President Trump has long been frustrated with the NATO alliance, and now he is talking about withdrawing from the treaty. A few days ago, Marco Rubio articulated the administration’s concerns about the alliance:
🚨 SECRETARY RUBIO: If NATO is just about us defending Europe if they’re attacked, but them denying us basing rights when we need them, then that’s not a very good arrangement.
That’s a hard one to stay engaged in and say this is good for the United States. pic.twitter.com/C3IsTXQYnW
— Department of State (@StateDept) March 30, 2026
Moreover, putting the bases to one side, it is true that the NATO treaty does not obligate our allies to cooperate with us in conflicts outside of Europe. But we aren’t allies because we have a treaty, we have a treaty because we are allies. It is only reasonable for our government to reconsider how valuable our European alliances are, when they prove themselves either unwilling or unable to help us in a conflict as important as the one with Iran.
That said, does Trump have the power to withdraw from NATO? In 2023, Congress included in the FY 2024 National Defense Authorization Act a provision that prohibits the president from withdrawing from NATO, unless approved by an act of Congress or a two-thirds majority of the Senate. So the Democrats will say that Trump can’t withdraw from the treaty.
That act is likely unconstitutional, however. In 2020, the Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion to the effect that Congress’s attempt to impose a notice requirement on withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty was unconstitutional:
The decision to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty implicates the President’s exclusive constitutional authorities to execute a treaty of the United States and to conduct the Nation’s diplomacy. The Constitution vests the President with all of the “executive Power” of the United States, U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 1, and it assigns to the President “plenary powers . . . as the head of the State in [the Nation’s] relations with foreign countries.” Acquisition of Naval and Air Bases in Exchange for Over-Age Destroyers, 39 Op. Att’y Gen. 484, 489–90 (1940) (Jackson, Att’y Gen.); see also, e.g., First Nat’l City Bank v. Banco Nacional de Cuba, 406 U.S. 759, 766 (1972) (describing the “exclusive competence of the Executive Branch in the field of foreign affairs”). Although Congress may legislate on topics that affect foreign affairs, Congress’s authority does not extend to regulating the President’s decision to exercise a right of the United States to withdraw from a treaty. Accordingly, section 1234(a) unconstitutionally restricts the President’s discretion to withdraw the United States from the Open Skies Treaty.
So if President Trump decides to withdraw from NATO, we will have another in a long series of constitutional conflicts between the Executive Branch and Congress. As a practical matter, however, Trump’s participation or lack of participation in NATO doesn’t hinge on a formal withdrawal. He can, and no doubt will, downgrade the alliance as an element in American foreign and defense policy, regardless of whether he issues a formal withdrawal.
