NATO/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump drew backlash last month after he did not explicitly endorse Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s founding document during his summit with NATO allies in Brussels. And it appears his own national security team was blindsided by it.
The article, known as the collective-defense clause, stipulates that an attack on any member is an attack on all. It was invoked for the first time in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Five sources told Politico on Monday that US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, national security adviser H.R. McMaster, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson worked with Trump on the speech for weeks and pushed hard for the Article 5 language to be included after viewing later drafts in which it had been taken out.
Lower-level members of Trump’s national security team, meanwhile, were blindsided, according to the report.”
-Natasha Bertrand, “‘They didn’t know it had been removed’: Trump’s big NATO speech reportedly blindsided his own national security team,” Business Insider, June 5, 2017 8:00am