Open Skies plan
오픈 스카이스 계획
The Open Skies plan was a proposal made by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower at the Geneva Summit in July 1955 for mutual aerial reconnaissance and monitoring of military installations. Unarmed aircraft would photograph the other side's territory to detect arms buildups and verify compliance with disarmament agreements, but the Soviet Union rejected it as a scheme that would permit Western surveillance.
In depth
The proposal exposed competing Cold War understandings of security and verification. For Eisenhower, reciprocal overflights were a means of making arms reductions dependable; for the Soviet leadership, allowing such flights risked exposing military information and creating vulnerability. Although the 1955 proposal was not adopted, it anticipated later verification debates involving reconnaissance satellites and arms-control agreements.
Sources
- Wikipedia (EN) (Eisenhower's 1955 Geneva proposal for an international aerial monitoring system and its disarmament purpose)
- history.state.gov (official U.S. diplomatic record of the July 21, 1955 Geneva session and Eisenhower's statement linking reliable arms reduction to inspection)
- history.com (the proposal's mutual aerial surveillance design and Soviet rejection)