Who needs treaties with Russian when Putin is your bestie?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/us/politics/trump-open-skies-treaty-arms-control.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&fbclid=IwAR1pqhZV217lswIGnr-frr9noDEQpu6LkjcUDFoktUjLcbwplrgAOZ7COCw
Dismantling the infrastructure of nuclear arms control is a bad idea. We should be continuing to work to control and reduce nukes, not reducing oversight.
From the Reuters article on the Open Skies treaty + this administrations' plan to pull out --
"The Open Skies treaty, proposed by U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower in 1955, was signed in 1992 and took effect in 2002. The idea is to let member nations make surveillance flights over each other’s countries to build trust.
The officials cited a years-long effort by Russia to violate the terms, such as by restricting U.S. overflights of Russia neighbor Georgia and its military enclave in Kaliningrad.
In addition, they said Russia has been using its own overflights of American and European territory to identify critical U.S. infrastructure for potential attack in a time of war.
Some experts worry that a U.S. exit from the treaty, which will halt Russian overflights of the United States, could prompt Moscow’s withdrawal, which would end overflights of Russia by the remaining members, weakening European security at a time that Russian-backed separatists are holding parts of Ukraine and Georgia.
Trump’s decision to leave the treaty is “premature and irresponsible,” said Daryl Kimball, the head of the Arms Control Association.
The 35 state parties to the Open Skies treaty are: Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark (including Greenland), Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, the Russian Federation, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Reporting By Steve Holland; additional reporting by Jonathan Landay; editing by David Gregorio"
Russian response about USA removing themselves - also from Reuters -
"MOSCOW (Reuters) - The U.S. withdrawal from the Open Skies treaty will affect the interests of all of its participants, who are also members of NATO, RIA state news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko as saying on Thursday.
Russia has not violated the treaty and nothing prevents the continuation of talks on technical issues that the U.S. says are the violations by the Russian side, Grushko said.
The United States announced its intention on Thursday to withdraw from the 35-nation Open Skies treaty allowing unarmed surveillance flights over member countries, the Trump administration’s latest move to pull the country from a major global treaty. "
** So it took about 35 years for the Treaty to get written, aggreed to, and signed , after Eisenhowers' proposal - then another 10 years for the participants to work out their surveilance + hiding strategies and technologies. - And now 18 years of the treaty possibly working. And then the USA decides it is too limiting on themselves ? Why else does a country remove themselves from a treaty ?
Topic: Trump outrage of the day (Read 842790 times)