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.
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 :-(
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.
China and Russia’s colonialism and imperialism apparently, since those are the only two countries trying to expand their own new colonial empires anywhere they can.
Russia has troops in half a dozen African countries, expreses military control over several of its neighbors, and is currently invading its neighbor to add it back into its empire.
China is continuing to annex its neighbors waters, building out military bases around the Pasific and Indian oceans, and gaining control over large parts of Africa’s infrastructure.
NATO remains primarily committed to mutual defense and in their own words, “preventing changes to the status quo by force or coercion.”. Yes, the current system is flawed and ineffectual with poor power distribution, but this libertarian ideal, that the world would be better off without defensive alliances and that military force and invasion should be the primary deciding factor of foreign influence is just as silly as all libertarian policy.
We had a system where military power was the primary deciding factor of foreign relations, that was what lead to Europe brutally colonizing most of the world in the first place. We should not seek to return to that era.
Oh, I remember you. With the apparently non-ironic Communist East Germany avatar. You never did respond to my previous comment. I'll copy paste the relevant bits again to refresh your memory:
I wrote:
The East German government opposed Apartheid. We now know that behind the scenes IMES, run by the East German deputy foreign minister and Stasi employees, sold dozens of shipments of weapons to Apartheid South Africa. Source: Van Vuuren, H. (2018). Apartheid guns and money: A Tale of Profit. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
You called this a fairy tale. But then never responded when I posted this:
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.
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.
There are many forms of democracy. Representative democracy is one and you seem to like direct democracy. I know that I don’t have time for direct democracy… there is just too much going on. But there might be a middle ground.
So if the Congress passes money to the settler colonial state of Israel to genocide and exterminate the country of Palestine, would it be democratic? Oh wait…
Are you confusing what is democratic with what is supporting democracy? Democracy is just a system of government. A democratic country can nuke another democratic country and still be democratic. We could say they are not supporting democracy in other countries, but that’s not what anyone is talking about here.
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.
The article suggest this legislation has bi-partisan support.
I'm afraid Americans will have to decide if this is a good or bad thing based on the merits of the case and the actual legislation, rather than on which party is in favour of it.
Not at all if you are viewing American democracy through the view of parties you don’t actually support democracy at all. And I view this as extremely troubling and undermining the separation of powers.
I view this as extremely troubling and undermining the separation of powers.
Not American, but I don't get why. AFAIK your constitution literally says that the senate gets a say in treaties. Article II, section 2:
He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur
Now obviously, that's far more rare in recent history, IRC stuff mainly gets done by executive agreements, but that's mainly because the government signs far more crap. Makes perfect sense that congress gets a say in the big stuff. Prime example I can think of, is the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which was signed by the president but not ratified by congress. I'm sure there are more. Not something particularly new.
In fact, I googled and apparentlyt the most recent vote was on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which Obama had signed but was ultimately rejected by congress. That was unfortunate, but I don't see how that undermined the seperation of the powers either.
if you are viewing American democracy through the view of parties you don’t actually support democracy at all.
Congress is elected, no? This legislation was approved by an overwhelming majority.
If anything, as an outsider I find it troubling that the presidency has become more and more imperial. The president's just one guy. Obviously, what do I know, I'm just a foreigner. Maybe the US is different than France, which has similar issues. But plenty of your countrymen agree and historically agreed with me:
There is a lot to unpack here, and I promise I will not be able to address all of your questions. But I will try.
First the overall problem I have with American democracy is that it is controlled by a single class of people who will donate equally to the two parties to ensure that they will get what they want regardless of who gets elected. These types of donors aren’t concerned with individual rights like abortion, protesting, police brutality, racism, housing etc. They just want to make sure that funding for foreign wars and arms deals aren’t interrupted. So the wars in Ukraine, Israel, afganistan, iraq, the various arms deals with saudi arabia, japan, morocco, the EU, municipal police etc etc are never in-question.
The second problem is the delusion that the populace has any control what-so-ever over public policy. The congress and the senate operate entirely without oversight. The incumbent advantage is overwhelming. In the last 10 years the US has re-elected at least 3 people who could not be described as functional humans to the senate. (Feinstein, McCane, McConnell), these senators shouldn’t have been fit for office AT ALL. But the fact that they are able to be re-electice is indicative of the problem. So when a captured institution like the Senate starts to encroach upon presidential powers it is cause for alarm.
The president is by design more receptive to the public then and of the rest of the federal office holders. So when a bunch of corporate mouth pieces start to get upset about a president rejecting defense pacts that amount to 100 of billions of dollars a year in defense contracts I see cause for concern, even if the wolves bipartisianally agreed to eat the sheep.
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.
It is funny because it is the opposite actually. Former senates and presidents actually clashed over foreign policies, it is only in recent times that presidents were more or less left to decide. So, I guess there is a bit of projection going on here.
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?
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?
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?
Sadly they would only have one option left, Impeachment. And that is such a fraught political process that it’s use and success would be in serious doubt. The House might vote to send Articles of Impeachment up to the Senate, but actually getting enough GOP Senators on board with removing a GOP President seems like a long shot. I think much of it would turn on who the Vice President is. If Trump somehow picks a more traditional Republican as VP, then there may be some desire in the Senate, from more moderate Republicans, to remove Trump. If Trump (as is more likely) picks some horrible ass-licker as VP, the GOP may look at the situation as having to remove both Trump and the VP and then end up with the Presidency falling to the Speaker of the House. While that might still be a Republican, this is also a pretty large embarrassment for the GOP, not something they will want to face lightly. And it’s also possible for the House to flip to the Democrats in 2024. So, the GOP in the Senate may be unwilling to accept removing a GOP President for a Democratic one. The Senate could try to engineer the transition of power such that a GOP care-taker President ends up in power (basically Gerald Ford’s path); but, one also wonders if the harder left wing of the Democrats would take a hard line against such a deal, seeing this as an opportunity to completely blunt a GOP Presidency. It wouldn’t work, we’d just end up one vote short for Conviction in the Senate for Impeachment. But, that’s the sort of political calculation which would need to be made.
Congress could also try to force the President’s hand by using budget votes and thew Power of the Purse. But, I don’t see Trump responding to that in a rational enough way to matter, This is a guy would would be completely willing to shutdown the US Government in a temper tantrum over a Happy Meal toy. He’;s not going to respond well to being told to play nice with our allies.
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.
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.
If you are viewing actions of the legislature strictly through a partisan lens, you dont’ have enough background to approach the original concern at all.
The original idea of the US government is three branches of government. If one branch of government “bipartisananly” wants to limit another branch of government, that should be cause for alarm and ideally the congressmen involved should be censured and possibly impeached. If you want to change the powers of the president, then it’s time to rewrite the constitution, not do whatever the fuck this is.
No, you are missing the entire point of three branches of government. They are there as a check and balance of power to the others. They are literally supposed to stop the other branches from overstepping.
Article II section 2 of the constitution requires approval from the senate to ratify treaties, which is then up to the president to ratify and implement. Both branches of the government are supposed to work together to establish foreign policies, this is part of the check and balances. If you have sources interpreting article II section 2 differently I’d be curious to see.
NATO is a mutual defense treaty that is in practice enforced by US armed forces. If you accept that the President is Commander-in-chief of the armed forces, if He chooses not to respect the terms of the treaty by not deploying the armed forces, then in what way does congress get a say without grossly violating the separation of powers?
Congress has the power to declare war. The president being commander-in-chief does not mean he can do whatever he please with the U.S army as its own personal force. The president is meant to follow the constitution, even as commander. If the president ignores treaties and war declarations, I would argue the president is the one violating the separation of powers, and not congress by hypothetically enforcing the powers given to them by the constitution. By this logic, whoever controller the army should have absolute power, being commander-in-chief and all. I like how you slipped past my initial post by completely ignoring that the constitution grants congress influence over foreign policies by citing the president control over the armed forces as this unalienable right. Why have treaties then? Why have declaration of war? I think you might be slightly biased in your argument. The president was never the sole responsible for foreign policies, even though the executive branch had a lot of influence over those in recent times.
The Supreme Court has specifically made this point: The President “may not disregard limitations that Congress has, in proper exercise of its own war powers, placed on his powers.” Hamdan vs Rumsfeld (2006).
Just because the President is commander-in-chief does not mean he has plenary power over everything related to the military and it’s use.
Do you disapprove of the idea that SCOTUS can decide constitutionality? It's not in the constitution, so when they first did it, it was a "limit" on another branch of government.
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…
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.
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.
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