The International Civil Aviation Organization is one of the most important international organizations you’ve never heard of. This specialized United Nations agency codifies international aviation law, standards, and practices to ensure safety and security.

Although largely unnoticed, the international rules of aviation are as critical to civilian safety as road rules, controlling everything from flight deconfliction to air traffic control to the interactions between military and passenger aircraft. But in recent years, ICAO has become a dictator’s playground, with first China and now Russia seeking to influence its guardianship of the skies.              

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Between 2015 and 2021, ICAO was led by Secretary-General Fang Liu, formerly of the General Administration of Civil Aviation in the People’s Republic of China. Under her tenure, she first served her Chinese Communist Party masters in Beijing, bending ICAO to serve Chinese interests, including placing an ICAO “regional office” in Beijing, blocking Taiwan’s involvement in ICAO, and covering up a Beijing-linked cyber breach. However, in 2021, the United States administration tackled the problem head-on, backing Colombia’s Juan Carlos Salazar Gómez to succeed her.

Salazar’s leadership has steadied the ship. But ICAO is once again in a dictator’s crosshairs: Elections for ICAO’s governing council take place in September, and the Kremlin, one of the world’s most reckless violators of civil aviation rules, is seeking a return to the influential perch. Its transgressions must not be rewarded.

ICAO was founded in 1944 under U.S. leadership to “serve as the global forum of States for international civil aviation.” Its primary mission is not political, but technical, focusing on setting universal international standards and recommendations for interoperability among countries and airlines to facilitate air navigation and safety. Literally, every time you fly, unheralded ICAO procedures help ensure you arrive safely.

Which is why it is so outrageous that Russia might be elected to the ICAO Council. 

Russia is currently absent, having fallen short in its effort at reelection to the council in 2022. The 2022 vote, the most recent in the triennial election system, was the first time Moscow was not represented on the council, and the first time in 40 years a member failed to secure sufficient votes for reelection. Moscow’s rebuke, led largely by the U.S. and the European Union, came following what was labeled flagrant endangerment of civilian aircraft, as well as other breaches of the Chicago Convention, which underpins ICAO.

Member states reportedly wished to punish the Russian government for violations of Ukrainian sovereign airspace and bombings of civilian airports in the war between the countries. Indeed, ICAO condemned Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and airspace in 2022, underscoring “the paramount importance of preserving the safety and security of international civil aviation and the related obligations of Member States.”

In addition to its airspace incursions, Putin’s government also passed a law in 2022 allowing Russian airlines to place 515 airplanes leased from foreign companies on the country’s aircraft register. The owners of the planes were forced to suspend their airworthiness certificates because they could no longer verify that they were safe. The ICAO Council called on the “Russian Federation to immediately cease its infractions of the Chicago Convention, with a view to preserving the safety and security of civil aviation, and to urgently remedy these violations.” 

Nor were these the most egregious assaults on the rules of civil aviation. In 2014, Russian forces over Ukrainian airspace shot down Malaysian jetliner MH17, killing 298 innocent passengers. Earlier this year, after a lengthy deliberation initiated by Australia and the Netherlands, the ICAO Council determined that the Russian Federation was responsible for the downing of MH17. “This represents the first time in ICAO’s history that its Council has made a determination on the merits of a dispute between Member States under the Organization’s dispute settlement mechanism,” the organization explained.

ICAO’s seriousness in tackling member intransigence and lawlessness is a shining corner in a U.N. system that regularly elevates human rights abusers to positions of authority inside human rights agencies, and nuclear proliferators to positions within nonproliferation bodies. And Russia, shocked at ICAO’s principled stand, quickly rejected both the vote to oust Moscow from its council seat and the MH17 condemnation. Instead, the Kremlin has repudiated the determination of the ICAO Council, labelling it “illegitimate.”

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In 2022, Moscow couldn’t cobble together the votes to support its candidacy in the 193-nation ICAO Assembly to win a seat on the organization’s council. This time around, per insiders, the Kremlin will likely try to seek the support of the world’s most virulent anti-Americans, such as Venezuela, Brazil, or Zimbabwe, and spread cash around to secure additional support.

The Trump administration must oppose it. Russia is a danger to aviation and cannot be in a position of global trust, governing the skies.

Danielle Pletka is a distinguished senior fellow in Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Brett Schaefer is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute