The Thawing of the Black Sea

The fate of the Black Sea was once more influenced by events occur­ring thousands of kilometres away in Moscow. The Soviet Union, ideo­logically weakened and economically bankrupt, collapsed into a smuta (social and political chaos) reminiscent of the fall of the Tsarist Empire in 1917, albeit less bloody.

Liberation from Soviet domination and the introduction of a market economy brought new hope and a period of openness on the Black Sea. During the 1990s, traffic in the Romanian port of Constanta soared to unprecedented levels; the port of Odessa also experienced a remarkable growth. The period also brought a wave of raw nationalisms that had been hitherto suppressed. Pro-Russian dissidences along the northern part of the Black Sea resulted in breakaway states still locked in frozen conflicts: Transnistria seceded from Moldova; in 2008 the Russian army intervened in Abkhazia in the revolt against Georgia (which provided yet another opportunity for population expulsion). Compounding these political confrontations was the struggle for the transport of oil and gas resources from the Caspian Sea through the Caucasus: the so-called ‘geo­politics of pipelines’.^[740] Not unlike in the nineteenth century, the compe­tition is between northern routes under Russian control and southern corridors under the control of other powers (all of which involve a mix of pipeline, rail, ships and even trucks).

In the early twenty-first century, the balance of power seems to have shifted and altered in nature.^[741] The political contentions concerning Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia are now conceived of as taking place between ‘Europe’ (‘the West’) and ‘Russia’. In reality, the source of ten­sion is another: Russia’s perceived threat that NATO could now expand its membership to ex-members of the USSR north of the Black Sea.

Turkey is a particular case: torn between Europe and the Middle East, it has been a candidate for membership to a reluctant EU since 1987 while it has been experiencing its own identity crisis.^[742] On the other hand, the Anatolian coast, which had once struck visitors as undeveloped and backwards, is bustling today with economic activity and the building of modern infrastructure, in a stark contrast to the Black Sea’s northern coast of Ukraine and Russia. As for Istanbul, it is a rapidly expanding modern metropolis and an international trade hub that ranks among the world’s major international capitals. The amount of traffic that passes through the Straits has been steadily growing; so much so that the Turkish government announced in April 2011 the construction of a 50 km-long sea-level waterway (Kanal Istanbul) that should run west of the Bosphorus, connecting the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea. The conse­quences for the region may be considerable, both in terms of the volumes of sea traffic, but also geopolitically: since the Convention of Montreux obviously applies to the Bosphorus, this new channel between two seas might also provide greater leeway to Turkey for military purposes.