Originally proposed by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1955—but rejected by the Soviet Union—the Open Skies idea was revived by President George H. W. Bush in 1989 as a confidence-building measure to promote greater transparency regarding military installations, forces and activities. The Open Skies Treaty permits state parties to conduct unarmed observation flights over other state parties. It entered into force in 2002 and currently has thirty-four state parties—the United States, Canada, Russia, Kazakhstan and thirty other countries in Europe. All total, they have conducted more than fifteen hundred observation overflights.

For each state party or group of state parties, the treaty specifies an active quota, the number of observation overflights it may conduct per year, and a passive quota, the number of overflights it must accept. Observation aircraft can carry video and still cameras, infrared line scanners and synthetic aperture radars, though the capabilities of the equipment (e.g., resolution) are limited. When an Open Skies aircraft conducts an overflight, officials of the observed state party get to inspect the aircraft to ensure that it is carrying only permitted equipment and fly onboard.

Criticism of Open Skies

In October 2019, President Donald Trump reportedly signed a memorandum regarding his intention to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty. The following month, U.S. officials briefed NATO on U.S. concerns and warned that the United States would probably leave the treaty. Treaty critics seem to have three principal concerns.

First, critics note that Russia has violated the treaty. Moscow restricts the distance that observation flights can fly over the exclave of Kaliningrad and bars flights along the Russian border with the Georgian-breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The treaty limits flights near borders with non-state parties and the Russians argue that South Ossetia and Abkhazia are independent nations, a position few other countries recognize.

In response to the Russian violation, the United States has imposed roughly reciprocal limitations on Russian flights over U.S. territory, restricting, for example, overflights of Hawaii. Russia has violated the treaty, but Washington has responded proportionately within the treaty.

Second, opponents of the Open Skies Treaty argue that, over the past thirty years, commercial satellites have developed capabilities, such as camera resolution, similar to or better than the equipment carried on Open Skies aircraft. They assert that makes observation flights unnecessary and redundant.

Aircraft, however, are more flexible than satellites, which fly in fixed orbits. Moreover, aircraft can fly below cloud cover that can obscure photography taken from space.

Third, critics express concern that the Russians use observation flights to gather information on U.S. infrastructure as well as military facilities and activities. But how much of a threat is this? Critics seem to ignore the fact that, much like the United States, Russia operates imagery satellites whose capabilities are equal to or better than those permitted on Open Skies aircraft.

Advantages of Open Skies

U.S. withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty would mean forgoing a number of advantages. First, Open Skies imagery and other data can be used in ways that U.S. satellite imagery, which is highly classified, cannot. U.S. officials explained publicly only in November 2018 the basis for their 2014 assessment that Russia had violated the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty by testing a prohibited cruise missile. Satellite imagery almost certainly figured in that assessment, but that imagery remains closely held because the U.S. government wants to protect the capabilities of its satellites. Open Skies data, on the other hand, could readily be used to demonstrate a violation of an agreement or some threatening military activity.

Second, the United States conducts far more overflights of Russia and Belarus (the two are paired as a group of state parties) than vice-versa. According to the Department of State, during the first fifteen years of the treaty’s operation, the United States made 196 observation flights over Russia and Belarus while Russia/Belarus made just seventy-one flights over U.S. territory. Moreover, U.S. allies conducted five hundred other flights over Russia and Belarus.

Third, few countries possess the sophisticated space-based reconnaissance capabilities that the United States and Russia have. The treaty allows other states parties to conduct overflights and directly gather confidence-building data. U.S. allies value Open Skies; a number, including Germany, France and Britain, have urged Washington to remain within the treaty.

Fourth, Open Skies can provide a particularly useful tool in times or regions of crisis. Russian and Russian proxy forces have been in conflict with Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region since spring 2014. The United States has targeted observation flights—sometimes in cooperation with Ukraine—at Donbas and Russian territory bordering Donbas. These overflights not only gather data but send a signal of U.S. political support to Ukraine.

U.S. Withdrawal?

Should Trump unwisely decide to withdraw from the treaty, it could mean the treaty’s end. With Russia no longer having the possibility of flights over the United States, it might also withdraw. That would likely provide the death knell for the treaty; with just NATO members and a few neutral states remaining in the agreement, what would be the point? Alternatively, Moscow could choose to remain in the treaty, which would highlight the U.S. absence (and allow Russian overflights to continue over American military facilities and activities in Europe).

In either case, political blame would fall on the United States. Given allied support for continuing the treaty, a U.S. withdrawal would be seen in Europe as one more instance where Washington ignored the views of its NATO partners.

Withdrawal would constitute yet another blow to arms control inflicted by the Trump administration. It left the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action regarding Iran. It refused to seek ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (even though it seems to see no reason for nuclear testing). It eschewed political and military steps that would have increased pressure on Russia to return to compliance with the INF Treaty. It so far refuses Moscow’s offer to extend the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expires in eleven months.

Trump over the past year has said that he wants to go big on arms control and negotiate an agreement with Russia and China covering all types of nuclear arms, but his administration has yet to offer a proposal or even an outline for doing so. A decision to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty would provide the latest evidence that he sees little point in arms control.

Steven Pifer is a William Perry Research Fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. 

Originally for The National Interest

This article originally appeared on the website of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where Rose Gottemoeller is a nonresident senior fellow in Carnegie’s Nuclear Policy Program. She is also the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Russia is replacing older nuclear technology with more modern, more functional options. What are the implications for the United States, Europe, and the future of arms control?

Do the U.S. and Russia have different reasons for modernizing nuclear weapons?
In the big strategic game, the Russians and Americans have the same reason for modernizing their nuclear forces: they want to maintain parity. If the two sides have the same number of nuclear warheads deployed, then they will not be tempted to shoot at each other. They also have a reason to avoid an arms race that would entail constantly seeking more nuclear weapons to try to achieve superiority—however temporary. As expensive as nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles are, parity has kept the costs down by holding the arms race in check.

In the past few years, Vladimir Putin does seem to be after nuclear weapons for another reason—to show that Russia is still a great power to be reckoned with. He has been trumpeting new and exotic systems that are unique, like the nuclear weapon delivery system known as the Burevestnik nuclear-propelled cruise missile.

These exotic systems have more of a political function than a strategic or security one. Their role is to signal Russia’s continuing scientific and military prowess at a time when the country does not otherwise have much on offer. Devilishly expensive and sometimes dangerous to operate, they are unlikely to be deployed in big numbers, as a 2019 fatal testing accident of the Burevestnik shows. If U.S.-Russian arms control remains in place, such systems definitely will not be deployed in big numbers, because they would displace proven and highly reliable intercontinental ballistic missiles in the Russian force structure. These ballistic missiles are the backbone of nuclear deterrence for Russia. The exotics don’t add to that deterrent. They have some show-off value, but they will do no more than make the rubble bounce.

What are European concerns with Russia's nuclear weapon modernization?
The Europeans, most prominently the NATO Allies, are very concerned about Russia’s nuclear modernization programs. Their concerns revolve more around new nuclear missiles to be deployed on European soil than the intercontinental systems that threaten the United States. Poland and Lithuania, for example, are NATO countries bordering Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave in the heart of NATO territory. Russia has put increasingly capable missiles there, including the Iskander, a highly accurate modern missile that is capable of launching either nuclear or conventional warheads.

Likewise, the Europeans are of one mind about the threat posed by a missile known as the 9M729 (SSC-8 in NATO parlance), which is a intermediate-range ground-launched cruise missile that the Russians developed and deployed in violation of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The Allies all agree that this missile poses a threat to NATO. Although it has not been deployed forward in Kaliningrad, its range is sufficient to threaten all of NATO Europe when deployed in European Russia. It too is said to support both nuclear and conventional weapons.

Since Russia seized Crimea in 2014, the Russians have begun to build up basing sites for their advanced systems there too, including the Iskanders. If Russia brings nuclear weapons into Crimea, it will spark complex political, legal, and moral problems. The world community has largely held firm in condemning Russia’s seizure of Crimea and considers Crimea to be Ukrainian territory. Should Russia bring nuclear weapons to Crimea, it will be violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in a fundamental manner, for Ukraine is a non-nuclear weapon state under the NPT. Russia in this case would be behaving in a manner no better than North Korea.

What is the role of arms control in managing U.S. and European relationships with Russia?
The most basic role of arms control regimes is to create mutual predictability, ensuring that no country participating is uncertain about its security both now and into the future. In this way, arms control helps to keep defense spending in check, but it also allows countries to build up mutual confidence and stability, which can translate into broader security and economic ties. This assumes, of course, that the deal is properly implemented by all parties, which is why Ronald Reagan’s old adage “trust but verify” is so important. If participants are allowed to cheat on an arms control regime, then it becomes hollowed out, detrimental to the security of all.

The fundamental benefits of arms control, however, can be helpful in times of trouble. I like to think that all the work Russia, the United States, and Europe did together in the 1990s was enabled by the then thirty-year legacy of arms control cooperation. We worked together to protect nuclear weapons and materials from the former Soviet arsenal from being stolen or misused. The same goes for the safety of nuclear power plants. When Ukraine, Russia, the European Union, and the U.S. began to work together in the early 1990s to mitigate the effects of the 1987 Chernobyl disaster, existing relationships in the nuclear realm helped the cleanup project run smoother. Nuclear energy is clearly a different world from the nuclear weapons establishment, but the scientific underpinnings and the scientists and engineers working the issues are the same.

Nowadays, I think that we must contemplate what it will mean if no nuclear arms control regimes remain in force. For the generation that worked these issues in Russia, the U.S., and Europe, enough of a residual relationship exists that experts can grasp at opportunities for cooperation when they present themselves. Some mechanisms such as scientist-to-scientist dialogues are likely to remain, such as the Pugwash and Dartmouth dialogues and the National Academy of Sciences exchanges with the Russian Academy of Sciences. These were the first places where Soviet and Western scientists gathered together to confront the problems of nuclear war and to look together for solutions.

We should be concerned, however, that they may revert to the talk shops of the Cold War, with few opportunities to work together on practical projects. Meanwhile, pragmatic and persistent tools, such as the Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers (NRRCs) that operate in the U.S. Department of State and the Russian Ministry of Defense, may find their missions sharply curtailed as they cease to serve any treaty purpose. The U.S., Russia, and Europe may thus be heading to a time when their means of communications in a nuclear crisis is no better than they had during the Cold War.

In the wake of a rollercoaster week of escalatory and de-escalatory signaling between the United States and Iran, both sides appear to have taken a step back from the abyss. Iran’s retaliatory missile barrage did not kill any U.S. personnel and President Trump has not signaled any plans to escalate beyond the killing of General Qasem Suleimani. But the core political stakes of the contest have risen. In response to the killing, Iran sloughed off the remaining limits on its nuclear hedge. Trump reflexively tightened sanctions.

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With Suleimani’s death, the months-long tit-for-tat cycle of pressure and provocation between Washington and Tehran has entered a much more dangerous phase. The risk of a regionwide conflagration is higher than ever. Shortly before the strike, U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper threatened preemptive action to protect U.S. forces, saying "the game has changed." But this is not a game—and the stakes for both sides could not be higher.”

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