 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today, we joined with Praveer Pulkarsan. We're going to be talking about the implications of the US decision to withdraw from the treaty on open skies. Now, this treaty was signed to give various countries the possibility of mounting aerial surveillance over other countries and to reduce tensions in this regard. Thank you so much, Praveer, for joining us. So first of all, could we just talk about why this treaty is important or relevant? Because it actually gives countries the possibility of mounting surveillance flights over other countries. So why is it important that the treaty even exists? Well, you know, the treaty has, of course, a hoary past. It started with Aishenhower offering open skies to both US and Russia, Soviet Union at the time. And this is in 1956, if my memory is correct. And the Soviet Union turned it down. Khrushchev was the general secretary of the party at that time. He turned it out for a very simple reason. He said, we had nothing. So the issue was not that we are hiding something, but if they really found out we had nothing, then we would be in trouble. They thought that that will invite strikes against the Soviet Union in a first strike. So that was where it started from. And if you remember, this led to the United States using its U-2 planes to fly over Russia, Soviet Union, and map Soviet Union for the next three years before the U-2 was shot down. Gary Power is the famous incident that took place. The issue is that open skies was, in some sense, an acceptance that the nuclear war cannot be fought. There is no point in trying to provide more arms, try and win the nuclear battle by doing a first strike. So it came as a part after the fall of Soviet Union. It really came as a part of accepting that we now have reached a place where there is no point in trying to win nuclear weapons or wars. Already we had the agreement on the anti-ballistic missile treaty, which was signed with Ronald Reagan. If you remember, we had the SALT II agreement. So there's been a whole bunch of things were put, and of course, the other part of it, the intermediate nuclear weapons being also the INF Treaty being also put in place. So all of this came as a part of an arrangement where overflying each other's territory was accepted. There is no big deal in it. In any case, the Americans had satellites, had satellites, and so do Russians. So there is really, in that sense, no major additional advantage it was felt. So this was accepted. OK, let them fly whatever they want. What it does is, if you want to position the satellite over a specific area, it takes time. So if you have an open skies treaty, you can say, hey, we'd like to fly over ABCD. And can you let us do it? It still has to be arranged for mutual discussion. And then, of course, they can fly over it. Now, the real issue is that, apart from Russia and the United States, there are other countries involved in it. A lot of them are the European NATO countries as well as the late NATO entrance to the game. So they actually do want to look into Russia because they don't have satellites. So for them, it's a huge loss that this is now going to be something that the United States has pulled out of. Having done that, Russia has very little interest in allowing others to overflight because US would still get the information from its allies. So effectively, it means that the countries that will be at a loss are really the US allies in Europe. So to me, it's a double strike. One, a declaration of competition that we can win the nuclear race that Marshall Billingsley has recently said. We can spend them to oblivion. So we know how to win economic war, even if we don't win a nuclear war, or we'll get overwhelming nuclear preponderance. So that's one. And the second part is its NATO allies now are, again, completely dependent of the United States providing it information over Russia. So I think it's a double strike. And it's a part of the US now deciding they are the only player in the game and everybody else should surrender. Either allies or force, it doesn't really matter. So that, I think, is the second part of this history, which you have asked in the history question, but it's really a part of the larger correlation of forces globally that led to the Open Skies Treaty, being part of a much larger set of anti-nuclear weapon steps that were taken, nuclear restrained regimes as they are called, and as well as, essentially, the oversight into other countries. Right. So Premier, just to go a bit more deeper into that point. Like you mentioned, the US walked out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Under Trump, it has gone out of the IRF Treaty, which is the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. And now we have this withdrawal. So clearly, there is a very assertive element to Trump's strategy. And clearly, there is nuclear weapons to form a very key aspect of this strategy. So right now, could you talk a bit about what is the global scenario with respect to the nuclear weapons itself, especially considering Trump's argument that China has to be brought into this whole set of treaties, and that is why these treaties are bad? Well, that is really more with respect to what's called the New Start, which expires in February 2021. So let's just put that aside for the time being addressed. The question that we have raised earlier, which is that INF Treaty, the ABM Treaty, and they are both withdrawn by, of course, Republican presidents. But nevertheless, George Bush and Trump are not exactly the same personalities. But I think it's an indication that they do believe, and this is something that we have to see what the belief is based on, that nuclear preponderance of power now is something that the US can do, and it is something that they have to now build. So it's not a declaration that they're already in a dominant position. They know they're not at the moment, that it is still the balance of power, it's still balance of terror, destruction of both sides. But it is possible to think of winning the nuclear war, and therefore not having to wage it, but asking its competition to surrender. So that seems to be the game plan there. And it comes from, if you see, the nuclear posture review, for instance, which the Trump administration drew up. Now, in releasing that, they gave a clear signal. They believed that first strike is possible by the United States. It could do it under certain conditions. It said that it thinks nuclear weapons are usable, but that's something which Ronald Reagan had said is not. So it says clearly that they think nuclear weapons are usable, and they also talked about, and Trump goes on further on this, I think in 2018 or 2019, in Pentagon, he gave a speech, but he says, yes, we are going to put laser weapons in space, and we are going to put laser weapons, not just for defense, but also for offense. So he covered both sides, that we are going to have, we'll weaponize space. Now, there's a difference between militarizing space. Space is already militarized, if you have, say, satellites in the sky which can track different places. So it's not that the militarization of space hasn't occurred, but what has happened is that you are talking of weaponizing space. Now, that's something qualitatively different, and the Trump administration is already on record saying that. I think Marshall Billingsley, he's supposed to be a peace negotiator. He's supposed to negotiate arms deals. So this so-called peace negotiator, he makes a statement saying, we know how to win the economic war. We can spend other countries to oblivion. So the threat is to spend Russia and China into oblivion. So it's a part of the larger economic war that Trump seems to want to launch or has already launched against China. So all of this is coming together to say, okay, we think that we can win the nuclear peace if we will, by spending the other side completely out of oblivion, into oblivion. Now, we know there is enough evidence now to show that's not what happened during the Reagan regime. The Reagan presidency did not lead to the Russians spending more on defense. In fact, the defense budget remained completely constant. So this whole issue of competition and driving the Soviet Union to bankruptcy is a false position. But living that out completely because that's a really another debate altogether. The point remains that if you, is it for the purpose of nuclear dominance or is it a double-edged sword that if you compete with me, you will economically lose. If you don't compete with me, I'll be able to dominate over you. The sheer amount of nuclear weapons I can bring to bear on you is going to be such that you will have no chance. Now, if you see the hypersonic missiles that the US is talking about, if we talk the laser weapons, which they have done just a demonstration, which is really the Reagan Star Wars scenario again. So all of that seems to indicate that now the position is that we will, we can do a first strike and then we can defend ourselves against the reduced strike. And towards that end, as you know, in the Baltics, which is what the Russians have been protesting about, they have put up missile shields, but they've also put in over there batteries, which can also launch Tomahawk missiles, which means they can launch nuclear-tipped warheads from the same batteries, which is what the Russians had said is a violation of the INF Treaty. And strangely enough, the Americans seem to have accepted yes it was because they have recently tested the land-based Tomahawk missile with exactly the same kind of properties that the Russians have said is existing with the missile batteries that have been put in the Baltic states. So this is the picture that we still see. And if you add the hypersonic weapons to that, it will seem to indicate that you hit the opponent, Russia or China, with overwhelming force. And if you do that, then you can shoot down the whatever is going to come your way with your anti-missile shields as well with the Star Wars scenario, laser weapons you might have positioned in space. So this seems to be the scenario they're building too. Of course, the Russians and the Chinese are not going to citadel. They have taken measures. Russia, as you know, last year unveiled a set of missiles, which they showed that would be able to hit the United States, the MAX6 plus missiles, which are the hypersonic, what have been called the hypersonic missiles. They showed Avangard hypersonic glider missiles. So they have seen to unveiled a set of six weapon systems, which they think they can counter United States. You know, the biggest problem with all of this is we are back to this head trigger alert and sort of doomsnake clock being set at 12. We are, I think now it's set at two minutes to 12. I think we are inching towards it becoming zero. So that is where it is. It has been recognized by the ability of atomic scientists as the most dangerous moment in our history. So this is where we are at the moment. Coming back to the question that you asked, this will be China. You know, China has about 300 odd nuclear warheads. Against 6,000 plus of the United States and the Russians. If you take these figures, if you take these figures at face value, then it seems that if you get China to the table, that you will like to come down from 6,000 to war, 3,000. And is China supposed to then go off from 300 to 3,000? Or is it supposed to also cut from 300 to 150? Now that asking a party which has 300 nuclear weapons to cut when other sides have 6,000 each seems to be absurd. So it doesn't seem to have any purpose of asking China to join the INF or the nuclear warhead start, new start as it is called, is renewal discussion, except purely as a ploy not to have the treaty and abandoned, which would be the new start is the last nuclear restrained treaty that exists. So that would also then be abandoned and there would be none. And I'll come to the only other treaty that still exists at the moment, which also Trump is talking about leaving. So essentially the China issue is just a ploy. And France has as many warheads as China has, but Britain has 250. So the fact that Britain and France were NATO allies are not being asked to join, but China is. Also shows the bad faith that the United States has on this count. But the last treaty, and that's the most dangerous one at the moment, is the fact that they want to do nuclear testing again. So Trump is on record and his people are in record saying we're reconsidering resumption of nuclear testing. Now resumption of nuclear testing is extremely provocative because then the whole range of other countries can say, hey, we need to test too. And that includes India. India's nuclear establishment has never been happy that they were not allowed to test again, mainly because the hydrogen bomb, as you know, they didn't really give a very successful demonstration. So according to people who know, they said it's a phase. That means it behave more like an enhanced atom bomb. At all, that is the basically the nuclear trigger that exploded that it acted in the hydrogen casing active to enrich that explosion. So it didn't really become a full blown hydrogen bomb. Unlike what, for instance, the North Koreans have demonstrated. So it became more like an enriched nuclear bomb. So this part of it, the nuclear establishment in India has been raring to test again. So if you start by allowing one country, of course, the global hegemon to test, how do you stop others from testing again? So this is the other part of the danger that we see. So honestly speaking, my problem is not that we have somebody who's mad as a president of the United States as many people would like to believe, but the fact that there's a continuity of what they're doing, starting from the George Bush regime to now, and the fact that a lot of these issues have come up even earlier. So there seems to be a continuity and the fact that the United States not only wants to withdraw from all these nuclear restrained regimes, but they have also withdrawn from the North Korean agreement that they had earlier. They have not successfully reached any agreement with North Korea. And of course, they've withdrawn from the Iran agreement. So if you see US record, the US record is one of complete duplicity, if you will. And if you forget the fact, oh, you know, it's Republicans and this is Democrat. If we leave that out for all other countries, we are not going to get into the internal politics of the United States. Well, we are concerned that US is not pretty capable, has shown that it cannot be trusted to keep any agreement that it signs. And this is not about climate change alone, but in the whole range of strategic issues and is looking for global dominance in an era where people have nuclear weapons. This is a path of complete destruction. And as I said, my complaint is not about Trump in the United States. My complaint is really that A, other countries seem to believe that they have to just choose sides. They have no other room. So therefore they don't want to protest. And secondly, the global peace movement, which in the 80s was strong enough to make an impact on the world. The global peace movement is also completely at the moment either demoralized or incapable of mounting a protest. And I think the time has come that the people have to now become a player if they want to retain the globe as a place where humanity has a future. Otherwise, with this kind of trajectory which United States is now on, I don't think the human race, human civilization will lead to wait for another pandemic. We would be there in the pandemic. Thank you so much, Rabir, for talking to us. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching NewsClick.