Open Skies Treaty

The Open Skies Treaty allows countries to monitor signatories’ arms development by conducting unarmed, surveillance flights over each other’s territories.
It entered into force in 2002 and currently has thirty-four state parties—the United States, Canada, Russia, Kazakhstan and thirty other countries in Europe. (India is not a signatory to the treaty)
For each state party or group of state parties, the treaty specifies an active quota, the number of observation overflights it may conduct per year, and a passive quota, the number of overflights it must accept.
All of a state-party’s territory can be overflown. No territory can be declared off-limits by the host nation.

Last year, the U.S. gave notice that it will exit the Open Skies Treaty alleging Russia had continuously and flagrantly violated the treaty.

Russia has announced that it was pulling out of the Open Skies treaty, saying that the pact had been seriously compromised by the withdrawal of the United States.
Russia has raised concerns that despite leaving the treaty Washington could potentially retain access to overflight intelligence gathered by allies who remain members in the treaty.
Arms control tensions have been rising between Moscow and Washington and New START, their last remaining major nuclear arms control treaty, is set to expire in February.
Mr. Biden has said he’s keen to renew it but it remains unclear for how long.

Signed in 1987, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty required the United States and the Soviet Union to eliminate all of their nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometres.
As a result of the treaty, both countries destroyed a total of 2,692 short-, medium-, and intermediate-range missiles.
In 2019, the U.S. announced its formal withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty accusing Russia of breaching the terms of the deal.

The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) was signed in 2010 by Russia and the United States and entered into force in 2011.
New START replaced the 1991 START I treaty, which expired in 2009, and superseded the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT).
New START caps the deployed strategic nuclear warheads and bombs of the United States at Russia at 1,550 each. The Treaty includes limits on missiles, bombers, and land-based launchers for nuclear weapons.
The Treaty also allows for verification inspections and information-sharing.
The New Start Treaty is due to expire this February.

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