Trump drops ball on global security
The US has decided to withdraw from the Treaty on Open Skies, which allows its 35 signatory states to observe each other’s activities in order to curb aggression and monitor military buildup. Countries can perform what are known as “short-notice observation flights” over each other’s territories, subject to agreements such as the type of observation planes, their routes, the equipment they carry and even the image resolution. Images are shared with all other treaty parties — meaning Open Skies is built on the kind of international coordination and cooperation that the White House loathes. Granted, there are plausible arguments in the current White House’s stance, since Russia plays hard and fast with the treaty’s principles. Fortunately for the US and its allies, even Russia cannot circumvent or undermine the ironclad common-sense notions and overall purpose of Open Skies so much as to render it meaningless; the US has still been able to gather valuable data on Russian military movements in flights over Russia and Belarus.
Unsurprisingly, Russia pledged its continued commitment to Open Skies. Washington (yet again) has dropped the ball on this invaluable tool of national security, especially to countries that lack satellite imagery of their own. To Moscow’s benefit, a US exit from Open Skies creates an impossible dilemma for the Euro-Atlantic alliance. European countries have declared their commitment to Open Skies but because they host US military assets, Washington may pressure them to reject Russian overflight requests. Predictably, Russia will want overflights over these assets, and when rejected it may ban Open Skies overflights over its own territory. This is a nightmare scenario for countries that have built parts of their military intelligence and national security apparatus around the data collected by Open Skies overflights. On the other hand, if European allies ignored Washington, the latter may threaten to pull out their assets, which will have ramifications for NATO and could set back EuroAtlantic relations decades.
While the allegation that
Russia misused imagery acquired from Open Skies overflights is concerning, it should not have warranted Washington storming out of this invaluable tool of global arms control. The matter should have been left to the treaty’s dispute resolution mechanisms, which have worked in the past to resolve issues. Instead, the disproportionate step of leaving Open Skies is part of a larger pattern of an American all stick, no carrot attitude to international relations that favors bravado and angry rhetoric over carefully thought out policy positions and their timely implementation. Quitting Open Skies risks a return to Cold War era militarization. Ongoing internationalized proxy wars raging in Libya, Syria and Yemen, along with the increasing sophistication of non-state militant extremists in the Sahel and parts of the Middle East, mean the opportunities for the use of dangerous weaponry are rife.
The time has come for a return to the spirit of transparency, cooperation and pragmatism that gave birth to Open Skies; these recent developments need not be a death knell but a wake-up call to our shared humanity.
Hafed Al-Ghwell is a non-resident senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Institute at the John Hopkins University School of Advance International Studies.
Twitter: @HafedAlGhwell