President Trump should withdraw the United States from a treaty governing aerial surveillance due to a dispute with Russia, according to Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.
“The Open Skies Treaty is out of date and favors Russia, and the best way forward is to leave it,” Cotton, a member of the Armed Services Committee, said Wednesday.
That call comes on the heels of the United States refusing to sign off on the deployment of a new Russian surveillance plane; the Open Skies Treaty allows signatories to conduct unarmed aerial surveillance flights, provided it passes an inspection by every other member-state. That refusal angered Russia, but it is just the latest sign of distrust between the two sides.
“By refusing to certify the Russian aircraft for observation flights, the US side has once again demonstrated to other states participating in the certification process that it puts political matters above the plane’s compliance with the treaty’s provisions,” Sergei Ryzhkov, chief of Russia’s Nuclear Risk Reduction Center, told state-run TASS.
Ryzhkov suggested the refusal stems from technological inferiority. “The US governmental agencies and establishment cannot tolerate the fact that the United States was left more than 5-7 years behind when Russia designed a modern surveillance aircraft and equipped it with domestically produced digital equipment,” he continued.
But Cotton cited Russia’s decision to limit international military flights over Kaliningrad, a strategically significant region controlled by Russia on the Baltic Sea. “It’s rich for Russia to protest this decision when it routinely restricts surveillance flights over Kaliningrad and other areas,” he said.
Russia has upgraded its military capabilities in Kaliningrad, a territorial outpost adjacent contiguous with NATO members Poland and Lithuania.
