The US said on May 21 it would withdraw from the 35-nation Open Skies treaty allowing unarmed surveillance flights over member countries, the Trump administration’s latest move to pull the country out of a major global treaty.

The administration said Russia had repeatedly violated the pact’s terms. Senior officials said the pullout would formally take place in six months, but President Donald Trump held out the possibility that Russia could come into compliance.

The Treaty on Open Skies

Open Skies was first proposed by US President Eisenhower to the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics at the Geneva Conference of 1955. The idea is to let member nations make surveillance flights over each other’s countries to build trust. In the context of the Cold War, this bilateral proposal was rejected by the Soviet Union.

When the administration reformulated Open Skies as a multilateral proposal in May 1989, the world was on the threshold of revolutionary developments. Open Skies was proposed as an instrument of confidence building.

Formal negotiations on a Treaty on Open Skies began in Ottawa in February 1990, and continued in Budapest in April and May 1990. At that time, however, the Soviet Union was still not prepared to open all of its territory to aerial observation.

The Treaty on Open Skies was finally signed on March 24, 1992 in Helsinki within the framework of the Conference on Security and Co‑operation in Europe (CSCE). Following a long period of negotiations, the treaty entered into force on January 1, 2002.

Currently, 34 countries are party to the treaty while a 35th, Kyrgyzstan, has signed but not ratified it.

India is not a member of this treaty. Most of the participating countries are in North America, Europe and central Asia.

Highlights of the treaty

The treaty is based on complete territorial openness, on the use of unarmed observation aircraft, on sensors on board those aircraft, and on quotas of observation flights which each State Party is willing to accept, and entitled to conduct, annually.

Observation flights will be conducted on unarmed fixed-wing aircraft provided either by the observing Party or by the observed Party. 

Aircraft may be equipped with video cameras and panoramic and framing cameras for daylight photography, infra-red line scanning systems, which can operate by day and night and synthetic aperture radar, which can operate day and night in any weather.

Why is the US pulling out of the treaty?

President Donald Trump blamed Russia’s non-compliance with the treaty for such a decision by the US. “I think we have a very good relationship with Russia. But Russia didn’t adhere to the treaty. So until they adhere, we will pull out,” Trump said.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US will submit notice of its decision to withdraw from the Treaty on Open Skies to the Treaty Depository and to all other states party to the treaty. 

After six months, the US will no longer be a party to the treaty, he said, adding that the US would, however, reconsider its withdrawal should Russia return to full compliance with the treaty.

Pompeo alleged that Russia has refused access to observation flights within a 10-km corridor along its border with the Russian-occupied Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, thereby attempting to advance false Russian claims that these occupied territories are independent states. 

Russia’s designation of an Open Skies refueling airfield in Crimea, Ukraine, is similarly an attempt to advance its claim of purported annexation of the peninsula, which the US does not and will never accept. Russia has also illegally placed a restriction on flight distance over Kaliningrad, despite the fact that this enclave has become the location of a significant military build-up that Russian officials have suggested includes short-range nuclear-tipped missiles targeting NATO, he said. 

In 2019, Russia unjustifiably denied a shared US and Canada observation flight over a large Russian military exercise.

What is the response to the US move?

Some experts worry that a US exit from the treaty, which will halt Russian overflights of the US, could prompt Moscow’s withdrawal, which would end overflights of Russia by the remaining members, weakening European security at a time that Russian-backed separatists are holding parts of Ukraine and Georgia.

NATO allies and other countries like Ukraine had pressed Washington not to leave the Open Skies treaty, whose unarmed overflights are aimed at bolstering confidence and providing members forewarning of surprise military attacks.

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