American politician introduces Bill to pull U.S. from NATO

A Republican from the House of Representatives has introduced a bill for the United States to leave NATO.

The representative, Thomas Massie from Kentucky, published a press release earlier this week stating that NATO is a “Cold War relic” and that the United States should withdraw from the alliance and use the money for domestic defense instead.

“NATO was created to counter the Soviet Union, which collapsed over thirty years ago. Since then, U.S. participation has cost taxpayers trillions of dollars and continues to risk U.S. involvement in foreign wars,” Massie said in the statement.

He added that the U.S. Constitution does not authorize permanent foreign entanglements.

What is in the NATO Act

According to the press release, the NATO Act, as the bill is called, includes four points of action:

• Requires the president to formally notify NATO of U.S. withdrawal under Article 13 of the North Atlantic Treaty.
• Concludes that NATO’s original Cold War purpose no longer aligns with current U.S. national security interests.
• Finds that European NATO members have adequate economic and military capacity to provide for their own defense.
• Prevents the use of U.S. taxpayer funds for NATO’s common budgets, including its civil budget, military budget, and the Security Investment Program.

You can read the entire NATO Act here (opens new tab).

One of the founders

The United States was one of the 12 founding members of NATO, creating the alliance in 1949.

Since then, the bloc has grown to include 32 nations.

The alliance is best known for its Article 5, also known as the Musketeer’s Oath. It states that an attack on a NATO member is an attack on the entire alliance.

Article 5 has only been activated once, in 2001, when the alliance members decided to support the U.S. by activating the article following the terrorist attacks on 9/11.

The U.S. is one of three nuclear states in the bloc, with the UK and France being the two others.

Sources: Office of Thomas Massie, NATO, Encyclopedia Britannica

This article is made and published by Jens Asbjørn Bogen, who may have used AI in the preparation