https://www.reuters.com/world/us/senators-offer-bill-block-any-us-president-leaving-nato-2023-07-12/
Democratic and Republic senators renewed an effort to block any U.S. president from leaving NATO on Wednesday, as leaders of the alliance attended an eventful summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.
I think any treaty should by default need approval by legislature for both entering and exiting the treaty, unless the legislature explicitly empowers the president to exit a particular treaty without legislative approval.
No country would trust the US if treaties could be potentially changed every 4 years by one person.
We had a pretty good run relying on an expectation that there'd be a responsible, competent adult in the White House.
Or were far more accomplished at hiding their crookedness and knowing when not to be a public jackass.
Treaties specifically require approval in the Senate. It's in the Constitution.
A non-corrupt court system would not permit a President to enter or exit a treaty without Senate confirmation.
I'm surprised all treaties aren't handled this way. We have such a high bar to approve them for a reason, it seems silly to not have a similarly high bar to leave them.
I do understand why you would want to be able to exit fast. I think it makes sense for the individual country as a safety net in case whatever deal you've entered goes south.
...but having a system in place to ensure that the majority agrees with that decision is important.
And now I'm picturing a Republican Congress and Presidency being voted out by the people, only to have the exiting Congress pass a "We Hereby Exit From All Treaties" bill, signed by the President before the changeover happens. All to leave the incoming Democratic Congress/President with a huge foreign relations mess to clean up.
I do understand why you would want to be able to exit fast.
If there's a legitimate reason why we would need to "exit a treaty fast", then I'm sure that Congress would have no issues approving it. I mean, I know we're in the era of "because fuck you that's why" politics, but if we needed to exit a treaty quickly, there has to be some pretty grave circumstances why, and I'm sure that even the dumbest of the dumb would know to put politics aside for a bit.
Even Kevin McCarthy knew when it was time to back down when it came to the debt ceiling fight. When push comes to shove in issues like this, the GOP have historically threatened a default right up until the very last second and then backed down. Most of the time, the threats are little more than red meat for their base and they know (even if they don't want to publicly say it) that if they were to attempt to follow through on their threats, the results would be significantly worse for everybody.
It has bipartisan support in the senate, but who knows what the republican-controlled house will do. This bill basically exists to prevent Trump or another republican president from fucking around with U.S. and global security.
Definitely will stop any republican bought by Russia from trying to dismantle NATO.
Now whether this bill will actually pass..
It's a bill that unilaterally gives the Legislature additional power at the expense of the Executive. Congress will probably approve it because they'd become more relevant.
I think one of the biggest threats facing the US position as the world leader in many areas is ourselves. We need more bills like this just to ensure other world leaders that the position of the US isn't going to change on important issues every time the party in power changes, because right now one of the biggest concerns other leaders have is that the incoming administration is just going to upend everything every 4-8 years, and they need more stability than that.