News From Antiwar.com General Kenneth McKenzie, chief of U.S. Central Command, applauded the scheduled meeting of President Joe Biden and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the sidelines of the North Atlantic Treatment Organization summit to be held in Brussels on June 14. In a virtual discussion with the American Enterprise Institute think tank, the commander praised Turkey as “a longstanding ally” (which first proved its value to the U.S. in the Korean War, thereby gaining NATO membership in 1952) and “valued NATO partner,” according to Turkey’s Anadolu Agency. He also reiterated the fact that the U.S. maintains a NATO Article 5 commitment to Ankara. That article mandates all NATO members to come to the military assistance of any other member or members seeking it. (That is, an attack against one is construed as an attack against all.) Article 5 was first invoked in 2001 after the attacks in New York City and the Pentagon, and was used as the basis of NATO’s now twenty-year war in Afghanistan (with related deployments to Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) as well as the Operation Active Endeavour (succeeded by Operation Sea Guardian) naval surveillance and interdiction throughout the Mediterranean Sea, the Operation Eagle Assist AWACS aircraft deployment over the U.S. and five other operations.