Reconsideration of the Wider Black Sea region as a part of EU Security after Russia’s invasion in Ukraine

Abstract

Before the war in Ukraine, the European Union perceived the Black Sea region as a crossroads connecting Europe with Asia. The EU always underlined the importance of the Black Sea area in the fields of connectivity, energy security, and regional development, indeed as a maritime connection between Europe and the Caucasus, it forms a crucial component of the Middle Corridor—a multimodal trade route linking China to Europe via Central Asia and the South Caucasus. However, a well-defined strategy for the Black Sea region within Europe’s security architecture did not exist before the war in Ukraine.  The Wider Black Sea region consists of two EU and NATO member states (Bulgaria, Romania), one NATO member state (Turkey) and six post-Soviet states: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine. Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine always demonstrated their eagerness to join EU and they were regarded as the most pro-Western-oriented states in the post-Soviet area. In spite of EU’s enlargement to the West of the Black Sea shore, Brussels was pursuing a cautious policy towards Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine due to several reasons: Absence of willingness of further enlargement to the East within EU member states. Different political interests of the Black Sea and entire regional states among EU members. Different perception of threats coming from Russia  The aim of this research is to analyze how the EU’s views on European security are changing with the war in Ukraine and in which sense the Wider Black Sea region is becoming an important part of the European security architecture. The specific objectives of the research are: -studying EU’s attitude towards the Wider Black Sea region before the Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine -analyzing the geopolitical dynamics in the Wider Black Sea region; - identifying problems and obstacles in the security of Europe after 2022; The research questions are as follows: How has Russia’s war in Ukraine affected the EU’s security concerns? How important is the role of the Wider Black Sea region in the EU’s emerging security architecture? Methodology. The research combines qualitative content analysis and the case study method. Qualitative content analysis is used to examine the EU’s foreign and security policy toward the Black Sea region. Another reason for choosing the qualitative content analysis lies in the fact that it allows the researcher to analyze decision-makers’ perceptions and attitudes, and to access more documents and public speeches. The study also employs the case study method because both the research object and the research questions concern EU policy toward the Wider Black Sea region. Robert Yin’s book (2018) significantly contributes to identifying when the case study should be employed while examining the “extensive and in-depth description” of some social phenomenon; Yin emphasizes that conducting a case study is relevant when seeking to explain some contemporary circumstances and asking the questions “how” and “why.” “This is because such questions deal with the tracing of operational processes over time, rather than mere frequencies or incidence” (p. 40). Therefore, this method is the most appropriate for me to study the case and answer the research questions, which, on the one hand, seek to examine the level of shifts/changes in foreign and security policy direction (how) and, on the other hand, explain the causes that triggered that change (“why”).