Marquardt, APSA 2005 (Aug. 23, 2005)
Introduction
The notion that states should be free to conduct unfettered, peaceful aerial
observation flights over each other’s national territory for the purpose of confidence
building has come a long way since President Dwight D. Eisenhower first proposed it in
July of 1955. Today, a half-century later, nearly three-dozen member states of the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) are parties to the Treaty
on Open Skies. Scores of official and unofficial flights have been conducted since the
treaty’s signing in 1992, and States Parties (this is the formal title for member countries
of the treaty) that are formal now meet regularly to resolve issues pertaining to the
treaty’s implementation, as well as how the treaty might be strengthened and how aerial
observation might serve other useful purposes. The treaty is a product of a thaw in Cold
War relations between East and West, and although its champions stress the treaty’s
adaptability and flexibility to changing circumstances, Open Skies continues to operate
in accordance with the peculiarities of a defunct security paradigm. It is, therefore,
necessary to inquire about the relevance of Open Skies to the post-Cold War system of
cooperative security. What does the Open Skies story over the past half-century
suggest about the treaty’s future? In light of its past, how, if at all, might the Open Skies
system be modified to further enhance military transparency and make the treaty more
relevant to today’s and tomorrow’s security challenges?
Open Skies is an intriguing fixture of modern international security affairs. Talk of
creating an aerial observation regime coincided with the end of two great global conflicts,
World War II and the Cold War. At each juncture, states recognized greater
transparency as potentially contributing to a stable and peaceful international system.
Yet Open Skies has never quite lived up to the expectations some have had for it – in
the mid-1950’s certainly, but also in the early 1990’s and today. While calls for greater
transparency in international security affairs have at various times been heard loud and
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Convention