ABSTRACT
The proposal for reciprocal reconnaissance flights over the United States, the Soviet Union, and their NATO and WTO allies, was revived by US President George Bush in May 1989, after it was neglected for the 35 years since Eisenhower's 1955 Open Skies initiative. Both military and political alliances came to the conference with their own proposals for the practical implementation of "Open Skies". In particular, the Soviet Union suggested that there would be a possibility of introducing amendments into a future Open Skies agreement so as to make it more consonant with other international obligations of its member-states and with verification procedures of other arms control agreements. Many Western scientists did not make a distinction between an Open Skies program as it was defined by the NATO's "basic elements" and reconnaissance flights as a standard intelligence tool. For many decades the Soviet Union was, in its own eyes, beset by numerous real and fictitious enemies.
