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.
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 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?
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.
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?
Social media’s understanding of law:
GOOD: “My guy does it.”
BAD: “The other guy does it.”
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.
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:
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.
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:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_presidency
Article mentions FDR, Bush and Obama. So not simply a partisan issue either.
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.
Found the trumpet.
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.
What? The idea of the president being in charge of foreign policy isn’t abnormal unless you think that history started when you were born.
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.