- Trump administration said in 2020 that he could leave treaties
- Congress passed law in 2023 barring unilateral NATO withdrawal
- No NATO member has ever withdrawn from the 77-year-old alliance
- As senator, Rubio helped lead effort to prevent unilateral withdrawal
WHAT DOES U.S. LAW SAY? In 2023, Congress passed, and then-President Joe Biden, a Democrat, signed into law, legislation barring any U.S. president from suspending, terminating, denouncing or withdrawing the United States from the treaty that established NATO unless the withdrawal is backed by a two-thirds majority in the 100-member Senate.
TL;DR; Per 2023 Congressional Law, not without a 2/3 US Congressional majority (and with a one year notice to NATO). But, experts said this lack of commitment, rather than any law, was the key point.
This is the rub. Can he officially? No. But then, he can’t officially rename the Department of Defense either. What they can do is go in arrears on payments and refuse to cooperate with allies or acknowledge that a given incident involves treaty obligations, and be extremely open about all of it. The only thing the law does is give the next guy cover to walk things back because it was never formal, but by then 99% of the damage will have been done.
Just from a sheer nuts and bolts point of view, the foreign relations damage is going to take literally decades to undo, including at least 8 years of republican administrations that top out at George W Bush levels of fascist exceptionalism. No sane government would trust the US with long-term commitments otherwise.
That is not what the article was saying. It’s not saying that he can actually withdraw. It’s that he has sufficient scope of discretionary action that he doesn’t have to really do anything if, say, a NATO member was invaded and he decides that he doesn’t want to do anything.
That’s not the same thing as the ability to exit NATO on his own authority; the latter would affect later administrations. It’s just saying that it would be difficult for Congress to force a President who does not want to go to war to actually go to war, even if the US was in NATO.