"Treaty on Open Skies" vor dem Aus
Verfasst: Do 21. Nov 2019, 18:09
US to Europe: Fix Open Skies Treaty or we quit
Treaty on Open Skies (OS)
https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/avc/cca/os//index.htm
NATO allies worried U.S. President Donald Trump will abandon the Open Skies Treaty have been told the administration views the arms control agreement as a danger to U.S. national security, and that unless those nations can assuage such concerns, the U.S. will likely pull out, Defense News has learned.
At a meeting in Brussels last week, Trump administration officials laid out for the first time a full suite of concerns with the treaty and made clear they were seriously considering an exit. The agreement, ratified in 2002, allows mutual reconnaissance flights over its 34 members, including the U.S. and Russia.
According to one senior administration official, the U.S. delegation presented classified intelligence to the foreign officials to explain its concerns, chiefly that Russian forces are “misusing the treaty in their targeting of critical U.S. infrastructure,” and to request help from allies to address those concerns if the treaty is to be saved.
“This is a U.S. position — that we think this treaty is a danger to our national security. We get nothing out of it. Our allies get nothing out of it, and it is our intention to withdraw, similar to what we did with [the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty]. From our perspective, the analysis is done,” the senior Trump administration official said. “The Europeans got that. It was a splash of cold water on their faces.”
The NATO allies did not reach an agreement at that meeting, the official noted.
Sources with several of these allied countries told Defense News that the Trump administration has indicated over the last month that there likely won’t be a final decision on the treaty before late January. In the interim, they said the U.S. sent a number of NATO nations a diplomatic communication earlier this month about the pact, essentially asking treaty members to make the case for its survival.
The U.S. outreach comes amid unusually strong and coordinated pressure from European allies inside and outside of NATO upon both the administration and Congress to remain in the treaty — and before a planned NATO leaders summit in London next month.
https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/20 ... r-we-quit/The meeting was meant to send a strong signal about the White House’s position, as the U.S. delegation included mid-level representatives from the Defense Department, Joint Chiefs of Staff, State Department and National Security Council. Broadly speaking, the American delegation argued Russian aggression since 2014 and the proliferation of high-quality commercial satellite imagery since 2002 had rendered the treaty obsolete.
The Trump administration’s efforts to solicit feedback from allies also seemed to be a response to criticism from Congress and allies that the president has a history of acting unilaterally when scrapping multilateral accords. Lawmakers and allies were caught off guard, for example, when the Wall Street Journal reported in October that Trump signed a document signaling his intent to withdraw from Open Skies. Weeks later, the administration had yet to make public its intentions.
A U.S. exit from the treaty would further erode the post-Cold War arms control architecture, after the U.S. and Russia walked away from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in August. The last remaining major nuclear arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia, New START, expires in 2021.
Treaty on Open Skies (OS)
https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/avc/cca/os//index.htm