The nuclear clock keeps ticking: U.S. withdraws from Open Skies Treaty

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Whether due to strategic reasons or short-term electoral gains , the United States is embarking on a dangerous arms race with Russia and China , which includes its decision to withdraw from the Treaty on Open Skies , that allows member countries to conduct short-notice , reconnaissance flights over the other countries to collect data on their military forces and activities .

Using the same flawed reasoning that has led Washington to abandon or criticize other multilateral instruments from the Paris Agreement on climate change to the World Health Organization , U.S. President Donald Trump argued last week that Moscow ’s actions have prompted him to take the decision.

“There’s a chance we may make a new agreement or do something to put that agreement back together,” Trump said alluding to his government position that pretends China to join the international nuclear weapons control regime .

According to the State Department and the Pentagon , Russia has imposed restrictions on Open Skies Treaty ( OST ) flights near its exclave of Kaliningrad , between Poland and Lithuania .

In contravention of the 1992 treaty, Russia is also denying flights over its border with Georgia and its southern Chechnya region. In September 2019, the Kremlin prevented the aerial imaging of major military exercises that was scheduled and approved previously.

However, ex U.S. military and intelligence officials , North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies, the United Nations , and analysts received the move with dismay; “this is insane,” tweeted Michael Hayden , the r etired four-star general who served as National Security Agency and CIA director .

Former Secretary of State George Shultz

, former Secretary of Defense William Perry , and former Democratic Senator Sam Nunn —who along with Henry Kissinger formed the Nuclear Security Project — wrote the Trump administration in March to urge they keep the OST .

In a letter to Defense Secretary Mark Esper , State Secretary Mike Pompeo , and National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien , they wrote that at a time when tensions with Moscow are increasing, the OST serves “as a very useful tool for the U.S. and our allies to monitor Russian military activities . Unilateral U.S. withdrawal from Open Skies would undermine American allies and friends in Europe .”

For its part, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists , which in 2018 set its famous Doomsday Clock at two minutes to midnight warning that we are living in “ a catastrophically dangerous world ,” similar to the Cold War in 1953, explained that even if Washington left the OST Europe could still derive benefits from overflying Russia and Belarus .

Alexander Graef

and Moritz Kütt , researchers in arms control , stressed that although Russia and Belarus would lose the ability to fly over the U.S., they would retain the right to conduct overflights over European countries and Canada , which together currently account for more than 87% of the active OST flights .

“The Americans fly way more often over Russia than the Russians fly over them,” Kütt detailed to the pacifist organization. And because any imagery can be shared among all member states, the U.S. does not even need to actively participate in missions over Europe to receive copies of the intelligence that Russia obtains, he added.

More than 1,500 flights have been conducted to date by the 34 member states of OST . Their reconnaissance planes , unarmed , may only carry cameras of 30-cm resolution, most of which use black and white wet-film.

Next target

Nevertheless, experts speculate that advocates of new nuclear weapons such as Republican senators Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz , will use withdrawal from the Open Skies agreement to justify calls for an exit from the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty ( New START ), on the grounds that its verification will be hindered without the intelligence gathered via OST .

The 2010 New START treaty is the last remaining nuclear arms pact between the U.S. and Russia , after the Trump administration pulled out of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty last year, and it is considered the most important since it limits each side to 1,550 nuclear warheads and 700 deployed bombers , submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM).

The treaty will expire in February 5, 2021 shortly after the next U.S. presidential inauguration ; it can be extended for five years without ratification if the U.S. and Russia presidents both agree. Russian leader Vladimir Putin has declared he wants to extend the pact, yet the White House has balked, criticizing it as outdated and lacking in proper oversight.

Washington

has been pushing to negotiate a follow-on trilateral agreement that includes China , yet Beijing has discarded the possibility so far. If the New START pact is not renewed, the world will return to an era without any legally binding or verifiable limits on its two nuclear superpowers for the first time since 1972.

In Moscow , experts and government officials affirmed that the decision to exit OST is part of Trump’s plan to pursue a bigger deal which he can boast about during his election campaign even if it comes to nothing. In response, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that his country did not intend to apply any pressure to China to please the United States .

Ivan Konovalov

, ex director of the Russian Center for Strategic Trends , asserted that the end of OST would harm the Atlantic Alliance and in particular the Baltic states and Ukraine bordering the Eurasian nation.

Also quoted by The Daily Beast , Andrey Bezrukov , member of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy , remarked: “I am often asked: ‘Why is Trump better than, for example, [ Joe ] Biden or [ Hillary ] Clinton ? The answer is simple. Because Biden or Clinton would act in support of coalitions. It is the gathering of all forces against us into one group, one team. When Trump came, he destroyed that team.”

In remarks during an online discussion with the Washington-based Hudson Institute confirming the above, Special Presidential Envoy Marshall Billingslea stressed that the U.S. would not hesitate to engage in a new arms race with Russia and China .

“We know how to win these races, and we know how to spend the adversary into oblivion, and if we have to, we will, but we sure would like to avoid it,” Billingslea said.

Moreover, the world was shocked last week after it was revealed that the Trump administration has discussed the possibility of the U.S. carrying out its first nuclear test since 1992 , in reaction to allegedly low-yield nuclear explosions performed by Russia and China .

Cotton and Cruz, among other U.S. lawmakers, have also pushed for Washington to withdraw from the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty , which has yet to enter into force. A nuclear test at this moment “would be the starting gun to an unprecedented arms race ,” highlighted Daryl Kimball , e xecutive director of the Arms Control Association .

In this sense, it is important to remember that two years ago, speaking before the Federal Assembly , the largest meeting of Russian Federation leaders , Putin announced to the world that the Kremlin has new advanced weapons , without equivalent in any other country.

In addition to the modernization program of existing weapons as the Borei-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines , and mobile Topol ICBMs , Putin underscored the new ICBM Sarmat , the autonomous long-range nuclear torpedo Status-6 , the intercontinental hypersonic air-breathing missile Avangard , and the air-launched hypersonic missile Kinzhal , designed to counter the Pentagon ballistic missile shield .

Instead of persuading China to join the nuclear negotiations , Trump is achieving the opposite with his “ maximum pressure ” policy . The bilateral relation is already damaged by the continuous verbal attacks regarding the origin of the coronavirus pandemic , and the U.S. support to the opposition in Hong Kong , where protests are resuming due to the introduction of a new national security law .

The U.S. is pushing Beijing to the brink of a “ new Cold War ,” warned China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi in a video news conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People’s Congress .

“This dangerous attempt to turn back the wheel of history will undo the fruits of decades long China-U.S. cooperation , dampen America’s own development prospects, and put world stability and prosperity in jeopardy,” Wang added.

Editing by Sofía Danis

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