The Parties of NATO agreed that an armed attack against

[Volcano1985]

The Parties of NATO agreed that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America ____________an attack
against them all.

A) will be considered
B) considering
C) must have considered
D) would be considered
E) had been considered

Could you explain me why the key is A, why not D?

[Cerberus™]

I agree with you here: D is the best choice. "Will be considered" may pass in informal speech, but it is certainly not better than "would". This sentence is a bit odd for other reasons as well:
- What are these "parties" exactly? They make me think of factions, while "members" or "countries" is probably what is meant.
- An attack is usually made on someone, not against someone (though "against" is not actually wrong).

[_Philippe]

I'm in no way a native english speaker.
Translated in French, A is more affirmative. There is no option.
D means probably. There is no absolute certainty.
Could it be the same in english ?

[Cerberus™]

What you say is mostly true if will and would are used in the main clause of a sentence; but here they are in a subordinate clause, where the sequence of tenses rules out "will" because the main clause is in the past.

[Volcano1985]

I thought like this:

The Parties of NATO agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America will be considered an attack against them all.

The Parties of NATO agreed that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America would be considered an attack against them all.

[Cerberus™]

[Hieupt]

[Cerberus™]

I disagree. Reported speech is often not in the same tense as direct speech. When the governing verb is in the past tense, reported speech is necessarily in a different tense.

Direct speech:
The Dauphin speaks: "Father, the mob has stormed the Bastille."

Reported speech:
The Dauphin told the King that the mob had stormed the Bastille.

[Hieupt]

There are some exceptions to shift back the tense of the original speech, and this is an exception case of telling the truth.

Another question comes out is, supposedly you were right, why wouldn't we change the form of the verb "attack", which is regular verb, that means the shift-back verb form should be "attacked"? In other word, "will/would" needs to be consistent with "attack/attacked".

How do you think?
_________________
Thank you very much,
Hieu Phan.

P/s: Please just correct if I'm wrong somewhere!

[Cerberus™]

Ah, I see: you are thinking of the exception that applies to general statements, which are true both in the past and in the present.

But I do not believe this is such a statement. At the time that the treaty was signed, it was declared: "an attack upon one will be an attack upon all". But was this, at the time, a statement about the future, or a general truth? If it had been a general truth, it would have been much more plausibly phrased "an attack upon one is an attack upon all"; for the present simple is the most common choice for a general truth.

When the auxiliary verb "will" is used in its habitual sense, it is in fact describing a habit, something that usually takes place in certain circumstances; but in this sense it is in general subject to the shift of the sequence of tenses.

"Would" just sounds by far more natural to me. The most likely usage of "will" here is simply as a statement about the future, and as such subject to the time shift - but with an undertone of command or official declaration that is often found in "it shall be so"; now that I think about it, why was not "should" used in this sentence?

"An attack" is a noun.

I have corrected your message as I thought you asked; but I realize only now that this request was in your signature, not in the message itself. Well, I have already done it, so here we go.

[Hieupt]

Hi Cerberus,

I'm just trying to agree with the "answer key" that Volcano1985 mentioned in the first post. If I were him, I would agree with the key.

Thank you very much for your correction. By the way, I thought "What do you think?" and "How do you think?" would be the same, wouldn't they?

Thanks,
Hieu.
_________________
Thank you very much,
Hieu Phan.

P/s: Please just correct if I'm wrong somewhere!

[Volcano1985]

Hello Hieupt

Attack is not verb in this sentence. "An armed attack"

[Cerberus™]

Hieu, I understand that you are applying the principle of charity here, that you are trying to find a way for this exercise to be right. But I just think that this sentence is odd.

I just Googled it, and what do you know, it is supposedly part of the actual Treaty. But it is phrased differently: it says "agreed ... shall ...". The past "agreed" was used in 1949! The simple past seems a bit odd here without context; perhaps diplomatic jargon is different. However that may be, if we change it to one tense backwards in time, we get: "had agreed ... should ...".

I don't know why, but "how do you think?" sounds more like a question about the process of your thinking: how do your thoughts come up exactly? Do you quickly jump from one thought to another? Or it could be used with an indirect question: how do you think whales can stay underwater for so long? How do they breathe? But not simply as an equivalent of "what do you think?".