Congress approves bill barring any president from unilaterally withdrawing from NATO

DocMcStuffin@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 928 points –
Congress approves bill barring any president from unilaterally withdrawing from NATO
thehill.com
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So Dems restructuring the Executive branch is cool, when the GOP claims to want changes its all hands on deck? NATO should have been dissolved with the Warsaw Pact. At least the USSR kept its word, unlike the US

  1. This was overwhelmingly bipartisan legislation. Here is the split by party. The vast majority of republicans were for this bill.

https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2023723 https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1181/vote_118_1_00343.htm#position

  1. “Restructuring the Executive branch” is a pretty bold label for this. Congress is required for getting into to treaties and ratified the US’ joining of NATO. Clarifying that they need to be apart of leaving seems like a pretty minor iteration. It wasn’t clearly defined before. Now it is.

Read your own constitution.

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; ...

Congress, not the President, has the power to declare war.

The Congress shall have Power To... To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

Make treaties

Does not address withdrawing from one. Obama and Biden have had no issue instigating and starting war without Congress

USA allows the deployment of forces with the War Powers Resolution of 1973

Limitations require Congress to be notified and that Congress approves an authorized use of force extension beyond 60 days

No President has followed this procedure in the past 23~ active interventions including the 4 wars that the United States has deployed forces in to this day:

Syria Niger Somalia Yemen

I think you are right about the withdrawing though. I found that this is not the first time Congress has put a treaty withdrawal restriction in a defense authorization bill and it has been ignored in the past with Open Skies.

Office of Legal counsel opinion says Congress does not have power outside of the initial agreement and rules within a given treaty.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10600#:~:text=OLC%20asserts%20in%20its%20FY2020,addition%20to%20vesting%20the%20President

https://www.justice.gov/d9/opinions/attachments/2020/12/21/2018-10-17-nafta-wd.pdf

So even though they put this into a bill, if a future President pushes back against it, they likely will win without much trouble at all.