Closed Skies? Thoughts on the US Withdrawal From Open Skies Treaty

The US Government has confirmed that it intends to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty in 6 months, ending its leading role in participating in this landmark international treaty intended to function as a confidence and security building mechanism in Europe.

Open Skies is one of a suite of arms control treaties dating back to the late Cold War, and was intended to try to reassure nations that the other side was not massing for a surprise attack. By allowing overflights of territory and the ability to collect and process imagery, which could be shared with allies (and has to be shared with the host nation), it was designed to make it harder to mass troops on the Inner German Border in secret and in turn reduce tensions.

When coupled with other agreements like the Vienna Document and the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, it was intended to make it harder for wars to start by accident, and to try to lower tensions and suspicions between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

Arms Control was highly fashionable in the late 1980s, but as soon as the Cold War ended it rapidly became a backwater to end ones career in. The UK Joint Arms Control Implementation Group (JACIG) began life as a large and busy organisation of dozens of inspectors, but over the years was downsized to barely a handful of people. It really took the illegal Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea to refocus attention on these all but forgotten and moribund agreements to realise they offered a way to focus international co-operation and respond to unwarranted Russian aggression.

For the last few years Arms Control has been increasingly important as the mechanisms in the treaties permitted snap inspections, the chance to observe military activity and the chance to deploy observers where required to monitor conformity to agreements. It is not an exaggeration to say that Arms Control was saved by the situation in the Ukraine and rapidly became a very high policy priority for many people.

Open Skies is important because it allows overflights at very short notice of each others territory. These flights are openly declared and are carried out in the full knowledge and support of the host nation – for example when a Russian Open Skies inspection is carried out in the UK, members of the RAF will be onboard the aircraft to liaise with the crew and talk to Air Traffic Control. Indeed back when Humphrey worked on arms control policy, one of his junior team members found that their first ever flight as an RAF officer happened onboard a Russian air force plane!

This is not a sneaky secret mission done covertly – the Treaty has extremely strict rules on the cameras that can be used, and the aircraft are subject to inspection and checks for compliance to make sure nothing untoward occurs. Also all imagery taken must be shared with all signatory nations – the host nation knows exactly what images were taken and the quality of those images.

The US Government has been concerned for years that the Russians were abusing the treaty, imposing limits and operating constraints, and attempting to make life difficult for Western observers. Whether this was true, or merely the case that the inherently paranoid and inward looking Russian regime wanted to prevent images being taken is less clear. While US (and others) objections are a matter of public record, the response being considered is potentially extremely damaging both for the US and for NATO.

Open Skies matters not because it necessarily provides top quality imagery that warns of an imminent Russian attack to the West, but because it permits the Russians access to the Wests airspace and to imagery they could otherwise not collect. Of all the arms control treaties and confidence and security building mechanisms they are party too, this is arguably the one they value the most, because of the access it provides them with.

The treaty provides a very effective way of trying to force Russia to balance its behaviour across a range of issues – the mere threat of withdrawal could potentially be enough to get them consider compliance elsewhere, or give ground on another policy area. It is a valuable bargaining tool that can be used to shape and influence international relations.

Walking away from this may provide the very temporary satisfaction of preventing the Russians from coming, but what it suddenly does is free Russia from having to feel obliged to comply or be helpful in other international fora. If they have lost access to the US for overflights, they have no reason to engage on other issues because the bargaining chip has been taken off the table – it is to all intents a short term gain that will generate long term diplomatic challenges for both the US and NATO allies.

Allied to this is the sense of US withdrawal from an extremely effective tool of international collaboration. International relations are rarely done bilaterally, and you often need favours and votes from other countries. Many nations, despite US objections, do place significant value on Open Skies and both the imagery it produces and also the means by which it can be used to hold Russia to account.

Due to the way the missions work, there is significant collaboration of effort – for example the UK and other nations regularly flew on the Eisenhower era KC135 jet that was used for inspections, making missions truly international in nature. This helped make maximum use of the inspection quotas and also helped much more effective planning be done to carry out missions to best effect. 

Many missions were flown internationally across a range of aircraft, making it a truly NATO effort.

With the US withdrawal the quote of missions is reduced, and a major asset has been removed from the list of available aircraft. This makes it harder for other countries to work together, and reduces US influence in the ability to monitor and target certain areas for inspection.

Diplomatically nations which previously worked closely with the US and were concerned about the potential for Russian aggression now find themselves more isolated and potentially faced with more difficulties in keeping track of activity – if the Russians were prepared to be difficult to the US on some issues to do with the Treaty, imagine how they may behave to minor nations they don’t particularly care for?

The result is that by withdrawing the US is going to suffer significant collateral damage to its relationships, not just with Russia, but also a wide range of NATO nations and beyond who will find it harder to maintain effective confidence and security building measures. This isn’t about paying a fair share or burden sharing, this is about the signals losing the most powerful member of a military alliance sends.

The question is whether there are any tangible gains for the US from this move? They will lose one of the last direct sources of routine access to the Russian Armed Forces, and the ability to monitor and track areas of interest, not all of which necessarily benefit from alternative means of imagery collection

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They will lose a means of being able to put diplomatic pressure on other countries – not just on Russia, but allies when they want to see them play ball too – never under estimate the value of being round a table at an international negotiation and being able to deliver on multiple policy goals – Humphrey has done this a lot, and so much policy deliverables are interlinked, and a lot of access and influence will be lost.

The message too undermines wider stability in Europe. The linking of the US to Europe via NATO has been one of the central planks of regional stability for 75 years. To step back from engagement in this way and signal that the US is no longer interested in European security and Russian activity will embolden Putin and Russia to note that Europe is potentially far weaker than before.

The wider impact on what effect this will have on NATO co-operation is yet to be seen, but it is likely that NATO as a whole will be impacted by this. As an organisation dedicated to effective working together on arms control and confidence issues, to lose US participation in this way will hurt badly and make it harder to speak with one voice – the Russians now know that NATO unanimity cannot be assumed anymore, and that with a bit of work, they can split the Alliance – if they can do it here,  then what does this mean for Article 5 and in particular for the long term security of the Baltic States?

For NATO the discussion will need to focus on how European Arms Control treaties will be effective if they are denied the ability to speak with one voice as an alliance. The potential longer term impact may see more investment in new aircraft and more funding for arms control inspections to make up for the US withdrawal, but it will be much harder to negotiate with Russia, which may see an opportunity to shape future negotiations on treaties such as CFE or OSCE work. NATO and other members may find that without the US present to threaten withdrawal from Open Skies, the leverage that exists to apply to Russia to change behaviours is gone, as without the inducement of retaining access to US airspace, the Russians have little reason to compromise or support changes that would not be in their interests elsewhere.

Ultimately the question is whether this is a good or bad decision for the US and it is hard to see that the benefits outweigh the positives. It leaves the US diplomatically isolated and once again trying to deliver bilateral diplomacy in a multilateral world, which only serves to weaken their position, particularly with allies who now look on the US as an increasingly unreliable international partner.

The big question is whether this forces fundamental changes in Russian behaviour to some form of acquiescence to adhere to the Treaty, or if they feel the gains from splitting NATO on arms control represents more widely a bigger win for Russian interests as a whole.

It is not clear how they will respond and what this means for international security, but if the US does withdraw, then they will be less safe and secure than they were before, and be denied a key long term lever to influence and shape Russian behaviour – is this a price worth paying for a short term means of punishing Putin?