Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s time as a senator stands to foil one of President Donald Trump’s most dangerous plans.
Rubio wrote legislation in 2023 that prevents Trump, or any future president, from withdrawing from NATO without Congressional approval—something Trump has threatened in response to some in NATO not fully cooperating amid joint U.S.-Israeli strikes in Iran.
Rubio’s law, which he co-authored with Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, prohibits a president from unilaterally withdrawing from NATO without the support of Congress. The bill was part of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law.
Rubio said at the time that NATO was one of the country’s “strategic strengths.”
“NATO is an important alliance. If NATO didn’t exist, we’d have to create it,” Rubio told Face the Nation on CBS News. “It’s one of our strategic strengths that we have in the world.”
Rubio noted in the same interview that adversaries like Russia, China, and Iran do not enjoy a similar level of security to that provided by NATO.
“I believe Congress needs to play a role in deciding whether we’re going to remove ourselves from that,” Rubio said.
Rubio struck a different tone in a Tuesday interview on Fox News, saying that the United States may need to re-examine its relationship with the all-important alliance.
“We are going to have to re-examine whether or not this alliance, that has served this country well for a while, is still serving that purpose,” he said, breaking with his staunch pro-NATO stance as a senator.
Channeling Trump, Rubio went on to question if NATO has “now become a one-way street where America is simply in a position to defend Europe, but when we need the help of our allies, they’re going to deny us basing rights, and they’re going to deny us overflight.”
He added, “These are very legitimate questions that we need to be asking.”
Much of Trump’s outrage with NATO stems from member nations not cooperating with his Iran war. Specifically, he has raged at France for blocking Israeli planes from flying weapons through its airspace, and at Spain for announcing it would close its airspace to American aircraft involved in military operations and not allow the U.S. to use its military bases for the war.
The Daily Beast reached out to the State Department and White House for comment.
The president is scheduled to make a prime-time address to the nation about his war in Iran on Wednesday night. The speech is expected to be highly critical of NATO.
