This is a Cato Special Podcast. I'm Caleb Brown. Over the weekend former

President Donald Trump made shocking remarks that for countries who aren't

paid up with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO.

The U.S. would not only not come to their defense if Russia were to attack,

that he would encourage Russia to do, quote, whatever the hell they want.

Is it an affront to ironclad U.S. commitments?

Or perhaps it's just saying the quiet part out loud.

It is Justin Logan comments.

What are the commitments that the United States has made to NATO as an organization and how free

is the President of the United States to disregard those commitments.

So that's a great question. I didn't know this was going to be a seven hour

podcast but we will talk about the commitments that we have. So the big money

commitment is Article 5 of NATO, which says that an

attack on one member of NATO will be treated as an attack on all members of NATO. In accordance with their own constitutional processes that the nations

will respond to that attack.

I think it doesn't say in a manner of their choosing, but it's actually quite murky.

So Article 5 has this weird witchy thing about it

that on the one hand in the legal lawyer kind of way of reading it it doesn't

commit the United States to do all that much other than to treat an attack on others as an attack on itself and to respond in accordance with its constitutional processes, blah, blah, blah, blah.

However, at the same time, in practical terms,

any time a US president says that a US response

to a notional attack on a member would be met by anything other than

...