Open Skies and American Primacy

Abstract

American statesmen have long held that peace and security depend on America possessing overwhelming power. Primacy has also meant constructing a system of world order conducive to American interests and values. To this end, America has championed the cause of greater transparency. In the mid-1950s and again in the late-1980s, it proposed the establishment of an international system of mutual aerial observation. The Open Skies Treaty, which came into force in 2002, is a triumph of American statecraft because it places Russia under closer international scrutiny and makes it more accountable to its neighbors.