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On March 24, 1992, the treaty was signed in Helsinki, Finland, during a summit of the,
then, Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. So, this March we will see the
20th anniversary of its signature and it’s been one of the most successful arms control
treaties ever negotiated and implemented on a multilateral basis. The treaty concept was
first introduced by President Eisenhower in 1955 as part of a bi-lateral approach with
Russia to try to provide more transparency on each other’s military forces and activities.
It was not adopted at that time, but it was reintroduced by President Herbert Walker Bush
in 1989 as we came to the end of the Cold War period. The Open Skies Treaty has long
been known by its name of covering the territory between Vancouver and Vladivostok. It is the
first conventional arms control treaty that includes the full territory of the United
States and Canada as well as Russia all the way to their Pacific coast. The observation
flights are very flexible and it’s up to every country to determine what they would
like to get images of of the country they’re flying over. So, every country plans these
flight routes according to their national interests, and very often the US plans include
a variety of arms control locations for other treaties, such as the new start treaty or
the CFE treaty. It can also capture lots of other information; infrastructure is possible,
such as railroad lines or oil and gas fields. It could also get into environmental areas,
such as deforestation or flooding. So, it depends and it changes over time. And it changes
by country. It depends on what each country would like to look for. But it’s also the
confidence and security-building aspect that develops between the teams when they’re
operating together. It’s very hard to quantify it and it’s not very tangible, but it has
been one of the key features, and probably even more important than the imagery that’s
actually collected. Both the observing country and the observed parties have their representatives
on board, which is, again, the underpinning of this confidence and security-building nature
of the missions. Having both states on an airplane flying together is what makes it
work. Well, the state department and the United States is fully committed to the future of
Open Skies. We are putting our own resources towards it to keep our own aircraft and sensors—modernize
our own sensors, and we are encouraging others to do the same. And I think it would be ideal
to look at how it could be used for OSCE transnational threats. States parties could also look at
expanding the membership of the treaty, perhaps to the OSCE partners for cooperation. The
Mediterranean partners aren’t that far away, and it would be a logical place to start,
especially with all the activity in the Arab Spring. Increasing transparency between the
Mediterranean states and North Africa might be a very interesting area to explore in the
future. Secretary Clinton talked about the importance of our European security architecture
during the Munich conference a few weeks ago, and I think Open Skies is an excellent example
of the kind of treaty and agreements that she was referring to as part of our foundation
of this Euro-Atlantic security architecture.