Hyperreality

You say that, but now I've been electronically tagged for hanging around a train station toilet naming people's penises.

Reminds me of this Trump quote:

"When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength ... That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak...as being spit on by the rest of the world."

So maybe authoritarian right could also read: "They showed the power of strength."

Authoritarian left could be a Mao quote: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."

I view this as extremely troubling and undermining the separation of powers.

Not American, but I don't get why. AFAIK your constitution literally says that the senate gets a say in treaties. Article II, section 2:

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur

Now obviously, that's far more rare in recent history, IRC stuff mainly gets done by executive agreements, but that's mainly because the government signs far more crap. Makes perfect sense that congress gets a say in the big stuff. Prime example I can think of, is the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which was signed by the president but not ratified by congress. I'm sure there are more. Not something particularly new.

In fact, I googled and apparentlyt the most recent vote was on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which Obama had signed but was ultimately rejected by congress. That was unfortunate, but I don't see how that undermined the seperation of the powers either.

if you are viewing American democracy through the view of parties you don’t actually support democracy at all.

Congress is elected, no? This legislation was approved by an overwhelming majority.

If anything, as an outsider I find it troubling that the presidency has become more and more imperial. The president's just one guy. Obviously, what do I know, I'm just a foreigner. Maybe the US is different than France, which has similar issues. But plenty of your countrymen agree and historically agreed with me:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_presidency

Article mentions FDR, Bush and Obama. So not simply a partisan issue either.

Normally liberals aren’t quite so mask-off ... please, tell me how you square this circle.

Sorry, not American, so I found your question confusing.

From the article above:

The measure, spearheaded by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.),

Both parties seem to be in favour of limiting the power of the president to withdraw from NATO.

This doesn't seem to be a simple partisan issue, as this legislation has bipartisan support.

The article suggest this legislation has bi-partisan support.

I'm afraid Americans will have to decide if this is a good or bad thing based on the merits of the case and the actual legislation, rather than on which party is in favour of it.

He won't be able to withdraw from the treaty itself.

He'll be able to publicly say he won't defend NATO allies, he'll be able to withdraw troops, withdraw diplomats, withdraw ambassadors, no longer have US personell attend meetings, refuse to continue funding NATO HQ, sabotage command and control, undermine leadership, and on and on, until the NATO treaty is barely worth the paper it's written on, leaving European NATO wholly unprepared for a potential invasion. It's too late to prepare for that if they start right now.

Russia might then take a gamble. A lot of people thought they wouldn't take that gamble in 2014. People thought they wouldn't take that gamble in 2022. People think they won't take that gamble if Trump gets re-elected.

Or Russia doesn't take that gamble. They simply engage in provocations. Military exercises near the border. Bomber runs which are aborted at the last moment. Some more extravagent extra-territorial assassinations. The chance of a miscalculation skyrockets, the chance of accidentally starting a war increases significantly.

This deterrent effect doesn’t come just from the NATO treaty, a bare-bones document whose signatories simply agree in Article 5 that “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.” Deterrence comes from the Kremlin’s conviction that Americans really believe in collective defense, that the U.S. military really is prepared for collective defense, and that the U.S. president really is committed to act if collective security is challenged. Trump could end that conviction with a single speech, a single comment, even a single Truth Social post, and it won’t matter if Congress, the media, and the Republican Party are still arguing about the legality of withdrawing from NATO. Once the commander in chief says “I will not come to an ally’s aid if attacked,” why would anyone fear NATO, regardless of what obligations still exist on paper? And once the Russians, or anyone else, no longer fear a U.S. response to an attack, then the chances that they will carry one out grow higher. If such a scenario seems unlikely, it shouldn’t. Before February 2022, many refused to believe there could ever be a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. ... When I asked several people with deep links to NATO to imagine what would happen to Europe, to Ukraine, and even to Taiwan and South Korea if Trump declared his refusal to observe Article 5, all of them agreed that faith in collective defense could evaporate quickly. Alexander Vershbow, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and a former deputy secretary-general of NATO, pointed out that Trump could pull the American ambassador from his post, prevent diplomats from attending meetings, or stop contributing to the cost of the Brussels headquarters, all before Congress was able to block him: “He wouldn’t be in any way legally constrained from doing that.” Closing American bases in Europe and transferring thousands of soldiers would take longer, of course, but all of the political bodies in the alliance would nevertheless have to change the way they operate overnight. James Goldgeier, an international-relations professor at American University and the author of several books on NATO, thinks the result would be chaotic. “It’s not like you can say, ‘Okay, now we have another plan for how to deal with this,’ ” he told me. There is no alternative leadership available, no alternative source of command-and-control systems, no alternative space weapons, not even an alternative supply of ammunition. Europe would immediately be exposed to a possible Russian attack for which it is not prepared, and for which it would not be prepared for many years.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/01/trump-2024-reelection-pull-out-of-nato-membership/676120/

This deterrent effect doesn’t come just from the NATO treaty ... Deterrence comes from the Kremlin’s conviction that Americans really believe in collective defense, that the U.S. military really is prepared for collective defense, and that the U.S. president really is committed to act if collective security is challenged. Trump could end that conviction with a single speech, a single comment, even a single Truth Social post, and it won’t matter if Congress, the media, and the Republican Party are still arguing about the legality of withdrawing from NATO. Once the commander in chief says “I will not come to an ally’s aid if attacked,” why would anyone fear NATO, regardless of what obligations still exist on paper? ... When I asked several people with deep links to NATO to imagine what would happen to Europe, to Ukraine, and even to Taiwan and South Korea if Trump declared his refusal to observe Article 5, all of them agreed that faith in collective defense could evaporate quickly. Alexander Vershbow, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and a former deputy secretary-general of NATO, pointed out that Trump could pull the American ambassador from his post, prevent diplomats from attending meetings, or stop contributing to the cost of the Brussels headquarters, all before Congress was able to block him: “He wouldn’t be in any way legally constrained from doing that.” Closing American bases in Europe and transferring thousands of soldiers would take longer, of course, but all of the political bodies in the alliance would nevertheless have to change the way they operate overnight. James Goldgeier, an international-relations professor at American University and the author of several books on NATO, thinks the result would be chaotic. “It’s not like you can say, ‘Okay, now we have another plan for how to deal with this,’ ” he told me. There is no alternative leadership available, no alternative source of command-and-control systems, no alternative space weapons, not even an alternative supply of ammunition. Europe would immediately be exposed to a possible Russian attack for which it is not prepared, and for which it would not be prepared for many years.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/01/trump-2024-reelection-pull-out-of-nato-membership/676120/

Maybe the AI Putin was the real Putin disguised by software to make him look like AI, and this is a warning to the double of Putin who replaced the real Putin in a coup ten years ago.

Not American, but are you sure they're not just delaying it (even if they will eventually pay out) because they've calculated that some people will die or give up, which increases their profits?