Some of the U.S. president’s hostility was to be expected. Trump has been disparaging U.S. security alliances for decades, dating all the way back to his famous Playboy interview in 1990, when he called on allies to pay the U.S. for the security it was providing. As a real-estate mogul, Trump felt the burden of having allies outweighed the benefits, and that has remained his view as president.
In 2017, he entered the White House declaring NATO “obsolete.” More recently, he’s called it a “paper tiger,” “useless,” and with NATO allies now refusing to join his attack on Iran — and some even denying the U.S. military access to their airspace and bases — the president has gone even further.
For Trump, the Iran war was a test for NATO, and it failed. “We will remember,” he said, insisting that “we’ll come to their rescue but they will never come to ours.” And when asked whether he would consider withdrawing from the alliance earlier this month, he said it was “beyond reconsideration.”
Still, commentators assume Trump cannot make good on this threat without congressional authorization. Indeed, a 2023 law co-sponsored by then-Senator and current Secretary of State Marco Rubio prohibits the president from withdrawing from NATO without winning a two-thirds vote in the Senate or a law passed by Congress. Neither is likely to happen.
However, the constitutionality of that law is questionable. Presidents have withdrawn from treaties before — including George W. Bush from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 and Trump himself from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019. And if Congress sued the president were he to withdraw from NATO, it’s highly unlikely the Supreme Court would rule against him in the exercise of his executive authority.
Plus, even without a formal withdrawal, there are many actions Trump can take to undermine NATO from within.