1. United States
2. Iowa
3. Letter

America’s Global Standing and Our Alliances Deserve Better Than This I’m writing because our country’s standing with its closest allies is being damaged, and it needs to stop. NATO invoked Article 5, its mutual defense clause, for the only time in its history after the September 11 attacks, specifically to defend the United States. Allied troops from dozens of countries, including nations with no legal obligation to help, deployed to Afghanistan and fought and died alongside American forces for two decades. That commitment was real, and it came at a real cost to the allies who honored it. Since then, the United States has repeatedly treated its alliances as disposable. The 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal was conducted with little coordination with NATO partners who had troops on the ground beside ours. More recently, the President has questioned the value of NATO membership, threatened the sovereignty of Greenland, a territory of a NATO ally, and imposed tariffs on longstanding allies while praising adversarial governments. These are not minor diplomatic missteps. They tell the rest of the world that American commitments are conditional and that alliances built over 75 years can be discarded on a whim. Meanwhile, the administration points fingers at how other countries are run while the United States faces its own serious problems: homelessness remains near a record high at over 745,000 people nationwide, medical debt remains a leading cause of personal bankruptcy, the federal minimum wage has not increased since 2009, and the United States continues to have one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. Lecturing allies about their governance while these problems go unaddressed at home undermines our credibility rather than strengthening it. Our alliances are not favors we do for other countries. They are commitments that have protected American lives and interests for generations, and treating them as leverage for political theater puts the country’s long-term security at risk. I’m asking you to: 1. Publicly reaffirm US commitment to NATO and our treaty allies, unambiguously and without preconditions. 2. Push back, on the record, against rhetoric or policy that threatens the sovereignty of allied nations or territories. 3. Use your oversight role to demand transparency about the diplomatic and security costs of erratic foreign policy decisions. 4. Prioritize rebuilding trust with allies as a matter of national security, not partisan politics. Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to your response.