Context: Russia and the other members of the Treaty on Open Skies held a videoconference on Monday to discuss the framework's future following America's announcement in late May that it plans to withdraw from the agreement. The Treaty on Open Skies allows member states to conduct surveillance flights over one another's territories under certain controlled conditions in order to reduce the likelihood of a war by miscalculation. The U.S.' withdrawal raised concern that the global security architecture will continue to collapse
Key Points

• It is expected to formally pull out of Open Skies in six months.

USA’s Stand

• The USA has blamed Russia for restricting US flyovers in neighbour Georgia and its military enclave in Kaliningrad (Russia).
• Russia misused its flights over the US and Europe to identify critical infrastructure for potential attack in a time of war.
• Russia intends to annex the Crimean peninsula and has designated an Open Skies refueling airfield in the region.
• Yet, the USA has expressed willingness to make a new agreement.

Russia’s Stand

• Russia has denied the allegations and warned that the withdrawal will affect the interests of all of 35 participating countries.
• However, Russia intended to fully follow all the rights and obligations under the treaty as long as the treaty is in force.
• It can be noted that the USA has used the treaty more intensively than Russia.
• Between 2002 and 2016, the U.S. flew 196 flights over Russia compared to the 71 flights flown by Russia.
• This move by the USA has further deepened doubts on extension of the New START treaty, which expires in February, 2021.
• Throughout its term, the Trump administration has been skeptical of arms control agreements. In 2019, the U.S. and Russia walked away from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Impact of withdrawal

• This withdrawal will undermine U.S. alliances with European allies who rely on the treaty to keep Russia accountable for its military activities in the region.
• Withdrawal from the treaty will prove to be a blow to the global security scenario and further undermine the international arms control agreements.
• It will give a blow to the efficacy of other similar treaties like the NATO alliance and will further deteriorate the relation of Us with European allies.

Open Skies Treaty

• It was signed in 1992 and came into effect in 2002.
• It is an agreement that allows its 34 signatories countries to monitor arm development by conducting surveillance flights (unarmed) over each other’s territories.
• Therefore, the treaty established an aerial surveillance system for its participants.
• Both US and Russia are signatories of the treaty.
• India is not a member of this treaty.

Implementation of the treaty

• The treaty makes it possible to conduct joint unarmed observation flights over the territories and to take images using sensors of a predefined resolution.
• And it also allows all signatories to request copies of all images taken during overflights carried out by others.
• Overflights are governed by quotas, negotiated annually and assigned to specific aircraft. The United States, for example, is allowed to operate Boeing OC-135 planes with infrared scanners.
• The country under surveillance is given 72 hours’ warning of a flight and 24 hours notice of the route, to which it can suggest modifications.
• The treaty lays down which air bases can be used for the flights and at which points they can cross into each other’s air space. Russia and the U.S. have four such bases each.
• A committee to oversee the implementation of the treaty meets in Vienna every month at the headquarters of the Organisation of Security and Cooperation (OSCE) in Europe.

Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty

• It was a nuclear arms-control accord reached by the United States and the Soviet Union in 1987 in which the two nations agreed to eliminate their stocks of intermediate-range and shorter-range (or “medium-range”) land-based missiles (which could carry nuclear warheads).
• It also covered all land-based missiles, including those carrying nuclear warheads but did not cover sea-launched missiles.
• The United States withdrew from the Treaty on 2nd August 2019.

New START Treaty

• The new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) is a treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on measures for the further reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms.
• It entered into force on 5th February, 2011.
• It is a successor to the START framework of 1991 (at the end of the Cold War) that limited both sides to 1,600 strategic delivery vehicles and 6,000 warheads.
• The USA has been worried that extending New Start would negatively impact an arms deal with China and Russia.
• It is concerned that China’s nuclear stockpile could be doubled if the New Start Treaty continued as is, without including China.
• The New Start Treaty also suffered from verification inadequacies and that the U.S. intended to establish a new arms control regime which would include China.

Road Ahead

• It is difficult to say what the future of arms control might be given the increasingly contentious nature of major power relations. The Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva has been in a state of limbo for more than two decades and it is unlikely that any serious discussions will happen at the CD in the near future.
• While the U.S. move does not help matters, it is also yet another indication that the intensifying international competition is shifting to the Indo-Pacific. This means that the U.S. and China will need to engage directly for a new era in arms control.