Donald Trump likes to go around claiming the power to rule by his personal whim, asserting authority the president simply does not possess under the U.S. Constitution. He has already started a war without approval from Congress, and this has emboldened him to talk about withdrawing from NATO—and its underlying treaty—also without approval from Congress. But this is expressly illegal.
CNN reports:
Trump told Britain’s Telegraph newspaper in an interview published Wednesday that he would reconsider the US’ NATO membership. He later doubled down, telling Reuters he was “absolutely” considering withdrawing from the alliance. …
Yet despite Trump’s claims that he can withdraw the United States from the alliance, a law passed by Congress in 2023 says the move would require the advice and consent of the Senate, with two-thirds of senators in agreement, or an act of Congress. …
The requirement for congressional approval means that even if all Republicans voted with Trump to withdraw the United States from NATO, it would require several Democrats—at least 14 if all Republicans are present—to join them to pass the legislation.
That’s unlikely to happen, as Sen. Thom Tillis, the top Republican on the bipartisan Senate NATO Observer Group, has warned against damaging the military alliance.
Tillis said in a March interview with ABC’s “This Week” that it is “factually not true” that Trump can pull out of NATO without Congress.
The 2023 law is redundant. NATO was formed by the North Atlantic Treaty, and under the Constitution, treaties are made with the approval of Congress and then become the law of the land—which implies that a treaty cannot be dissolved without the approval of Congress, either.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
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