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1. A New Black Sea Strategy for a New Black Sea Reality

Author:
Luke Coffey and Can Kasapoglu
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
With Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, there is a new geopolitical reality in the Black Sea region. Following the capture of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol in May, Russia has effectively turned the Sea of Azov into a Russian lake and is also seeking maximum control of the Black Sea. Turkey has reminded the world of Ankara’s regional importance by closing the Turkish Straits to the belligerent parties’ vessels (in practice the Russian Navy, except for the platforms home-ported in the Black Sea), which it carried out under authority granted by the 1936 Montreux Convention. Despite the overwhelming odds, Ukraine has been able to deliver significant blows to the Russian Navy—most sensationally by sinking the Black Sea Fleet’s flagship Moskva missile cruiser and by striking Russian platforms with unmanned surface combatants in October. Black Sea geopolitics is a complex phenomenon. Any comprehensive regional political-military policy must therefore offer a multidomain strategy. This report will focus on the maritime agenda. Future reports will present findings on air warfare and land warfare trends in the broader Black Sea region.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, NATO, Geopolitics, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Ukraine, and Black Sea

2. NATO’s Black Sea Frontier Is the Southern Shore of the Caspian Sea

Author:
Luke Coffey
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has led to a renewed focus on the geopolitical importance of the Black Sea. What the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has overlooked is Russia’s use—often in coordination with Iran—of the Caspian Sea to advance its war aims in Ukraine. The Caspian Sea offers Russia a strategic depth to strike targets far afield in a relatively safe manner, is currently the only way for Russia to reinforce its Black Sea Fleet, and serves as a transport conduit allowing Iran to deliver military assistance to Russia for use against Ukraine. As Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the United Kingdom’s chief of the defence staff, recently said, “The flow of Iranian weapons to Russia’s war in Ukraine demonstrates that there is no easy geographical distinction on matters of defense.”1 In the context of regional security, military planners in the United States and NATO should see the most extreme point of the alliance’s Black Sea frontier as the southern shoreline of the Caspian Sea.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, NATO, Alliance, and Strategy
Political Geography:
Russia, Iran, Caspian Sea, and Black Sea

3. Ukraine, NATO and the Black Sea

Author:
Iulian Romanyshyn
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
NATO Defense College
Abstract:
Since its occupation of Crimea in 2014, Russia has steadily expanded military capabilities and technical infrastructure on the peninsula, transforming the region into a springboard for offensive military operations in the Black Sea and beyond. Despite growing insecurity and Russian militarization of the region over the years, the transatlantic community has not put as high of a strategic premium on the Black Sea compared to the Baltic region. Russia’s renewed aggression against Ukraine, however, has reshaped the strategic landscape, giving momentum for NATO to remedy its Black Sea defence posture. Greater military support to Ukraine and strengthened forward presence in the area would be key components of a new approach to deterring and confronting Russian aggression.
Topic:
Defense Policy, NATO, Transatlantic Relations, Militarization, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Ukraine, and Black Sea

4. The Black Sea, the spectre of a new Iron Curtain?

Author:
Radu Magdin
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Robert Schuman Foundation (RSF)
Abstract:
For thousands of years, the Black Sea has been a place of meetings and exchange. It has often been the natural border between empires. Now, together with the Baltic Sea, it is the place where East and West, the United States (through NATO), the European Union, Turkey and Russia still meet on open terrain.
Topic:
NATO, History, European Union, Geopolitics, Borders, and Regional Politics
Political Geography:
Russia, Turkey, United States of America, and Black Sea

5. The Black Sea Thread in Russian Foreign Policy and How the United States Can Respond

Author:
Adam Christopher Nettles
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Advanced Military Studies
Institution:
Marine Corps University Press, National Defense University
Abstract:
This article outlines the evolving geopolitical situation in the Black Sea in the context of Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine. It establishes a historically rooted pattern in Russian strategy tied to the region that runs through most recent acts of Russian aggression against its neighbors. It illustrates how after each Russian conflict with its neighbors in the last 20 years Russia has gained more physical coastline on the Black Sea. It roots this behavior in a centuries-long pattern of Russian behavior grounded in practical and ideational motivations. Accordingly, it establishes that Russian aggression in the Black Sea is likely to be a persistent fixture of global great power competition for the near future. The author then proposes a sustainable solution to counter Russian aggression in the theater through U.S. support of the current trend toward increased European “strategic autonomy” within the bounds of the NATO alliance.
Topic:
Security, NATO, Military Strategy, Navy, Transatlantic Relations, Strategic Autonomy, and Invasion
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Ukraine, and Black Sea

6. Waves of ambition: Russia’s military build-up in Crimea and the Black Sea

Author:
Gustav Gressel
Publication Date:
09-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR)
Abstract:
Russia’s capacity to carry out large-scale military operations against Black Sea states allows it to coerce and extort them. Reducing the predictability of such operations is the first step towards deterring them, because Moscow carefully weighs their risks. Western countries should increase their militaries’ interoperability with Black Sea states’ armed forces and improve the infrastructure they use to deploy reinforcements in the region. This would allow them to react to Russian military escalation in kind and thereby increase the risks for Moscow. With Ukraine and Georgia engaged in land wars against Russia, the vulnerabilities of Ukrainian and Georgian airspace and territorial waters have received relatively little attention. Western states could begin to address these vulnerabilities by establishing an international naval presence in the Black Sea. This would counter Russia’s attempts to deny other nations free use of the sea, and could help mitigate long-standing rivalries between allied states in the region. These efforts to enhance Black Sea states’ security will depend on improvements in other areas, particularly the security of government communications, counter-intelligence, the rule of law, and the fight against corruption.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, NATO, Military Affairs, European Union, and Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia, Eurasia, Turkey, Crimea, and Black Sea

7. Developing a New Euro-Atlantic Strategy for the Black Sea Region

Author:
Ronald D. Asmus
Publication Date:
06-2004
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV)
Abstract:
A series of historically unprecedented events have brought the attention of the West to the wider Black Sea region—that area including the littoral states of the Black Sea, Moldova, and the Southern Caucasus countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. An area that has heretofore been neglected by the Euro-Atlantic community is now starting to move from the periphery to the center of Western attention. Why has the West heretofore lacked such a strategy for the Black Sea region in the past and what has changed to make one so critical now? Four main factors explain the past lack of interest.
Topic:
NATO, Regional Cooperation, European Union, and Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Black Sea

8. Bulgaria’s Role and Prospects In The Black Sea Region: Implications Of Nato and Eu Enlargement

Author:
Plamen Plantev
Publication Date:
12-2003
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
Abstract:
In the evolving situation of EU and NATO eastward enlargement within a dramatically changed global security environment Bulgaria’s role and prospects are shaped by powerful yet hard to organise and realise in practice interests: First, the interest of serving as a reliable boundary state of both EU and NATO while projecting the image and influence of a trustworthy bridge, linking a stable and well established region of EU and NATO states with countries of a still shaky though bearing positive economic opportunities area. With the support of EU and NATO Bulgaria is in a position to mobilise its potential to serve these uneasy jobs. Second, the interest not to be pushed or even just to be left in the position to choose between the EU and NATO as well as between the EU and the leading NATO country – the United States. Bulgaria’s perceptions of the world – from the point of view of EU and US interaction, is a place, calling for cooperation in approaching and solving the hard issues of the globe and not for trying to counter-balance the Americans. Any other reading of the EU/US relationship by Bulgaria would practically dilute and even dissolve the country’s chances to play an effective and forward targeted boundary and bridge roles. Third, the interest to project to the contending for EU and NATO membership countries in the Balkans and in the Black Sea area the lesson Bulgaria has learnt in the accession years, that joining the two institutions is not an issue of geopolitical bargaining, but one of mostly meeting standard conditions that would lead to social and economic progress of the aspirants themselves and make them compatible with the other members of the Union and the Alliance.
Topic:
NATO, European Union, and Geopolitics
Political Geography:
Europe, Eastern Europe, Bulgaria, and Black Sea