03-24-2025, 05:29 AM
Tiangou wrote:
[quote=kj]
[quote=Michael]
[quote=Ombligo]
including a pitch to the administration of President Donald Trump, for a managed transfer over the next five to 10 years, according to a new report.
Well, first of all, there's the fact that Congress passed a bill in Dec 2023 (National Defense Authorization Act) that has a measure that prevents a president from leaving NATO without a 2/3 Senate approval vote or separate Congressional legislation. Of course, Trump could do what he seems to be doing to the Dept of Education and defund NATO at some level. But, just leaving would be a problem.
https://www.kaine.senate.gov/in-the-news...iting-nato
But, he might well sign something that hands over big chunks of historic US defense of NATO without leaving. But the listed time frame goes past Trump and if Trump does, in fact, agree to a handover, then I think whoever becomes the next President would likely call up the Nato countries and say, "Oops!" and go back in. I think even JD would, although if one of the Trump kids somehow makes it to President, who knows...
But my bet is that when the European NATO countries take on a bigger defense role, Trump will trumpet his ability to have gotten them to do it and say that all is well with NATO now, thanks to him being the best negotiator of all time!!!
It looks like leaving would be difficult, but I don’t know how that affects getting kicked out. Wouldn’t getting kicked out allow us to invade NATO countries a la Canada, Panama and Greenland? Pretty far fetched, but who knows with these guys.
Or, our invading Canada or Greenland could get us kicked out.
(Panama is not a member of NATO.)
Yeah, that was unclear, but I didn’t mean those were NATO countries per se (Greenland isn’t a member of NATO either, fwiw).. I was referring to invading any NATO countries the way Trump has been threatening to invade Canada, Panama and Greenland. If we got kicked out of NATO, we wouldn’t have any obligation to defend NATO countries freeing Trump to invade any or all of them.