Democratic and Republic senators renewed an effort to block any U.S. president from leaving NATO on Wednesday, as leaders of the alliance attended an eventful summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.
I think any treaty should by default need approval by legislature for both entering and exiting the treaty, unless the legislature explicitly empowers the president to exit a particular treaty without legislative approval.
No country would trust the US if treaties could be potentially changed every 4 years by one person.
I'm surprised all treaties aren't handled this way. We have such a high bar to approve them for a reason, it seems silly to not have a similarly high bar to leave them.
I do understand why you would want to be able to exit fast. I think it makes sense for the individual country as a safety net in case whatever deal you've entered goes south.
...but having a system in place to ensure that the majority agrees with that decision is important.
I do understand why you would want to be able to exit fast.
If there's a legitimate reason why we would need to "exit a treaty fast", then I'm sure that Congress would have no issues approving it. I mean, I know we're in the era of "because fuck you that's why" politics, but if we needed to exit a treaty quickly, there has to be some pretty grave circumstances why, and I'm sure that even the dumbest of the dumb would know to put politics aside for a bit.
It has bipartisan support in the senate, but who knows what the republican-controlled house will do. This bill basically exists to prevent Trump or another republican president from fucking around with U.S. and global security.
I think one of the biggest threats facing the US position as the world leader in many areas is ourselves. We need more bills like this just to ensure other world leaders that the position of the US isn't going to change on important issues every time the party in power changes, because right now one of the biggest concerns other leaders have is that the incoming administration is just going to upend everything every 4-8 years, and they need more stability than that.