Can the Black Sea return to what it was before the era of 21st century wars? Who can guarantee the free navigation and balance of this region? And what can Romania do to defend itself?
The President of Romania, Nicusor Dan, with Ionel Niţu, the president of the New Strategy Center
“When we talk about the Black Sea and the Danube Delta, we must make sure that they are protected and will be protected in the future as well” said the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Oana Țoiu at the debate on the pacification and development of the Pontic region organized by The New Strategy Center. President Nicușor Dan, number 2 in the hierarchy of Turkish diplomacy, Mehmet Kemal Bozay, the former Russian prime minister who went into opposition and fled to the West, Mihail Kasianov and other experts in foreign policy, security, energy and infrastructure also participated and spoke about the regional situation.
Mikhail Kasianov: Europeans must back down before the US and Russia further divide the EU
Whatever happens in the Black Sea region has a “huge” impact on regional security and on the Mediterranean, said the Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister, who also spoke about a possible mediation between Russia and Ukraine, explaining that Ankara has the advantage of being in touch with both sides, unlike European states. Former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasianov has insisted that Americans do not understand what Vladimir Putin's ambition is all about and that Europeans must back down before the United States and Russia further divide the European Union.
“Everything that fails at the level of security is transferred immediately, sometimes in the medium or long term, in everyday prices, in competitiveness and in the standard of living”, added the head of Romanian diplomacy, describing the Black Sea as a “safe sea”. The authors of the collective volume “Black Swans in the Black Sea”, launched at the opening of the Black Sea and Balkans Security Forum, relativize or even contradict Minister Țoiu's statement.
“Black Swans in the Black Sea” coord. Lt. Gen (ret) Ben Hodges and George Scutaru (ed)
The black swans that could disturb the Black Sea
For example, Tacan Ildem, former representative of Turkey at NATO writes that the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was only the most dramatic phase of a process that led to the deterioration of security in the Black Sea starting with the war in Georgia (2008) and then with the annexation of Crimea (2014). The author talks about how Ukraine forced the Russians to withdraw their ships from Sevastopol to Novorossiisk, but at the same time notes that Russia maintains its A2/AD capabilities (air, coastal, anti-ship defense systems that can include a nuclear component) on the peninsula, which make Crimea a difficult place to conquer. The retired American colonel, Robert E. Hamilton, head of the Delphi Strategic Research Center, wonders whether the Black Sea is a nuclear sea and believes that Russian aggression in the region began in the 1990s with the interventions in Abkhazia (a territory broken from Georgia and turned into a Russian enclave) and Transnistria (another Russian enclave that the Republic of Moldova fails to integrate).
If the United States does not return to a more solid commitment within NATO, it is possible that the large countries of the Black Sea, Turkey and Ukraine, for example, would like to have nuclear weapons to protect their territory, concludes the military analyst. Another expert from the United States, Phillip A. Petersen lists the black swans that could disturb the Black Sea. The black swan theory as formulated by Nassim Taleb refers to an event with three attributes: i) “an isolated case beyond the realm of ordinary expectation, given that nothing in the past has in any way indicated its possibility”; ii) “a special impact”; (iii) then, even though it is an isolated and unexpected case, after what happens, people find explanations making it predictable in retrospect (Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan. The Impact of the Unlikely, Curtea veche, Bucharest, 2008).
Can Europeans prevent black swan scenarios?
Petersen, who is the head of the Center for the Study of New Generation War, uses the Black Swan theory to demonstrate that 1) Moscow is losing the war with Ukraine, despite having more soldiers, more weapons, more money, and that 2) Turkey is no longer part of the European political culture because the European Union did not understand Kemalism as a formula for interrupting traditional oriental despotism, leaving Recep Tayyip Erdogan to move from competitive authoritarianism to hegemonic. In the future – writes the American analyst – it would not be at all excluded that Russia loses its supremacy in the Black Sea, and Turkey, where jihadism is expanding, enter into a conflict with Europe and return in force to the Pontic region, using for this purpose including the keys of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles Straits.
Can Europeans prevent the black swan scenarios described in the volume edited by the New Strategic Center (Lt. Gen (ret) Ben Hodges, George Scutaru (ed), Black Swans in The Black Sea, Tritonic, Bucharest, 2024)? Can these intellectual exercises turn into immediate dangers? Only if NATO loses its scope and power, only if Europe fragments under Russian, Chinese and American pressures, only if the spheres of influence return and the states on the periphery of the continent are once again lost in gray areas, as has happened before in history.
Sabina Fati – DW
