Leaving NATO Would Be National Self-Sabotage

President Donald Trump speaks with NATO’s Secretary-General Mark Rutte next to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Jan. 21, 2026. —Mandel Ngan—AFP via Getty Images“NATO serves as an essential military alliance that protects shared national interests and enhances America’s international presence.”These are the words of Marco Rubio, now Secretary of State but then a U.S. Senator, in a statement he and I released in 2023 announcing our legislation to keep any U.S. President from withdrawing from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization without congressional approval. That bill—which I first started working on with the late Senator John McCain in 2018—was signed into law as section 1250A of the 2024 defense bill with an overwhelming bipartisan vote in the Senate. That bipartisan legislation reflected a long-standing, robust consensus among both parties in the U.S. about NATO: that the most powerful military alliance ever assembled is an indispensable force for democracy and peace and helps keep America safe.But under President Donald Trump, that consensus is in peril. As the alliance marked its 77th anniversary last week, Trump denigrated NATO as a “paper tiger” and intoned about trying to pull the U.S. out, the latest installment in a long series of threats to abandon the alliance. Regardless of how embarrassing Trump decides to make his ongoing anti-NATO temper tantrum, his hands are tied. He cannot unilaterally withdraw from NATO—my legislation with Secretary Rubio has made sure of that—but Trump’s undermining of the bipartisan pro-NATO consensus makes America and the world less safe.Trump has been criticizing…

Continue reading →