The worst-case scenario is now a possible one: European troops fighting off an invasion largely alone.
It’s by no means clear the Europeans would succeed. Romanian and other European officials at the exercise in Cincu, about 260 kilometers (162 miles) north of Bucharest by road, voiced concerns about how long it would take for NATO allies to make it to the front.
French four-star General Philippe de Montenon said he’s confident Europe could prevail, even without the US on side. “The direction of history is a progressive disengagement of the United States from the European continent,” he said.
That’s not really how NATO works, but I can understand the sentiment of imagining the USA refusing to enact the articles upon a member being attacked.
I didn’t think it was the sort of thing that could be refused? Aren’t things like Article 5 basically a ride-or-die pact that obligates member nations to come to eachother’s defense? At least in my understanding, being a part of NATO at all legally requires each nation to consider an attack against any one of them as an attack on all of them. It specifically isn’t a “if you feel like it” rule, because that doesn’t have the scary MAD implications of Article 5.
I think I didn’t really articulate it correctly, I am saying I sympathize with the French and other EU Generals for planning like this.
If the US fails to honor NATO’s Article 5 then the rest of the world will worry the US won’t honor their defence packs.
Japan Taiwan Philippines South Korea
Nuclear proliferation will follow
Are client states under the occupation of the US military. They aren’t worried the US might fall to act. They’re worried the US might act to remove their leaders and replace them with more pliant ones.
Why would an occupied territory hosting US nuclear weapons build their own nuclear arsenal?
Why would the US allow them to do so?
Many of them already do have nuclear weapons of their own. Also the US wouldn’t have any say in whether or not they produce nuclear weapons they could announce their preference but they have no ability to enforce it.
By that logic Germany and UK are too so the whole article is garbage
And how exactly would they force the United States to do anything?
“Join Us or we’ll start a two front war to make you join us” is hardly a convincing argument.
Why would Europe engage in a two front war with the United States when it could instead just ignore the United States?
Hey if there’s one thing I know, it’s that you can’t force the US to respect a treaty it’s signed, ever. It’s kinda our thing since the very beginning.
The US military is highly distributed throughout the world. Other countries can stop allowing us to have bases on their soil and it will significantly weaken our military posture. They dont need to invade the US to do this.
They aren’t self enforcing. Someone at the Pentagon actually has to give the order to mobilize
It would be better if the U.S. just waits a minute sees shat happens, and then congress votes to declare war and the executive branch would have to act based upon their vote or would be directly disobeying the legislature again. Congress declares war. Not the executive branch. And in the end we are the only country to enact article 5 in history, when 9/11 happened and NATO countries answered the call even though many probably did not wish too.
The thing here would be that unless Russis initiates the attack, it wouldn’t trigger article 5 and congress could just ignore it.
And a lot of people would like to ignore it even with the long term pitfalls, because all they care about is themselves and right this very second
Congress authorized enormous discretion to the president under the NDAA and AUMF. There’s no actual need to declare war in the modern era.
Other than the part about it forcing the executive branch to act and holding all of them responsible for not upholding the laws written by the legislature. But congress wouldn’t likely do it.
Trump doesn’t seem like a ‘respect the law’ sort of guy.
Well I know this is getting well away from the point here, but Congress declares war, not the President.
Congress has already authorized the President to deploy military units at the president’s discretion, per the AUMF which renews biannually under the NDAA
For sure, what I’m saying is that, if Article 5 gets invoked, Congress at least has the theoretical option to make a declaration of war. They’ve done it 11 times in US history so far, and I’d have to imagine that Article 5 being invoked would be about the strongest possible reason to make it 12.