
Putin Wants to Break NATO. Republicans Want to Help Him.
He's losing the war against Ukraine but making advances in his campaign to dissolve NATO.
Vladimir Putinās central objective in Europe isnāt to capture Kyiv, the Donbas, or any other part of Ukraine. Itās to weaken the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which protects most of the continent against him. And in that longstanding campaign, Putin scored two significant victories this week.
One was in France, where Marine Le Pen, a Putin sympathizer, finished a close second to Emmanuel Macron in Sundayās French presidential election. Le Pen is running almost even with Macron in polls for the April 24 runoff. She has said that if she wins, sheāll withdraw France from NATOās command structure.
The other victory was in the United States, where 63 House Republicans, nearly a third of the GOP conference, voted against a resolution of support for NATO.
The House vote, taken on April 5, is a warning sign. Putin may be losing ground in Ukraine, but heās gaining ground in the U.S. Congress. Three years ago, 22 House Republicans voted against pro-NATO legislation. That number has nearly tripled.
The āPutin wingā of the House GOPāuseful idiots such as Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who openly spout Russian propagandaāis only a tiny fraction of the Kremlinās target audience in Congress. Theyāre joined by a larger crowd of Ukraine bashers, hardcore isolationists, and right-wingers who say we shouldnāt worry about anyone elseās borders until we āsecureā our own. Together, that coalition adds up to more than 20 lawmakers.
Thatās a problem. But when you combine them with the NATO skeptics who voted against last weekās resolutionāanother 40 or so House Republicans who donāt trust alliances and who view Europeans as Americaās rivals or adversariesāthe problem gets a lot bigger.
The GOPās turn against NATO is particularly worrisome because Congress has been warned, explicitly and repeatedly, about Putinās goal of dissolving the alliance. In March 2017, after a U.S. intelligence report confirmed that Russia had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the House Committee on Foreign Affairsāwhich was then, like the rest of Congress, under Republican controlāheld a hearing on this subject. The hearing was titled, āUndermining Democratic Institutions and Splintering NATO: Russian Disinformation Aims.ā Analysts and former officials explained to the committee how Russia had, in the words of one witness, persistently funded propaganda in the West to āfracture allied security, stoke public distrust against democratic institutions, and discredit the alliance structures that defend Europe.ā
Over the next two years, other reports documented the same problem. The European Council on Foreign Relations noted Russiaās efforts to undermine support for NATO in Finland, the Czech Republic, and other countries. Foreign policy journals and articles in the American press noted rising alarm in Europe at President Donald Trumpās threats to withdraw U.S. troops from the continent or to abandon the American commitment to defend NATO allies.
On January 14, 2019, the New York Times reported that āseveral timesā in 2018, Trump had āprivately said he wanted to withdrawā from the alliance. The article said Trump had ātold his top national security officials that he did not see the point of the military alliance, which he presented as a drain on the United States.ā
A few days after the Times report, House Democrats filed and brought to the floor the NATO Support Act, which reaffirmed that the U.S. was āsolemnly committed to the North Atlantic Treaty Organizationās principle of collective defense as enumerated in Article 5.ā The bill couldnāt completely bind Trump, but it expressed the sense of Congress that āthe President shall not withdraw the United States from NATOā and that American policy was āto reject any efforts to withdraw the United States from NATO.ā It also prohibited the use of federal funds āto take any action to withdraw the United Statesā from the alliance.
Every Democrat voted for the bill; 22 Republicans voted against it.
One of the 22 Republicans, Rep. Scott Perry, explained why he and other self-styled hawks had voted no. In a statement to constituents, he complained that āthe bill prevented the U.S. from ever leaving NATO . . . unless Congress first voted to repeal this would-be new law.ā Perry wanted Trump to be free to pull America out of NATO, on his own.
Perry also argued that Trump should be free āto negotiate better terms for the United States in NATO,ā as though the alliance were a trade deal. And he warned that āan ally of ours today may not be an ally tomorrow.ā
Thatās how Perry and many of his colleagues viewed the world. They saw alliances as entanglements and burdens. They worried that even friendly countries couldnāt be trusted. They believed that America should hedge its commitments because our allies might screw us.
And that was all Putin needed. He didnāt need American lawmakers to love him the way Trump did. He just needed them to constrain or withhold support from NATO.
Perryās defection was a particularly good sign for Putin. The congressman wasnāt just an Iraq war veteran. He had also chaired part of the 2017 hearing on Russiaās strategy to undermine NATO. So he must have known he was doing what Putin wanted.
But he did it anyway, because he thought he was protecting America from Europe.
In the three years since that vote, Congress has seen even more evidence of Russiaās operations to sabotage NATO.
In April 2019, the Justice Department released the Mueller report. It detailed how Russia had lobbied Trump campaign officials against NATO; how the Trump campaign, according to one of its own former co-chairs, had shifted away from āthe NATO frameworkā; and how the Trump team had blocked Republican platform language that would have endorsed āproviding lethal defensive weaponsā to Ukraine.
In October 2019, the Senate Intelligence Committee released an analysis of Russian propaganda techniques. The report showed how the Kremlin had sought to ādrive wedges in the Western community alliances of all sorts, particularly NATO.ā One of Russiaās tricks, the report noted, was ādiscouraging United States supportā for accepting eastern European countries into NATO by portraying those countries as āfree riders.ā
In August 2020, the Senate committee issued a report that showed how Kremlin sympathizers had lobbied the Trump campaign against NATO. The report found that in April 2016, then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had advised Trump to affirm in a speech that āour commitment to our NATO allies in Eastern Europe is absoluteā and that āwe need to stand up to Russian aggression together.ā The Trump campaign had rejected this language.
In September 2020, New York Times journalist Michael Schmidt reported that during Trumpās presidency, his then-chief of staff, John Kelly, had struggled to stop Trump from pulling out of NATO. In July 2021, Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker revealed that Trump had told advisers he would abandon the alliance in his second term. And last month, Trumpās former national security adviser, John Bolton, told the Post that āPutin was waitingā for Trump to do just that.
After all these warnings, and after Putinās latest invasion of Ukraine, one might have expected the congressional caucus of NATO critics to shrink.
Instead, it multiplied.
Why did so many Republicans vote against the latest pro-NATO resolution?
Some openly reject the alliance. āNATO is a relic of the Cold War,ā said Rep. Thomas Massie. āWhy should Americans pay for Europeās defense?ā
Others said the U.S. should be wary of overcommitment. āWe shouldnāt say that our support for NATO is unconditional,ā said Rep. Warren Davidson.
But others, including Perry, complained that the resolution threatened American sovereignty.In a video statement, Perry told his constituents that the resolution āpoliticizes NATOā by saying āif youāre not supporting socialism, then weāre going to use NATO against you.ā
This is a bizarre misrepresentation. The resolution affirmed that NATO was āfounded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law.ā Those words are literally in the allianceās founding treaty. The resolution also called for āunwavering support to the people of Ukraine.ā And it endorsed a project, jointly proposed by Democratic and Republican lawmakers, to build āNATOās capacity to strengthen democratic institutions within NATO member, partner, and aspirant countries.ā
To make sure nobody misconstrued that language as an attack on sovereignty, the resolution stipulated that any NATO monitoring of āchallenges to democracyā within member states would be undertaken only āwhen requested.ā
Perry ignored that stipulation and caricatured the resolution. So did several of his colleagues. Representative Chip Roy described the resolution as āempowering international organizations to target the internal activities of sovereign nations.ā Davidson described it as āusing NATO to try to undermine Americaās sovereignty.ā
Some members who opposed the measure also expressed hostility toward Europe. Davidson said āglobal commitmentsā to accords on climate, banking, and other issues were forcing the U.S. to adopt the āinferior systemā of āthe Europeans.ā
Roy fretted that NATO, empowered by the House resolution, would subject Americans to āthe leftist orthodoxy that now unfortunately permeates most of Western Europe.ā
These lawmakers think theyāre patriots. They think that by voting to limit NATO and Americaās commitment to it, theyāre protecting us. And thatās what makes their subversion of the alliance, from Putinās point of view, so delicious.
Itās so much easier to serve evil when you think youāre doing good.
Correction (April 12, 2022): As originally published, this article misstated the date of a House vote in the last Congress on a bill expressing support for NATO. The vote was three years agoāin 2019ānot five.