thanks for branding yourself as a Putin ally and enemy of the entire free world.
I'm actually extremely worried about this constitutional overreach. Under many sane readings of the constitution, this isn't a power congress has. The president has a few unilateral powers in order to check the mob rules (or rather the external capture of congress.)
Ideally a president should be able to unilaterally dissolve all alliances and other undue foreign influence on our legislature. Otherwise there is no way to recover form this sham of democracy.
Under many sane readings of the constitution, this isn’t a power congress has.
The constitution only explicitly articulates the process for establishing treaties, not ending them. So it's a bit of a gray area as to whether the president can end them by himself, since he can't establish them by himself.
To my mind, it would seem exceedingly weird if establishing a treaty required the consent of the Senate but breaking one didn't. What's the argument to be made that the two aspects (establish/break) are so fundamentally different that the rules for the first aren't also the rules for the second? Why does the president need consent to say yes but does not need consent to say no?
It's definitely been done before, but also never directly contested. (In previous cases SCOTUS has avoided answering the question by saying they didn't have jurisdiction.)
I don't want to argue the specifics of breaking/establishing a general treaty (though i'm sure that is an amazingly interesting analysis). But I do want to discuss at a naive level the results of a US president refusing to enforce NATO. Without being overly factual, I understand NATO to be a mutual defense treaty ratified and renegotiated from the post-ww2 era til now. It was created by the US and former Allied Forces except Russia, to contain perceived Russian/Communist aggression.
From the genesis of this treaty( 1948), the US was understood to be the "enforcer" of it. Sure other nations would support the US and generally contribute to Article5, but in-practice and dollars, the US legitimized NATO.
So if a modern US president decided to publicly announce that he would no-longer respect NATO without additional justifications, how can the Senate enforce NATO without the US President and thus the Armed Forces support?
Laws are made by Congress. This is exactly the power Congress has. In your opinion, who would make laws if Congress didn't have that power, a dictator?
Found the trumpet.
Social media's understanding of law:
GOOD: "My guy does it."
BAD: "The other guy does it."
I was about to ask if, since you're "extremely worried" about this (seemingly esoteric) potentially unconstitutional move, how you cope with the rest of the world.
Then I saw the second paragraph and it seems that you don't.
all alliances and other undue foreign influence on our legislature
Alliances are "undue foreign influence"?