![Bipartisan group of senators reintroduce bill blocking presidential NATO withdrawal](https://www.jurist.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2019/02/NATO-Headquarters.jpg)
A bipartisan group of US senators reintroduced a bill Thursday that would prevent a president from unilaterally deciding to leave the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), or for using any public funds to do so, without the approval of Congress. The legislation reintroduces a 2018 bill that failed to progress out of committee.
This resolution has support from high-profile senators from both parties including Tim Kaine (D-VA), Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN). The language of the bill forbids any president from suspending, terminating, denouncing or withdrawing the US from NATO, “except by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, provided that two thirds of the Senators present concur, or pursuant to an Act of Congress.” Furthermore, a president is also forbidden from attempting to divert funds to attempt to achieve a withdrawal from NATO.
Should a president unilaterally ignore this legislation and attempt to withdraw from NATO without the support of Congress, the bill empowers both the Senate and the House to independently or collectively represent Congress and initiate judicial proceedings against the president in federal court, an action that would likely lead to a court striking down the president’s unilateral withdrawal as illegal.
The NATO founding treaty does not outline specific procedures for withdrawing from NATO, other than requiring the withdrawing member state to submit a “notice of denunciation” one year ahead of the desired withdrawal date. The US Constitution only requires that the president have the “Advice and Consent” of two-thirds of the Senate before making international treaties.
The 2018 bill was originally introduced amid concerns that then-president Donald Trump would unilaterally withdraw the US from NATO due to his skepticism over its continuing value. Kaine affirmed NATO’s value when introducing this recent resolution, saying, “NATO has been a critical alliance for nearly 75 years,” while Rubio called it “a critical military alliance for our national security interests and the security of our allies in Europe.” A majority of respondents in NATO member states view the alliance favorably, with more than half of US respondents supporting continued membership.