The Open Skies Treaty allows unarmed aerial surveillance flights over the entire territory of the participating countries.
US President Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of the United States from the 35-nation Open Skies Treaty with Russia. This would be the third arms control pact Trump has revoked since coming to the office. The 18-year-old pact was designed to improve military transparency and confidence between the superpowers.
The US administration held that Russia had not stuck to its commitments and repeatedly violated the terms of the pact, which was designed to improve military transparency and confidence between the superpowers.
The USA has blamed Russia for restricting US flyovers in neighbour Georgia and its military enclave in Kaliningrad on the Baltic coast. In addition, US said Russia misused its flights over American and European territory to identify critical infrastructure for the potential attack in a time of war.
The pull-out would formally take place in six months, but US President held out the possibility that Russia could start adhering.
However, Russia rejected the allegations of violations and showed the intentions to talk on technical issues that US calls violations. It has also warned that the withdrawal will affect the interests of all of 35 participating countries.
It may be noted that between 2002 and 2016, the US flew 196 flights over Russia compared to the 71 flights flown by Russia. So, USA has used the treaty more intensively than Russia.
This decision further intensifies doubts on the extension of the New START accord, which expires in February 2021. The accord imposes reduction and limitation of US and Russian strategic offensive arms. It is a successor to the START framework of 1991.
The USA has been worried that China’s nuclear accumulation could be doubled if the New Start Treaty continued without including China. The US intended to establish a new arms control regime which would include China.
In 2019, the USand Russia walked away from the 1987 Intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty with Russia. It was a nuclear arms-control pact in which the two nations decided to eliminate their stocks of medium-range land-based missiles which could carry nuclear warheads.
The Open Skies Treaty was proposed by President Dwight Eisenhower of the US in 1955. It was signed in 1992 and took effect in 2002. The objective is to let member nations make unarmed surveillance flights over each other’s countries to build up trust.