In the spring of 1952, the Republican Party was divided by “old guard” isolationists, led by presidential frontrunner Sen. Robert Taft (R-Ohio), who demanded a refocus to confronting China from defending Europe after the Communist Chinese Party (CCP) intervened in the stalemated Korean War.
Mr. Taft, son of former Republican President William Howard Taft, had opposed the United States aiding the United Kingdom and other European nations a decade earlier—before Pearl Harbor, that is—and lobbied against the post-war Marshall Plan.
Citing wariness of European commitments that he blamed for the United States’ participation in two global wars in the preceding 35 years, Mr. Taft was one of 13 Republican senators who voted against creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in July 1949.
The GOP’s “internationalist” wing, led by Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (R-Mass.) and a young Sen. Richard Nixon (R-Calif.), had no viable party challenger when their nemesis, Mr. Taft, announced he would seek the GOP presidential nomination for a third time in 1952.
Actually, they had a candidate in mind but were uncertain if he was a Republican or if he would run—Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the former supreme Allied commander in Europe in World War II who by then was living in Paris as NATO’s first commander.
Mr. Eisenhower had already turned down offers to run for office, including from President Harry Truman, who said he’d run as “Ike’s” vice president on the 1948 Democrat ticket.
After a meeting with Mr. Lodge in Paris, Mr. Eisenhower announced in January 1952 that he was a Republican and would consider running for public office, citing fears that isolationist Republicans wanted to withdraw from NATO as a primary motivation.
Without his participation or approval, Mr. Eisenhower’s name was placed on the March 1952 New Hampshire primary ballot and he won easily. A week later, he narrowly lost the Minnesota primary as a write-in.
It wasn’t until June 4, 1952, that Mr. Eisenhower formally declared he was a candidate. A month later, he edged Mr. Taft at the GOP Convention and then went on to defeat Democrat Adlai Stevenson in the general election.
Mr. Eisenhower would serve two terms and be the first Republican president in a six-decade succession of “internationalist” GOP administrations—from Mr. Nixon through George W. Bush—that staunchly defended and expanded the international alliances, including NATO, that sustained the post-World War II “rules-based order.”
Seventy-two years later, the Republican Party finds itself in a similar scenario.
Only now, it is the “internationalists” who are the “old guard” and the “isolationists”—especially among the 40-something member House Freedom Caucus—who are increasingly gaining traction in Congress under the Taftian “America First” banner recycled by former President Donald Trump during his 2016 campaign, his four years in office, and in his 2024 presidential campaign.
Partisan Split on NATO
The U.S. relationships with allies in the 31-member NATO alliance—and its commitments under Article 5—have been a priority issue since Russia launched its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Kyiv was preliminarily cleared for membership in 2008 if it met an array of conditions, including meeting “rule of law” standards but has been provided no timetable for doing so.Few nations in the alliance—with the exception of Baltic and East Europe members—support Ukraine joining NATO while embroiled in a war with Russia. That’s the Biden administration’s view and the most prevalent bipartisan consensus in Congress.
Since the Russian invasion, Americans’ views on NATO have been linked to sustaining support for Ukraine, for which U.S. taxpayers have contributed $32 billion. That’s a source of contention for many in Congress who say the Biden administration has done a poor job of explaining to constituents why Kyiv’s fight against President Vladimir Putin is important to them.
However, all point to partisan variations in that consensus.
According to Pew, while 62 percent of Americans have “favorable” views of NATO, Democrats approve by a 54-point margin, 76 percent to 22 percent, while Republicans are split with 49 percent equally expressing approval and disapproval.
Perhaps more broadly revealing, the same Pew poll found more than 60 percent of Democrats believe “it is best for the future of our country to be active in world affairs,” while 39 percent say “we should pay less attention to problems overseas and concentrate on problems here at home.”
NATO Debated in Congress
Even before Mr. Trump’s emergence and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there have been numerous failed legislative efforts to cut or diminish U.S. ties to NATO.In 2012, the GOP-led House passed an amendment to that year’s defense budget, or National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), by Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) to remove all U.S. Army brigades permanently stationed in Europe and replace them with a rotational force. It wasn’t approved by the Senate and didn’t make it into the NDAA.
In June 2017, after Mr. Trump wouldn’t pledge that the United States would live up to NATO’s Article 5 joint-defense commitment during a Brussels conference, the House in a 423–4 vote affirmed that commitment.
In a 357–22 January 2019 vote, the House approved a resolution that barred the use of federal funds to withdraw from NATO. Of the 22 dissenters, all Republicans, 14 were House Freedom Caucus members, led by then-Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.).
After that vote, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) wrote in a Twitter—now X—post that he opposed the resolution.
“Actually, I’d call it the ‘Pledge Allegiance to NATO Act.’
During 2024 defense budget hearings, and ensuing amendment filings, Republicans filed numerous prospective NDAA add-ons regarding support for Ukraine and sustained membership in NATO.
Rep. Warren Davidson’s (R-Ohio) proposed NDAA amendment directed the president to withdraw the United States from NATO because many members aren’t fulfilling 2014 pledges, reiterated in 2022, to commit a minimum of 2 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) to defense.
“For the better part of the last decade. Germany has contributed only around 1 percent of its GDP to finance NATO obligations while the United States is paying around 4 percent of our GDP to defend NATO countries,” Mr. Davidson said in a hearing before the Rules Committee.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who filed five NDAA amendments seeking to cut U.S. financial support for Ukraine, also filed a proposed add-on seeking withdrawal from NATO.
Rep. Chip Roy’s (R-Texas) prospective amendment “expressed” the sentiment that “the United States should not continue subsidizing NATO member countries who choose not to invest in their own defense.”
His measure praised Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and the United Kingdom for meeting the minimum 2 percent GDP defense spending obligations in 2022, while “denouncing” Croatia, France, Slovakia, Romania, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Albania, Bulgaria, Italy, Germany, Hungary, Denmark, Portugal, Turkey, Montenegro, Czech Republic, Canada, Slovenia, Belgium, Spain, and Luxembourg for not doing so.
They all failed, including Mr. Roy’s proposal in a 218–212 near-total partisan vote. None of the proposals are in the House NDAA adopted in a 219–210 near-total party-line vote.
In Senate defense budget deliberations, Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) proposed amendment to “express the sense of Congress that Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO) does not supersede the constitutional requirement that Congress declare war before the United States engages in war” failed in an 83–16 July 19 tally.
Under Article 5, an attack on any one NATO member constitutes an attack on all members. It has only been invoked once—by the United States after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
The Senate NDAA, however, adopted in an 86–11 bipartisan tally, does contain an amendment related to NATO—one in support of the alliance designed to constrain a president from acting unilaterally without the consent of Congress.
The add-on, co-sponsored by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and approved July 19 in a 65–28 vote, would prohibit a president to withdraw from NATO without a two-thirds vote of both chambers of Congress by essentially banning the use of any federal money to do so.
“The last administration, a question came up about whether a president could withdraw from NATO unilaterally,” Mr. Kaine said on the Senate floor.
NATO a GOP Presidential Primary Issue
As a 2016 candidate and subsequent president, Mr. Trump became the first Republican to successfully campaign on scrutinizing the alliance and also the first sitting president since 1949 to characterize NATO as an unnecessary foreign entanglement.He isn’t backing down from that stance in his 2024 campaign. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy have also criticized the alliance and appear ambivalent about staying in NATO, reflecting the isolationist “America First” wing of the party.
Among the remaining 11 Republican presidential candidates, the GOP’s “old guard” constituency reflecting Reagan-era strong support for NATO, is represented by former Vice President Mike Pence, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson.
The former president maintains his threat to leave NATO because relatively few members were anteing up their 2 percent share spurred delinquent nations to pay $400 billion in lagging commitments.
Mr. Trump, in stump speeches and TV interviews, said he will continue to extract the United States from trade agreements and treaties that don’t benefit his “America First” platform, including NATO.
“These globalists want to squander all of America’s strength, blood and treasure, chasing monsters and phantoms overseas—while keeping us distracted from the havoc they’re creating right here at home,” he said in the Agenda47 statement.
Mr. DeSantis has repeatedly questioned NATO’s collective commitment to defense and—like the Taft campaign 72 years ago—suggested money and resources committed to Europe should be directed to thwart the growing challenge presented by China in the Pacific.
If elected, the governor said he’d demand all NATO members contribute 2.5 percent of their GDP to defense, especially if some NATO members continue to have business with China.
“We can’t underwrite security for all of Europe while they don’t necessarily share our interests in terms of our posture in the Pacific, which is the most important threat we’re going to face as an American,” he said in a late-June campaign stop in Hollis, New Hampshire.
“You have some [NATO members] like the Brits and the Poles, they get it and I think that they’re with us on that. But you have others like France and Germany that, they think being more friendly with Xi [Jinping] is the right way to go, that China doesn’t really represent a threat.”
Under his proposal, the United States and NATO countries would repeal sanctions against Russia, restore normal diplomatic and trade relations with Moscow “with mutual security commitments,” cede most of Ukraine’s Donbas region to Russia, withdraw all troops and bases in Eastern Europe, “returning to the reality that existed before the July 2016 Warsaw Summit” in exchange for Putin agreeing to end its military alliance with China and rejoin the START nuclear treaty.
“NATO has expanded far more after the fall of the USSR than it ever did when the USSR existed,” Mr. Ramaswamy said on July 2 in Nashua, New Hampshire.
“NATO was supposedly created to reduce the risk of nuclear war with the USSR, now the steps that it’s taking is literally increasing the risk of nuclear war with modern Russia. I believe this does not advance American interests, and we should be deeply concerned about aggressive NATO expansion.”
Mr. Scott was among the 18 Republican senators who voted for the Kaine–Rubio amendment and co-sponsored a bill with Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) to enhance energy security for NATO members by providing an escape from dependence on Russian energy.
The proposed Scott–Barrasso Energy Security Cooperation with Allied Partners in Europe (ESCAPE) Act provides Western Europe “with efficient and reliable American energy. In addition, the legislation mandates sanctions on those who facilitate the development of Russian energy pipelines,” the bill states.
“Unleashing America’s abundant natural resources makes us more energy independent and strengthens our national security,” Mr. Scott said in a statement, noting that sustained support for the alliance doesn’t come “with a blank check” and that he supports increased “accountability for all the [U.S and NATO] dollars being spent, wherever they are.”
Mr. Pence—who visited Ukraine early in his campaign and maintained strong support for NATO even while serving as Mr. Trump’s vice president; Ms. Haley, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson are among GOP presidential candidates who have issued statements or commentary in support of the alliance.
Mr. Hutchinson said he supported not only audits of U.S. funds spent in Ukraine, but also of the nation’s contributions to NATO.
But, he told C-SPAN, the alliance is critical to U.S. defense and Washington needs to be the driver in leading the alliance, saying Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis represent an “isolationist view” that’s impossible to implement in an interconnected modern world.
