Findings

Congress makes the following findings: (1) The North Atlantic Treaty (also known as the Washington Treaty) was signed on April 4, 1949, in Washington, DC, and created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). (2) NATO was intended to counterbalance the political and military power of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and was originally composed of 12 member states representing Western Europe and its transatlantic partners. (3) The preamble to the Washington Treaty affirms that the Parties will unite their efforts for collective defense. Similarly, Article 3 of the Washington Treaty provides that each Party will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack. (4) The Warsaw Pact served as the collective defense bloc of the Soviet Union and collapsed in 1991, followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union itself by the end of that year. (5) Shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union, United States Secretary of State James Baker made assurances to Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastward. (6) The dissolution of both the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union fundamentally altered the security environment in Europe and rendered NATO’s founding collective defense mission irrelevant. (7) Despite its waning relevance and prior assurances to the contrary, NATO began a profound eastward expansion in 1999, which, as of 2025, culminated in a land border with the Russian Federation that exceeds 1,500 miles and encircles the Baltic Sea. (8) Successive National Military Doctrines and National Security Strategies of the Russian Federation have framed the expansion of NATO as a pervasive threat to Russian security. (9) In a speech before the Munich Security Conference in 2007, President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin described NATO expansion as a serious provocation and referenced the assurances previously made by the United States. (10) The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation in 2022 demonstrates the Russian Federation's willingness to employ military action in response to perceived security threats. (11) NATO members have refused to rule out further expansion. (12) Since the founding of NATO, the United States has shouldered the burden of what was characterized as a collective security alliance, as the largest financial and hard power contributor. (13) At the Wales Summit in 2014, NATO members pledged to spend 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense, known as the Wales Pledge. (14) More than a decade later, nearly 1/3 of NATO members fail to meet the Wales Pledge. (15) Consistent with United States national security interests, Europe is not a priority theater for United States engagement. The principal interest of the United States in Europe is preventing the emergence of a regional hegemon. (16) The combined military and economic capacity of European NATO members exceeds that of the Russian Federation, serving as a sufficient counterweight to a prospective regional hegemon without United States engagement. (17) While the United States continues to subsidize European security, European NATO members are disincentivized from forward movement on burden shifting in the European theater. (18) Membership of the United States in NATO is inconsistent with the national security interests of the United States.