Professor Hermann Matthijs (VUB & UGent) reflects on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s recent statements about NATO. Does he want the US out of NATO? What does the law say about this?
Article 13 of the NATO Treaty states that since 1969 a member of the Western military alliance may leave the organization, which must be notified to the Archive of the NATO Treaty. United States of America.
Only one half example of the prior art is known. 13 exercise, as it relates to France. President de Gaulle left NATO’s military component SHAPE in 1966, but remained a member of the political component. It was under President Sarkozy that France became a full NATO member again, with the French military under the command of SHAPE. In other words, it was a European country halfway out of NATO.
Also, let’s not forget that Article 6 of this treaty limits NATO territory to a part of Europe and the Americas, located above the Tropic of Cancer, and then to the Atlantic region. It also includes parts of the Americas, such as Hawaii, the United Kingdom (for example, the Falklands), France (for example, with Tahiti), and the Netherlands (for example, with the Antilles). And Norway (along with the Antarctic Islands, for example) does not come under the protection of the NATO treaty.
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On December 22, 2023, the US Congress ‘National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024‘ Accepted. What does it mean? Well, the US can leave NATO only with a two-thirds majority in the Senate. The U.S. Constitution states that all treaties are legally valid in the U.S. only if ratified by a two-thirds majority of the Senate.
The two leading parties in American politics, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, are overwhelmingly pro-NATO. Americans have long understood that NATO does more good than bad for Uncle Sam’s country. The three smaller parties, the Libertarian Party, the Green Party and the Constitution Party, are known to want to leave the Western military alliance.
Money
Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s statement mainly deals with money. He is a businessman and looks at all the files from a financial point of view. In fact, he has said that many NATO countries must fulfill their obligations. As early as 2014 (with then President Barack Obama), the NATO summit in Wales decided to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense by 2024 (!). Trump has now said this directly, although without naming the countries, but his statement has already been released by Obama, Joe Biden and Bill Clinton, and it was very diplomatic at the time.
If one analyzes NATO’s July 2023 calculations of military expenditures for 2023, we come to the following conclusions.
Twelve of the 31 NATO members are far from this 2 percent GDP standard: Iceland (no military), Luxembourg (0.72 percent), Belgium (1.13 percent) and Spain (1.26 percent). Notably, this group also includes Germany, Italy and Canada.
Eight countries are between the 1.7 percent and 2 percent benchmark and could comply in the short term: France, Norway, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Albania, Croatia and North Macedonia.
Today, 11 countries already spend at least 2 percent on their military equipment, namely: Poland (3.9 percent), the United States (3.49 percent), Greece (3 percent), Estonia (2.73 percent), Lithuania (2.54 percent), Finland (2.45 percent), Romania (2.44 percent) Hungary (2.43 percent), Latvia (2.27 percent), United Kingdom (2.07 percent) and Slovakia (2.03 percent).
As NATO’s home country, Belgium has little influence here. The next government will not only get more than 20 billion euros to comply with new EU budget rules, but also a structural 6 billion to meet that 2 percent GDP NATO standard.
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