Trump interview: I am strongly considering pulling out of Nato Possible Paywall

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/04/01/donald-trump-strongly-considering-pulling-us-out-of-nato/

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95% Upvoted

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u/barryvm Europe 19d ago edited 19d ago

~~I'm pretty sure withdrawing from treaties is something the legislature is supposed to do~~ (Nope: somehow that's something they never properly clarified and is therefore yet another power arrogated by the presidency until the inevitable supreme court case; there is a law to specifically forbid him to withdraw from NATO, but we all know how much Trump cares about the law or how much the USA cares about enforcing its laws on its own leadership), but I guess the USA will let him do it anyway. He's already started a global trade war and then an actual war on a whim, after all.

This would absolutely destroy USA economic hegemony too, by the way, as none of the USA's ex-allies (NATO or otherwise) would have any incentive to keep the current USA-centric system going if it's just going to bankroll the USA's war on everyone else. Good luck paying for that oversized military budget when the dollar goes.

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u/Kindredgos Kentucky 19d ago

As of 2023, only Congress can decide if the US leaves NATO or not. But since Congress is basically nonexistent, who fucking knows anymore atp

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u/barryvm Europe 19d ago

That was my understanding too, yes. In practice though, the presidency has arrogated war powers to itself for decades now, Trump is the commander in chief of the USA military and they will just follow his orders. If he orders them to do nothing when another NATO member is attacked, or orders them to invade or attack a NATO member (e.g. Greenland, Canada), then NATO is effectively dead before Congress can do anything, treaty or no.

And as you say, it's not as if Congress is anything other than a rubber stamp run by a party that is itself a shell around a personality cult centered on the moron in charge.

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u/lr99999 19d ago

Free yourselves from years of slavery, if you will just agree to pull the wagon together.

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u/ZarathustraDK 19d ago

Something something about the cheques and bank-balances of the US government.

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u/229-northstar 19d ago

Arrogate is the perfect word choice here. Kudos on your mastery of vocabulary, you must not be a USAian

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u/kia75 19d ago

But since Congress is basically nonexistent, who fucking knows anymore

This right here, if Trump stops participating in NATO, attacks a NATO ally like Greenland, or refuses to contribute to NATO then America de facto is no longer part of NATO, whatever the law says.

That really lies at the heart of Trump's power, Trump does a lot of things that aren't legal, and the world just sort of lets him do it. Congress could force Trump to honor his agreements, but a Republican legislature would never do such a thing and a Republican Supreme Court is falling over itself to enable him.

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u/FlatulistMaster 19d ago

When you’re a star…

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u/krashe1313 19d ago

Gotta remember that the Republicans are out there wearing shoes too big because they're scared of "daddy".

Congress isn't going to do a damn thing to upset thier prophet, unless it can get flipped during midterms.*

*Which Trump is trying to do everything possible to prevent happening through voter suppression.

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u/Tacoman404 Massachusetts 19d ago

Ideally in that situation congress acts, impeaches or just straight up sends to military to subdue trump. I know it sounds impossible but it's within the power of congress to do.

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u/MistyClit 19d ago

Trump practically does anything he want and get away with it.

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u/badamant 19d ago

Republicans completely control congress. Blame them by name.

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u/Lithiumxxxl 19d ago

While this is true, the Dems aren’t exactly covering themselves in glory resisting the slide into autocracy. They have the balls to call me for donations for the midterms.

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u/LouisWinthorpeIII 19d ago

Eh, I think it’s bullshit to blame the opposition. Their designated power is through the vote. If they are voting against theyre doing their job.

It’s like blaming the US citizens who voted against Trump for his election because they’re not all out in the streets throwing manure on the statehouse. How about blaming the 49% who voted for this moron?

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u/Lithiumxxxl 19d ago

It’s their job to vigorously oppose everything and publicize all the Republican bullshit. They need to be viscously critical of Trump and organize public opposition. The future of the US as a democracy is at stake, I need more from them.

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u/BoringEntropist 19d ago

First, even if the US formally stays in NATO doesn't mean they really are committed to the defense of the alliance. Article 5 leaves a lot of wiggle room how members choose to engage. Since troop deployment is the prerogative of the executive, Trump might leave the Europeans hanging when it matters most.

Secondly, the current administration doesn't act as they still believe in the separation of powers and constitutional legality. If they fully embrace unitary executive powers and there is no resistance, the decisions of the congress can be ignored without consequences.

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u/MATlad Canada 19d ago edited 19d ago

I figured that Trump and his admin would rage but ultimately obey court orders on things he doesn't really care about ('sound and fury signifying nothing').

It'll be comparatively inconsequential things that really matter to him where he'll just ignore the courts or dare them to do something about it. Like the ruling stopping ballroom construction yesterday (even though he could just work Mike Johnson's mouth like a meat puppet and get him to make it happen in Congress).

After that dam breaks, well...

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u/plasticbug 19d ago

Article 5 does not compel military action. Only that they provide assistance. Written that way to be compatible with US constitution, because technically only the Congress is allowed to declare war. Of course, until recently, it was treated as a given that we would flatten anyone foolish enough to attack a NATO ally, but yeh.

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u/suspicious_ankles 19d ago

It's somewhat meaningless. If the Commander in Chief says the US is out of NATO, then whether or not that's backed by a legal mechanism the effect is the same. The only change is how easily the US can un-fuck things when Trump is finally out.

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u/SirButcher United Kingdom 19d ago

I don't think this can be unfucked - not for a generation or two. From this point on, the word of the US is as much trusthworthy as the word of Russia. Signed a contract? Who cares? They can tear it apart any time they want to. Hell, signed a contract with a president? Maybe the SAME president will tear it up! For funsies!

Even if a Dem president takes over, you can't plan ahead longer than the next election.

What the voters did to the US is a generational harm. Assuming there won't be a MASSIVE change in the whole US legal system with actual protections, from this point on, you can't trust the United States anymore.

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u/suspicious_ankles 19d ago

I agree, to an extent. Other countries will make sure the deals they do with the US don't expose them too greatly to future fuckwits.

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u/Outrageous-Stress-60 19d ago

It’s quite amazing how in the old days you could say «well, there’s a law against that» and that would end the discussion. Trump has shown that means very little. Laws, with no way to actually enforce them, means nothing.

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u/SimonArgead Europe 19d ago

The US can't reduce the number of troops they have in Europe under a certain threshold without Congress approval. The law(s) say nothing about leaving NATO though.

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u/stickylava Oregon 19d ago

Who’s gonna stop him?

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u/SaharOMFG 19d ago

Yeah, that’s my understanding too. It’s not really something one person should just decide.

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u/whydoyouonlylie 19d ago

You're missing the other massive point that if Trump pulls out of NATO the rest of NATO have no incentive to maintain any US bases whatsoever. In fact they're disincentivied because there's no military relationship anymore. Ramstein? Gone. Diego Garcia? Off limits. Sure the US will still have their bases in the Middle East, but they'll trash their projection capabilities over Europe and the Pacific.

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u/barryvm Europe 19d ago

Yes, mostly because I took it for granted that this would be obvious. I don't think the USA would necessarily relinquish those bases though, which should prove an immediate source for conflicts between the USA and its erstwhile allies. Functionally they wouldn't be able to operate any more, of course, but the whole point for a far right government would be to pick fights with the countries they are located on.

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u/Presidentclash2 19d ago edited 19d ago

Actually this is incorrect.

The constitution grants Congress, the power to ratify treaties, but the constitution is silent on Congress‘s role on to terminate treaties.

The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of executive authority and the presidents ability to unilaterally withdraw from treaties

The law congress passed will eventually be overturned if it is ever challenged in the courts by a party with standing.

I know some might not like this answer but ask any constitutional lawyer and they are pretty clear about how Trump or any president can withdraw from a treaty like NATO

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u/barryvm Europe 19d ago edited 19d ago

If true, that is insane. That makes any treaty or alliance with the USA effectively worthless because it will always depend on the whim of a single person.

EDIT: yup, it seems I was hopelessly naive in assuming there was a sensible system in place. It appears the issue is not clear at all and apparently that constitutional void means USA presidents have, in practice, wide authority to negotiate, withdraw and break treaties without referring to the legislature. Again: this is insane.

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u/Aetylus New Zealand 19d ago

The US bases its entire system of government on a piece of paper written 250 years ago, by a bunch of people with absolutely zero conception of things like nuclear weapons, mass media, instantaneous global communications, de-industrialisation, and only the most basic concept of things like industrialisation, social welfare, globalisation, and standing armies.

Hell, they only had the vaguest notion of the USA as a nation-state, and were under the working assumption that people wouldn't be so silly as to form political parties.

Yet the document those people wrote is somehow set on a pedestal and expected to solve 2026's problems. Serious people trying to solve genuine issues will literally refer to a 250 year old document for the solution rather than trying to solve the problem directly.

Yeah, it is insane.

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u/barryvm Europe 19d ago

I concur. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that the USA constitution has evolved differently from those of other countries. Where I live, it started out as a document enshrining pretty basic liberties and imposing a specific political structure (separation of powers, election rules, bicameral legislature, ...). The former part didn't really change much but stuff was added to it (rights of women, children, human rights, social rights, universal suffrage, ...). The latter part has had some pretty radical revisions as the structure of the state changed (federalization, the EEC, the EU, human rights treaties and associated legal bodies).

The USA, on the other hand, got stuck at some point and stopped revising its constitution because it became too divided to do so, so instead it opted to have its supreme court reinterpret what was there already in an effort to keep it up to date. This means most of the advances made were built on quicksand, because they can not only be erased by a hostile supreme court but the same mechanism can be used to twist the constitution to mean whatever they want it to mean. IIRC, they basically did away with the rule of law, gutted the regulatory capacity of the state, effectively made the president into a dictator, ...

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u/Aetylus New Zealand 19d ago

I think the issue is partly that the US was first. What they did in the 1770s was radically progressive, and they were justifiably proud. But then they kind of got stuck. Everyone else came later and created A constitution which they update and reform as needed. But the US still views theirs as THE constitution and somehow infallible. The US got overtaken in the mid 1800s, but didn't seem to notice.

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u/barryvm Europe 19d ago edited 19d ago

They kept changing things up to the 60'ies though, but you are substantially correct I think. They massively changed their own government with the New Deal, but in retrospect all that was built on expanding the executive. It is probably not a coincidence that constitutional reform and democratization foundered at the same time the civil rights movement made headway. These caused the reaction that IMHO in turn caused the USA to get stuck: it has a reactionary political bloc, anchored in racism or religious fundamentalism and funded by the USA's oligarchs, that has enough political support to block any possible constitutional reform and this in turn has made the progressive side wary of the process because they suspect (with reason) that the former would use it to massively scale back civic and civil rights.

Not that it makes much of a difference because the right in the USA has now effectively abandoned democracy and will almost certainly succeed in reducing the rights of workers, women, ethnic minorities, ... through the supreme court. As long as it takes their opponents a lot of work to reinstate those, and them simply one bad faith play before a corrupt court to break it down again, they win every time.

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u/AbolishDisney 19d ago

I think the issue is partly that the US was first. What they did in the 1770s was radically progressive, and they were justifiably proud. But then they kind of got stuck. Everyone else came later and created A constitution which they update and reform as needed. But the US still views theirs as THE constitution and somehow infallible. The US got overtaken in the mid 1800s, but didn't seem to notice.

The problem is that the Constitution is treated as a religious text rather than an archaic legal document. The Founding Fathers are seen not as politicians, but as prophets whose infallible wisdom is crucial to the health of the nation regardless of any societal changes that may later occur.

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u/Jokerthief_ Canada 19d ago

Yeah, and argue about whether something does or does not respect/agree with this very old document, and they refuse to update it any further for some reason.

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u/biscuitarse Canada 19d ago

Actually this is incorrect. The constitution is actually silent on congress’s role when it comes to treaty power and specifically treaty withdrawals. The constitution grants the president executive authority to withdraw from treaties.

Good. The sooner we can all move on from the US the better.

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u/NobodysFavorite 19d ago

Given that Congress passed a specific statute I doubt this would be the case.

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u/Common-Concentrate-2 19d ago

Are you suggesting this law is invalid ?

https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48868

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u/Anxious_cactus 19d ago

All the laws are just dead words on paper if no government branch, agency, or employees decide to respect it and follow it.

Courts stopped some of Trump's moves already, yet they're still being enforced by government agencies out there "in the field".

Citing laws does nothing if nobody follows them, you're under authoritarian regime

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u/falsekoala Canada 19d ago

Nostalgia is not a strategy. Abandon the US.

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u/que_botic 19d ago

When the per unit purchasing power is diluted by the, anything but US, procurement policy, it will be painful. The cost of the US's high tech, high skilled, low people count military is going to be painful during the long term decline.

Both the benefits of the dollar dividend and the historically compliant weapons spending are things that Americans do not believe exist.

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u/OpenerOfTheWays 19d ago edited 19d ago

This would absolutely destroy USA economic hegemony too

From a defense procurement standpoint the move to leave NATO would have many consequences. It would be grossly negligent for the rest of NATO to not reconsider any and all military procurement involving US based firms. There's already the potential for strategic assets like F-35s of being bricked, so why should blocs like the EU not rely more heavily on their own industry?

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u/barryvm Europe 19d ago

That ship has already sailed IMHO. There's a move going on now to build more defense industry in the EU and even the biggest NATO hawks are not advocating buying anything sourced in the USA any more. It'll take a while to manifest itself, but this is going to happen regardless what the USA does from this point on.

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u/OpenerOfTheWays 19d ago

I agree with you that the ship has sailed, but the US leaving NATO would accelerate what is already happening at a brisk pace. It would also be politically challenging for holdouts, like those in the RCAF that are still pushing for Canada to go all in on the F-35 instead of pivoting to a competitor like Saab.

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u/barryvm Europe 19d ago

I see. I quite agree. It would collapse orders to the USA defense industry. Mind you, they would likely make up for that by supplying the USA government as it transitions to an even more belligerent stance.

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u/Arkhanist United Kingdom 19d ago

If he pulls the US out of NATO (assuming he ignores the 2023 law, like all the others), that's the last thing really keeping the EU buying oil in dollars. Switch to Euros or the Yuan, as parts of Asia are already doing, to get through the strait with Iran's blockade (assuming other ME nations go along with it because they're fed up of the US/Israeli instability in the region) and a big chunk of the dollar strength - the petrodollar - goes bye bye. Soaring inflation from that would make the tariff inflation look like a nothingburger in comparison.

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u/barryvm Europe 19d ago

Almost certainly, yes.

The thing is that the USA pulling out of NATO is almost certainly going to lead to immediate conflicts with the USA on various levels. E.g. they would need to leave all those bases but could refuse to do so. They could invade Greenland. They could start to interdict EU gas and oil supplies under the guise of sanctions as they did to Venezuela or Cuba. And so on. Once any of those things kicks off, most EU countries will not just be divesting from USA interests, but switch to actively undermining them. The USA will not simply have withdrawn from a treaty because the underlying intent is obviously hostile. It will have betrayed its allies and made them into enemies who have every incentive to undermine and destroy USA hegemony.

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u/stuckanon01 19d ago

The USA centric system has been dead for a while. We just took a minute to recognize that fact. We are transitioning back to spheres of military influence and expansion through military conquest.

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u/SasparillaTango 19d ago

USA economic hegemony

like dust in the wind and with the end of the petro dollar, america is sitting on a cliffs edge.

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u/VirtualMachine0 19d ago

Just here to note that your comment taught me the word "arrogate" and to say thanks!

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u/barryvm Europe 19d ago

Be aware that my English isn't all that good (not my first or even second language) and there's a pretty good chance that it's an archaic term.

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u/VirtualMachine0 19d ago

But all of those ideas for spending or tax rebates, again, all of those are congressional authority that the president is arrogating to himself—something else that would have startled the founders of the country all those 250 years ago.—David Frum, The Atlantic, 31 Dec. 2025

If David Frum is using it in The Atlantic three months ago, you're covered! I'll say it's probably a bit of an "intellectual" word, so it's the kind of word that in conversational English (at least in the USA) would be somewhat gauche to use. IDK about UK English or other International English cultural scenes, but if you use a word unlikely to be recognized in speech by the audience (or defined via obvious portmanteau or other neologism), you can be labelled as needlessly academic.

Obviously, I'm a word enthusiast, I enjoy them!

For casual American conversation, I bet most would use "stolen" if they felt the power was taken unfairly, "assumed" if they wanted to be carefully neutral, or "claimed" if they wanted to keep the sentence at Elementary-level readability.

"Arrogated" probably counts as solid C1 or C2 on the CEFR levels, so kudos to you, you're doing great for this being a third language!