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Which ones do you think are most relevant to being pivotal to the replacement of the U.S. as the keeper/administrator of the Treaty?
Liberal (Minority/Majority) Government 2025 - ???
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The North Atlantic Treaty has no amending mechanism or formula that would permit alteration of the existing accession or renunciation provisions. There literally isn’t a way to change the North Atlantic Treaty from what it is to something else, and its wording is such the U.S. and the U.S. alone is indispensable to its administration and operation. Any other party could renounce it and it would remain coherent and operable, but not the U.S.. I expect that was a deliberate choice on the part of the U.S. when it was drafted. Something else would need to be negotiated and ratified anew in its place, and the existing treaty left to wither, defunct.
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You should become a policy/treaty influencer to help those unfortunate souls less able to appreciate the complexities of transnational multi-articular agreements. I’d follow you.
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Have you read the treaty? I've gone back and skimmed it. My initial recollection is reinforced: most articles don't mention the US at all, and those that do are chiefly concerned with its function as a depository.
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It's a treaty, not a constitution. It doesn't need an amending formula. The non-US members could meet, agree to adopt the provisions of the treaty with the replacement of the US by some other depository state, retain all the other trappings of the organization and start unwinding US involvement, and be done with it. Preserving NATO without upending everything just because of some rules lawyer quibbling isn't some concept that people should have difficulty wrapping their heads around.
[Add: "With regard to security rather than trade, we already have NATO, which could be adapted in whatever respects necessary if the US decided to make a full exit" doesn't mean the original treaty needs to be preserved as an artifact.]
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While the North Atlantic Treaty set the foundation for what was called the "North Atlantic Treaty Organization", the "organizing" resulted from, among others,
"Ottawa Agreement"
and
"Paris Protocol"
www.nato.int
"Ottawa Agreement"
"Paris Protocol"
Protocol
The parties to the North Atlantic Treaty signed in Washington on 4th April, 1949, Considering that international military Headquarters may be established in their territories, by separate arrangement, under the North Atlantic Treaty, and Desiring to define the status of such Headquarters and of...
www.nato.int
Of course I have, and long before this discussion. If you aren’t grasping the way those articles make the U.S. central to the function of NATO through its role in the administration of the treaty, I don’t know what to tell you. A NATO that had to deposit any accessions or renunciations with the government of a renounced member would be an absurdity. And a U.S. that withdrew from the treaty would have no treaty obligation or right to accept them.
A treaty without an amending provision can be replaced with another treaty, but not changed in part but otherwise retained in its current operation. What you describe is a replacement treaty, as I said. If you want to imagine all of NATO minus the U.S. simply agreeing to a new NATO that’s otherwise the same, then I respectfully suggest you’re wilfully blind to the defence and security dynamics - including U.S. predominance - that made NATO in its current form attractive in the first place, and are just skipping past and ignoring other tensions within the alliance.
Absolutely European and other allies could negotiate a new defence pact, with or without a mutual defence ‘trigger’ along the lines of article 5. Much infrastructure, policy, and bureaucracy could conceivably pivot to serving this new alliance. But make no mistake, it would have to be reassembled into a new framework, and that would not be quick, easy, or seamless, nor would it be NATO. It would be something new.
Realistically I struggle to imagine all or most of the current NATO partners would, faced with NATO as it stands dissolving, commit themselves to the same sort of obligatory mutual defence that was attractive in 1949 staring across the top of the Iron Curtain at the prospect of nuclear oblivion. Nor can I imagine many current NATO members wanting to enter a new arrangement hamstrung by the sort of unilateral veto with which figures like Orban could hamstring the alliance
NATO continues today in its present form largely out of inertia and because, tensions notwithstanding, it’s still attractive to retain for a host of reasons because it’s already set up and running. But a U.S. renunciation would force the creation of a new arrangement, and in that rebuild of a new security architecture we would see a lot of things done differently.
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?? It’s not much of a treaty to read, maybe a page and a half. It’s everything that flows out of the articles that is voluminous.
The sections 10, 11 and 14 where all instruments are registered with the United States Government. They are the lynch pin. The United States intentionally positioned it that way as the basis for control of NATO by them.
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You seem to be seeing a huge impediment where I see none. I get that the US is written into the treaty as the centre of administrative treaty matters (primarily accession and renunciation). I don't see nations necessarily wringing their hands over how to adapt the existing treaty and simply change who serves as the administrator, or even that it needs to be a single country. Words on papers are not insurmountable obstacles. You change them, and move on.
I'm not skipping anything. I posit there's an easy way and there are harder ways to deal with a US exit. If the US says it's out, it's out regardless whether some I's are dotted and T's are crossed. ("No, no; the US didn't really leave because they didn't follow the right process!" rings ridiculous.) The remaining members can always do a headless chicken dance and go marching in 20 or more different directions instead of seeking the path of least resistance and most conservation, if they really want to. Either they're capable and responsible enough to hold their collective security together, or they're not. If they aren't, it suggests they don't deserve it; if the US is the only glue holding them together against external threats like Russia or the resumption of ages-old quarrels among themselves, they're just pathetic. If they're that politically weak, it'd be a mistake to bind Canada any closer to them.
HavokFour
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Another backer of the DSRB is in the works.
This might signal that the similar Multilateral Defence Mechanism (UK, Netherlands, Finland, and Poland) may be dead in the water. So more might be hop on the DSRB train in the coming months, and I'm betting the Netherlands is next.
Archive
Britain in talks with Canada about joining defence bank
Carney expected to discuss financing venture, which presently includes eight other countries, with Burnham when they meet in U.K. this weekwww.theglobeandmail.com
The Germans are also being talked to.
Mark Carney wants the U.K. and Germany to join Canada’s new defence bank, says lead negotiator
Article
Halifax Tar
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Sounds like things may not be going well...
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Not surprising about the ‘terms were empty’ as those meeting occur next month in October.
aS for the second part, not surprised.
Halifax Tar
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IMHO Our relationship with Europe should start and end with free trade.
#chauvanistnorthamerican #oceansaremoats
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So no NATO, no JEF?
Halifax Tar
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You might have me at NATO. JEF, hard no.
But only so much as to keep the North Atlantic sea land open. Withdrawal of all ground and air forces.
Oldgateboatdriver
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Fine, but if free trade and opening the SLOC are our two things, we have to get a Navy that can do that - and that's more than tripling what we have right now, likely to about 60 ships, with aircraft carriers and submarine support. Hell! That's almost what we had at the height of the cold war in the 60"s.
Fun fact here (to relieve the tension): The reference to member's possession North of the Tropic of Cancer is the reason the Brits could not call on the other NATO members when the Falkland war started. Just thought you ought to know.
Halifax Tar
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Yes.
Canada should trade with anyone, while walking softly and carrying a big nuke.
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I can be sold on the nuclear Swiss option. That includes not getting involved in America’s nonsense too.
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