The Black Sea Region

The Black Sea region is a dynamic and complex area in which many national and international actors have key interests, including Russia and the US. The European Union stretches to the sea’s western coast where it meets former Soviet territory as well as EU candidate Turkey. Regional tensions include those over NATO enlargement, a US anti-ballistic missile system, access to the Black Sea, democratization, spheres of interest and the conflict zones of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Transnistria. In addition, the region’s close proximity to the Caspian basin offers the prospect of alternative energy resources and routes to western states. The Politics of the Black Sea Region: EU Neighbourhood, Conflict Zone or Future Security Community? explores and examines the many diverse political, security and economic interests that affect the region and the possible outcomes for it. By reviewing the wider history and examining the political systems and policies of the Black Sea nations and organizations as well as analyzing current tensions and future trends, it provides an invaluable, comprehensive and unique political guide to this fascinating area.

This book on the security context in the Black Sea region is a timely endeavour and substantive contribution to understanding the state of play in the region and its linkages to the rest of the world. With contributions from analysts from Europe, the United States, Russia, Ukraine and Turkey, the book provides a holistic perspective. Post-Cold War developments have increased interest in the Black Sea region and the role of the regional and extra-regional actors in its security issues: this volume examines the position of the United States; NATO’s involvement; the EU’s engagement; Russia and Turkey’s aspirations alongside the policies of the other states in the region as they seek a role for themselves. It illustrates and investigates key concerns such as security, energy and energy security, regionalism and good governance; and questions why a cooperative security framework (or other regional schemes which could accommodate the needs of all stakeholders) has to date never become a reality. This book adds to the growing body of research on the region, presenting the facts of the current situation and asking what can be done in the Black Sea region for it to survive given its precarious security environment. This book was published as a special issue of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies.

In 89 BC, Roman legionaries intervened in the Black Sea region to curb the ambitions of Mithridates VI of Pontos. Over the next two centuries, the Roman presence on the Black Sea coast was slowly, but steadily increased. This volume deals with the Roman impact on the indigenous population in the Black Sea region and touches on the theme of romanisation of that area. Nine different contributors discuss several aspects of Roman identity and the cultural interaction - one article even compares the situation to the American presence in Iraq - though at the same time, it also looks at the resistance to the Roman Empire and the Roman problems of creating peace in the region after the colonisation. Romanisation and becoming Roman in a Greek world is a very popular field of discussion about which a lot has already been written. This book, however, encircles three important themes - the domination, the romanisation and the resistance. It covers two different sides of the Roman presence in the area and shows both the perspective of a Roman just arrived, Pliny the Younger, and a native seeing the Romans coming, the historian Memnon of Herakleia. Furthermore it describes how multi-identity cultures manage to live together because becoming Roman not necessarily means becoming less Greek (or less Gaulish, less Scythian, less Bosporan, etc.). The diversity of the different chapters in this book creates reflection on the cultural change in the traditionalist, yet cosmopolitan environment that was the Roman Black Sea Region.

Offering theoretical insights on region building, this book explores the attempts to formulate a political and institutional vision for the Black Sea region in the post-9/11 era and in the context of the enlargements of the EU and NATO. It investigates in depth these attempts, viewed as a failure by the key actors involved, in order to understand how regions emerge in international politics as well as how and why they may fail to come into being. To this end, the book explores a range of factors that impacted region building in the Black Sea, considering the role of region builders involved, their practices and the context of their actions, and the spatial representations and security discourses that were integral to the region building process. Hence, attention is paid to how these factors both enabled and constrained the discursive construction of the Black Sea region, thus identifying the elements that distinguish the Black Sea from other successful cases of region building. Based on critical approaches towards international relations and political geography, this book both expands and deepens the scope and understanding of regions and will thus appeal to academics and students in the fields of International Relations, Security Studies, Political Geography, and Regional Integration.

This book focuses on the network of the Genoese colonies in the Black Sea area and their diverse multi-ethnic societies. It raises the problems of continuity of the colonial patterns, reveals the importance of the formation of the late medieval / early modern colonialism, the urban demography, and the functioning of the polyethnic entangled society of Caffa in its interaction with the outer world. It offers a novel interpretation of the functioning of this late medieval colonial polyethnic society and rejects the widely accepted narrative portraying the whole history of Caffa of the fifteenth century as a period of constant decline and depopulation.

This book underpins the geography of the Black Sea, covering topics such as morphology, morphography, geology, and history of the Black Sea. It also discusses environmental aspects affecting the population in the Black Sea's coastal settlements and looks to the future of the Black Sea region. This book covers a gap in research in the field of world regional geography of the Black Sea by providing a comprehensive methodology and terminology to readers, students and teachers in the field.

New Regionalism or No Regionalism? places the Black Sea probl(r)matique in a wider historical and spatial context, taking a closer look at the region and examining further the structure of the Black Sea area. The authors offer a perspective on smaller actors with great ambitions, such as Azerbaijan and Romania, and go on to make a comparison between the emerging regionalism in the Black Sea area and regionalisms in other parts of the world."

This book provides a detailed analysis of Russia’s ‘great power identity’ and the role of Europe in forming this identity. ‘Great power identity’ implies an expansionist foreign policy, and yet this does not explain all the complexities of the Russian state. For instance, it cannot explain why Russia decided to take over Crimea, but provided only limited support to break-away regions in Eastern Ukraine. Moreover, if Russia is in geo-economic competition with Europe, why has no serious conflict erupted between Moscow and other post-Soviet states which developed closer ties with the EU? Finally, why does Putin maintain relationships with the European countries that imposed tough economic sanctions on Russia? Vsevolod Samokhvalov provides a more nuanced understanding of Russia’s great power identity by drawing on his experience in regional diplomacy and research and applying a constructivist methodology. The book will appeal to students and scholars of international relations, in particular Russian-European relations, Russian foreign policy and Russian studies.