Before everyone gets upset about this, it's worth it to read the article and understand the reasoning involved. This is not being weak on Russia. This is not inviting nuclear war. What this is is something that we should all be agreeing on, and that is a common sense move with the size of China. We signed this treaty back when China was not a major threat, and Russia was. It was a good treaty at the time. But today, we have several factors to consider that weren't present at the time:
1. Direct Evidence of Russian duplicity. We know from intelligence reports that the Russians aren't following the treaty. Why should we stay in a treaty where we're the only ones obeying the terms?
2. China is not a member of this treaty. China is the biggest threat we face now, but they are not constrained in their building by this treaty. What is the point of handicapping ourself if both of our superpower threats are not doing the same?
I'd genuinely like to see an intelligent explanation for staying in, because I can't think of a credible one.
Some relevant links:
https://armscontrolcenter.org/treaty-open-skies/https://openskies.flights/The "China is not a participant" claim is horse poop.
The treaty allows for (unarmed, surveillance) overflights of signatories by other signatories, mostly overflights of Russian territory by NATO members, and of NATO territory by Russian aircraft. China neither gains nor is hindered by the treaty, nor is US behavior regarding China affected by the OST or its absence. While Russia has not been a perfect participant, the treaty works. "Russian duplicity" is a handful of instances out of over fifteen hundred surveillance flights.
Benefits to the US from withdrawing:We no longer have to allow Russian overflights of US territory. (Which for reasons technical and practical made up only a fraction of total surveillance flights by Russia.)
"Sending Russia a message" by cutting off entirely our own right to overfly Russian airspace (or access aerial surveillance information on Russian and other nations that was openly available to us under the treaty) as "retaliation" for a handful of instances (out of over fifteen hundred overflights) were we didn't like Russian behavior.
Benefits to Russia from US withdrawal:The US is no longer able to overfly Russian territory.
The US is no longer able to access data from allies' surveillance flights over Russian and other territories.
The end of a treaty that disproportionately favored the US in practice. (It's all equal on paper, but the US does considerably more overflights of Russian than vice versa.)
Russia doesn't suffer the international PR hit of pulling out of the treaty.
The United States
does take an international PR hit for pulling out of the treaty, especially with NATO's European members.
It damages the relations between the US and its traditional European allies (against Russia),
European treaty participants are now subject to proportionately more Russian surveillance.
Europeans face a downturn in their own surveillance over Russia, because they will be losing both access to the United States' flight quota, and to US hardware.
This surveillance is also individually more important to the Europeans than the US, since many NATO members lack their own surveillance satellites. The absence of US hardware probably can be remedied in time.
In short, the coward Donald Trump and his treacherous band of liars, cheats, and crooks are doing a solid for their buddy Putin.
