Article 5 of the Constitution
In the episode on how Washington invented the presidency, Harlow Giles Unger describes George Washington’s view of the Constitution as a compromise among conflicting interests around the country. Washington, Unger says, told critics that the document was not what everybody wanted but to try it, and that if they did not like it, Article 5 gave them the right to amend it. Unger’s account places Article 5 in Washington’s own framing of the Constitution as an experiment subject to revision rather than a final settlement. How Washington Invented the Presidency (2013)
The same episode describes Washington acting outside the letter of the document. Unger says that during his eight years in office Washington established what he called seven pillars of executive power not granted to him by the Constitution, powers that belonged to the House of Representatives but that Washington seized out of necessity. When the first Congress recessed in 1789 without leaving money for the president to spend, Unger says, Washington sent his Treasury Secretary to banks in New York City, then the temporary capital, and borrowed money on his own say-so. The following year, with Congress out of session and Indian nations in the West attacking American settlers, Washington drafted 2,000 troops and sent them to war without the consent of Congress. Unger calls the borrowing a blatant violation of the Constitution and the sending of troops a blatant violation of the clause stating that Congress shall declare war. How Washington Invented the Presidency (2013)
Unger’s account ties these acts to Washington’s oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. Washington, he says, intended to do just that even if it meant violating the letter of the Constitution to preserve its spirit. The episode also notes that the first act of Congress was the Oath Act, which created the oath of office for other governmental officials, and that Washington began with a blank slate because Congress had not yet passed a law. How Washington Invented the Presidency (2013)
Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty
In the February 2022 episode on Ukraine, Chris Preble explains that for Ukrainians who wish their country to be in NATO, the core defensive article of the alliance, Article 5, says that an attack on any one member will be treated as an attack on all of them. The presumption, he says, is that the collective military capability of all 30 member NATO states is a deterrent to attacks by Russia or other foreign powers. Preble notes that other NATO members such as Poland, the Baltic states and Romania, near or along the Russian border, look upon NATO membership as a key deterrent and defense mechanism. Chris Preble on Ukraine (2022)
Preble sets the clause against Russia’s stated concerns. He says the present crisis was created by Vladimir Putin’s decision to station over 100,000 Russian troops near Ukraine’s border and along the border to the north in Belarus, with some estimates putting as much as 70 percent of Russian military power concentrated on the crisis. Russia’s long-standing complaint, he says, is that it does not wish to see Ukraine become a NATO member, and the potential for foreign troops stationed on the Russian border is a great concern to it. Preble describes the U.S. position, stated most eloquently by Secretary of State Blinken, that countries are entitled to choose what alliances they make and who they align with, and that if the government in Ukraine wishes to be a NATO member it should be able to apply like any other country—though existing members must agree to invite and admit it. Chris Preble on Ukraine (2022)
Bob Zadek presses Preble on the meaning of membership, saying that becoming a NATO member sounds benign, like joining a country club, but that it means a defense pact. Preble’s answer returns to Article 5 as the guarantee that makes membership valuable to states near Russia. Chris Preble on Ukraine (2022)
Article 5 and the expansion debate
In the March 2022 episode, Justin Logan takes up the question of whether admitting Eastern European countries to NATO serves the alliance’s interests. He argues that one must look at the member states, since states look out for their own interest, and that NATO as an organization had an interest in expanding after the Cold War so that it could tell a story about why it existed. From an American point of view, he says, NATO serves as a net transfer payment from U.S. taxpayers to European taxpayers, and he notes that even original members such as France get to have a lower military budget because of the American contribution to European security. Justin Logan on Ukraine (2022)
Logan agrees with Bob Zadek’s framing that from Russia’s standpoint NATO is the enemy, created to counter the USSR and now Russia, and that Russia is not irrational in feeling insecure as its enemy grows and moves closer. He cites Bob Gates, the former Secretary of Defense and Director of Central Intelligence, who wrote in his book in 2014 that the effort in 2008 to get Ukraine and Georgia into NATO was a step too far and an affront that any Russian leader would view as dangerous to Russia, and Bill Burns, who cabled the same thing in 2008. Logan says this view has been widely circulated in the upper echelons of the American foreign policy establishment for decades. Justin Logan on Ukraine (2022)
Logan distinguishes a security threat to the United States from a threat to the political project in Europe. The Russians, he says, are not going to invade or bomb the United States, so fundamental considerations about U.S. national security are not at stake. But because the United States has made itself the central fact in European security affairs for the last 65 years, Russian revisionism and the invasion of Ukraine endanger that project. He notes that the alliance has gone from 12 founding members of the North Atlantic Treaty to 30 members, and that this expansion is viewed as a danger in Moscow. Justin Logan on Ukraine (2022)
Bob Zadek asks whether NATO has become a democracy club rather than a mutual defense pact held together by Article 5 and other sections of the NATO treaty, and whether the European Union already fills that need. Logan answers that NATO’s mission as a military alliance could be met by the EU, and that the fundamental distinction is that the United States is in NATO and not in the EU. He says the United States historically stifled European security cooperation, particularly through the 1990s and 2000s, because it wanted those countries to stay in NATO so that it could have influence over their policies. Justin Logan on Ukraine (2022)
Across episodes: the two Article 5s
The excerpts treat two different Article 5 provisions. The 2013 episode uses Article 5 of the U.S. Constitution as the amendment route Washington pointed to when he told critics to try the document and change it if they did not like it. The 2022 episodes use Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty as the collective-defense clause at the center of the Ukraine crisis and the expansion debate. The earlier treatment is Unger’s, framed around Washington’s willingness to act outside the constitutional text; the later treatment is Preble’s and Logan’s, framed around Russia’s objection to NATO enlargement and the American interest in the alliance. The excerpts show no development between the two 2022 episodes on the meaning of the clause itself: Preble states what Article 5 says, and Logan argues about what expansion costs and whom it provokes.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not give the full text of either Article 5, nor do they state when the North Atlantic Treaty was signed or when the constitutional amendment process was first used. They do not say what any court has held about the president’s borrowing or war powers, or name the statutes involved. The Preble excerpt breaks off at the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis segment, and the Logan excerpt ends mid-sentence, so neither the parallels Bob Zadek proposed nor Logan’s final thought is available.