Michael Krepon and Michael Newbill, eds.

Over the past seven years, the Stimson Center has published several essays on the utility of cooperative aerial observation for tension reduction, confidence building, and conflict resolution. The Stimson Center is reproducing these essays and republishing them in order to draw attention to this body of work at a time when these imaginative ideas could have direct utility for long-standing disputes in South Asia, the Middle East, and the Asia–Pacific region.

• In Confidence Building, Peace-Making and Aerial Inspection in the Middle East, Michael Krepon and Peter Constable discuss the important role aerial inspections have played in monitoring and verifying disengagement agreements between Israel and Egypt in the Sinai peninsula.
• In Open Skies: Beyond ‘Vancouver to Vladivostock Ambassador John Hawes, a career US Foreign Service Officer and the lead US negotiator for the Open Skies Treaty, highlights the ability of the Open Skies Treaty to be adopted, and adapted, by other countries.
• In Risk-Reduction in South Asia: A Role for Cooperative Aerial Observation? Ambassadors John H. Hawes and Teresita Schaffer propose alternative “open skies” arrangements for the subcontinent.