Does NATO Subvert the Constitution?

Michael Scheuer makes a great case here for the unconstitutionality of the NATO treaty. The Treaty, signed nearly seventy years ago, binds today’s Congress to going to war against unknown enemies simply because they attack another allied nation. This obligation removes Congress, the only body constitutionally allowed to declare war, from the war making decision altogether.

If NATO isn’t unconstitutional, it certainly isn’t aligned with the intent of the framers, who expected any decision to go to war to pass through the rightfully elected representatives of the people. The framers did not expect America would be pressed into a war by a treaty signed before most of its citizens were even alive. Scheuer writes:

In terms of America’s genuine national interests, the central takeaway from the G-20 Summit in Germany has almost nothing to do with what went on in the Summit’s discussions and declarations. The Summit produced what it always produces, hot air and political posturing. President Trump, however, did what he needed to do for America and calmed down our ties with the Russians.

I read this afternoon that the fossilized commentator David Gergen said that this was the first time that America was not the leader of the Summit and the Free World. My view, for what it is worth, is that that is simply great news. Being the leader of the free world means that U.S. citizens pay the freight for Europe’s security, and the defense of numerous Arab tyrants, with their taxes, and with their children in their wars. Losing the title of “Leader of the Free World” can only mean that the United States is safer, and that “America First” can yet be made a reality. One sure way of knowing how well Mr. Trump did in defusing tensions with Russia, is to listen to the attacks launched on his meeting with Putin by FOX commentator John Bolton and Senators Graham and McCain, each a Neocon, an Israel Firster, and a war-causing, democracy monger

NATO is death trap for the United States. A massive Russian military incursion into the EU and NATO countries would quickly crush the small NATO forces that would oppose it; that is, if those forces did not run from the Russians. At that point, the U.S. — under Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, which surrenders America’s sovereignty and independence — would have no option but to use nuclear weapons in the defense of nations and peoples that, with a few exceptions, will not defend themselves against either internal nor external enemies. That seems like an insane situation for the United States to be locked into, especially when the values of Europe’s governments and peoples are so clearly antithetical to those of Americans.

Americans have been faced with this automatic-war option previously. In 1919, for example, President Woodrow Wilson tried to ram the League of Nations Covenant through the U.S. Senate — then, unlike now, composed of a goodly number of adult patriots — and suffered defeat at the hands of that body’s non-interventionists. Article X of the Covenant committed the United States to go to war if another member of the League was the target of an offensive war. In other words, the great Democrat Wilson wanted to remove the decision for war from where it was vested by the Constitution — in the hands of the citizenry through its elected representatives — and deliver it into foreign hands beyond Americans’ control. NATO’s Article 5 does precisely the same thing, committing America today, in fact, to nuclear war for Europe states to whom we owe nothing and with which we have little left in terms of common values.