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BLACK SEA BASIN — VULNERABILITY AREA
Cebotari Svetlana, Moldova State University, Chisinau, Republic of Moldova,
Gutu Ion, Moldova State University, Chisinau, Republic of Moldova
E-mail: svetlana.cebotari@mail.ru
Abstract. The security of the Black Sea basin is affected by the presence of several geostrategic, political, military, economic, social vulnerabilities. The presence ^ of these vulnerabilities in the region makes the destabilization of regional security.
This article analyzes the presence of vulnerabilities in the Black Sea basin and their impact on regional security.
Key words: regional security, energy security, vulnerability, conflict, organized crime, migration, drug trafficking, Black Sea.
The Extended Black Sea Region (EBSR) is an apparently recent operational concept, which is being frequently used especially in the geopolitical and geostrategic projections of the manifest interests regarding this space. From the point of view of the delimitation of the Extended Black Sea Region, if we consider strictly the geographical criterion, then it includes the 6 riparian countries (Romania, Ukraine, Russian Federation, Georgia, Turkey and Bulgaria). However, the term "extended" refers to a politico-economic region rather than a geographical one, so we cannot ignore the political, economic and strategic importance of countries such as the Republic of Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Greece. Therefore, we could appreciate that the Extended Black Sea Region stretches from the Balkans to the Caspian Sea, becoming one of the most dynamic areas in the post-Cold War and postSoviet Union period. It is flanked on the west by the Balkans and on the east by the Caucasus, two areas with a very high potential for conflict, which in the 1990s were considered the periphery of Europe. We also cannot ignore the importance of the Eurasian energy corridor, which connects the large consumers of the West with the rich energy reserves in the Caspian Sea and Central Asia [7].
Along with the accession of Central and Eastern European countries to the EU, the EU has become a Black Sea neighbourhood. With the accession of Bulgaria and
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Romania in 2007, the EU became an active power in the Black Sea region. Based on the premise that the EU borders the Black Sea, the region's problems are addressed through the "European Neighbourhood Policy" framework. The European Neighbourhood Policy seeks to recognize sovereignty and independence, resolve conflicts, recognize human rights and democratic foundations, and implement economic reforms. Being located on the energy routes, the Black Sea is becoming an important area for the EU. In addition, environmental factors have created a link between the Black Sea and the EU through Romania and Bulgaria's membership of the EU. Thus, the EU has a coastline on the Black Sea, and responsibilities such as the protection of the seafront, the lack of water and the fight against radioactive waste will come to the fore. In addition, the passage of oil tankers from the Black Sea will have to comply with EU security standards. The EU's relationship with the region is also needed to control potential immigration from the region's unstable and relatively underdeveloped countries to Europe [8].
Despite recent positive developments, the Black Sea region is not exempt from the presence of risk factors that can induce asymmetric hazards and threats both regionally and internationally. Their degree of danger can evolve depending on certain circumstances. Thus, analyzing the situation in the region, the following vulnerabilities can be highlighted, which can have a direct impact on regional security.
Maintaining low-intensity conflict situations in the frozen phase (Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Transnistria), the activation of which can also contaminate neighbouring areas and the resolution of which is still very difficult. Maintaining chronic interethnic conflicts, in order to exploit their effects, facilitates the emergence of massive flows of refugees, amplification of tensions, incitement to extremism, xenophobic manifestations, etc., risks with radical spread in the Black Sea region. Asymmetric threats are the most significant risk to regional security; a defining element of any strategic evaluation. Asymmetric threats are distinguished by the fact that they are difficult to predict and consequently almost impossible to prevent and counteract unilaterally [6]. There are also currently regional and non-regional actors in the Black Sea region: three main actors exert a different degree of influence on security policy options [5]. Since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, a series of violent conflicts have broken out, leading to instability and security issues in the Black Sea and Caspian regions.
The issue of national borders and mutual territorial claims were the premises that conditioned the disputes between independent states that failed to demarcate with the collapse of the USSR. The emergence of Ukraine as an independent state is an important geostrategic evolution in Europe. Moscow and Kiev faced a wide range of problems: the Black Sea Fleet, the division of former Soviet property, international debt repayments, energy delivery, and since 2014, the Russian-Ukrainian crisis [10]. Last but not least, the combination of tensions could be further aggravated by disparities in military power. The Black Sea region includes the states with the three
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largest armed forces in Europe - Russia, Turkey and Ukraine. Other countries remain relatively weak militarily and are unlikely to spend large sums on their defence budgets [4].
Thus, from a geostrategic point of view, on both sides of the Black Sea, the Balkans and, especially, the South Caucasus are characterized by numerous tensions and conflicts (Chechnya, South Ossetia, Transnistria, Karabakh Mountain, Abkhazia, etc.), in which international security organizations make important efforts [3].
In South Ossetia, Ossetian separatists began the armed struggle in 1990-1991. Tens of thousands of Georgians were killed or left the province. In June 1992 (the Sochi Agreement), Boris Yeltsin mediated the ceasefire and deployed a peace force of 1,700 people. A negotiating group for the future of the province (OSCE, the Russian Federation, Georgia and North Ossetia) has also been set up. The EU has also recently become involved. The OSCE has decided to send more observers to the area, as a step towards greater stability and faster resolution of tensions. The changes in Tbilisi and an active US attitude are likely to open up new negotiating perspectives; however, Georgia does not accept the secessions in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Adjara; a solution of territorial integrity is supported, with wide local autonomy and the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers.
Thus, the Republic of Moldova represents a key link in the security system in the Black Sea region. The distinctive sign is the frozen conflict between Chisinau and Tiraspol. Its existence generates contradictions in the field of regional cooperation. The ideological component of the conflict zone is also a danger to regional stability and security. In Transnistria, as in other conflict zones in the states located in the Black Sea region, with Russia's efforts, an archaic model was established that functions as a parastatal formation, constituting a de facto criminal enclave, with all the "kit" of illegitimate instruments. This "gloomy area", specific in its own way, is an ideal place for the emergence of the "black offshore", with an illegal circuit of goods, including weapons and drugs. The annual volume of this circuit is estimated at about two billion US dollars. It goes without saying that such enclaves cannot but be attractive to representatives of international terrorism who can naturally act in the territories of these "black holes" of Europe only under the umbrella of the Russian secret services. The ideological composition of the areas of "frozen conflicts" is marked by the amplification of the tendencies of manifestation of national intolerance, anti-Semitism and xenophobia [1].
The case of the Republic of Moldova contains some of the major problems of Russian policy towards the successor states of the former Soviet Union: the presence of the Russian-speaking population, economic dependence and Russia's military involvement. The Transnistrian conflict that began in 1992 cannot be resolved through Russian military intervention. On this occasion, the Russians deployed their military forces in the Transnistrian region, assuming that they guarantee political stability in those localities [2].
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Another hotbed of instability in the Black Sea area is Transnistria, located east of the Nistru, which declared independence in 1990. Transnistria is a factor of international destabilization and a "centre of organized crime" in Eastern Europe. The United States, along with the EU and the OSCE, support the demand for the withdrawal of Russian military bases from Transnistria, but the Russian Federation considers it a kind of "advanced base". Russia is offering support the 14th Army, which was to be evacuated under the 1999 agreement, in line with its OSCE commitments. The conflict is currently in a frozen phase, but it is not ruled out that it will be reactivated.
No less attention in the context of the analysis of vulnerabilities in the Black Sea basin is the geographical proximity of areas currently marked by instability or having a high potential for risk in this regard: the Middle East, the borders of Iraq and Iran, the Western Balkans.
Also, the diversity of identity, cultural and other issues, amplified by ethnic and religious diversity, as well as socio-economic, political, or historical heritage issues are equally vulnerabilities that can lead to destabilization of regional security.
Another vulnerability having an impact on regional security is the persistence of actions specific to the phenomenon of organized crime and the difficulties related to their monitoring, prevention and control through regional and international cooperation actions. The actions of organized crime structures are favored by the unstable political climate in some regions and in some neighbouring areas, corruption and the precarious state of the population, contributing to the proliferation of smuggling, illegal migration and other criminal activities. Attempts to expand links between terrorist groups, organizations and networks (Al Qaeda, Chechen and Kurdish networks, other networks) in the wider Black Sea region; The case study confirms the tendency to expand the nuclei inspired by the doctrines of Islamic extremism and Al Qaeda, by attracting new followers and involving them in actions against the antiterrorist coalition. The regional dimension of terrorism includes a number of known and monitored terrorist groups operating in the adjacent areas of the Black Sea; the connections of terrorist networks with areas with a high terrorist potential operating in the Middle East also induce a global dimension. All Black Sea states are currently participating in the multinational coalition against global terrorism [9] .
In this context we can include the tendency of terrorist elements to use the channels and routes of cross-border crime, their logistical and human support. In the context of the accession to the European Union of the states bordering the Black Sea, it is observed the intensification of actions on the illegal migration routes. Migration flows cross the region mainly by land (Ukraine and Turkey being turntables), but some important routes of illegal migration from Africa and the Middle East and the Far East are already crossing the Black Sea basin. Given the security measures for land borders undertaken by Member States and candidates for the European Union, an increase in migration flows on sea and river routes is expected. Illegal migration, with Turkey and
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Ukraine as the main protagonists, both as a source and as a transit environment (with impressive numbers of immigrants), as well as illegal arms and drug trafficking, with devastating effects socially, economically and politically, completes the spectrum of threats and risks of the states bordering the Black Sea. The problem of refugees and forced migrants, as a result of a conflict situation, a political and economic situation, is particularly worrying. The fighting in South Ossetia (1991) and Abkhazia (1992-93) led to hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Georgia, including 40,000 people displaced in 1998 in Georgia. In recent years, Russia alone has hosted about a million people, mostly ethnic Russians. These include approximately 150,000 internally displaced persons from Chechnya (Russian Federation), 23,000 internally displaced persons from North Ossetia; 29,000 Georgian refugees; and 20,000 former deportees by the Turks [4].
Illegal trafficking in strategic materials, weapons, combat equipment and ammunition, as well as drugs, has no less impact on regional security. Arms trafficking, combat equipment and ammunition are stimulated both by the existence of large quantities of weapons in the region and by the production of weapons in some riparian countries. Some of the trafficked weapons are transported through the ports on the Black Sea, the smuggling sea routes being considered safer by the traffickers than the land ones. Trafficking in strategic materials as a result of cooperation between terrorist groups and organizations and mafias in the region, especially in the former Soviet Union, is also a serious threat to the security and stability of the area. Drug trafficking is favored by the development of the drug production and consumption market, as well as by the change and diversification of routes, including maritime routes.
Also, in the Black Sea basin there is the persistence of vulnerabilities that can feed unconventional risk factors on the environment and public health, and the inefficiency of mechanisms to coordinate protection actions in civil emergencies (pollution, danger of a pandemic, smuggling of goods, etc.) Tensions could gradually grow as a result of aggravated environmental problems, which are becoming increasingly detrimental to the interests of the Black Sea coastal states and even beyond. The Black Sea is becoming one of the most polluted in the world, it is becoming a sink for natural and artificial vapours thrown into the rivers that feed it -the Danube, the Don and the Nistru, and the ecological catastrophe is so severe that it tends not to recover [9].
Regarding energy resources, the riparian states in the basin of the analyzed region are highly dependent, from an energy point of view, on oil and gas supplies from the Russian Federation, a particularly important vulnerability. Thus, the West, with the support of the states on the western shore of the Black Sea, seeks to open access to energy sources in the Caspian Sea and the Middle East, which would reduce in the medium term the dependence of Eastern Europe - the EU in general - on The Russian Federation. However, the participation of Russian companies (Gazprom,
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Lukoil) in a regional economic competition is burdened by: the obligation for them to comply with EU rules and to liberalize their own energy market; the need for technological modernization; high transport costs on the Druzhba pipeline, on the railway or on the Odessa-Brody pipeline, etc. In the end, the Russian Federation must accept the Western partnership and cooperation of large transnational corporations and give up on its strong relations with the states in its immediate vicinity.
In order to maintain its position as the area's energy leader and reduce Ukraine's positional advantages, Moscow is pushing for projects on the Novorossiysk-Eastern Balkans pipeline and the Black Sea underwater pipeline with the terminal in Istanbul. Another course of action of the Russian Federation is the "offensive" of Russian energy companies in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, with the intention of "buying everything that can be bought".
From a practical point of view, the states of the Black Sea region depend to a large extent on Western economic assistance, which is essential for stimulating the processes of transforming the economic and social base of these states and their accentuated democratization. Everywhere, in different proportions, there are important obstacles: old mentalities; weak democratic traditions; corruption; relations with international criminal organizations; illegal trafficking in drugs, weapons, human trafficking through networks in Ukraine, the Russian Federation, Central Asia etc.
In addition, the existence of several distinct sub-regions in the Black Sea region, namely the Caucasus, the Balkans and, to some extent, the Mediterranean, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, is another factor destabilizing the area. Subregional identities have prevented the emergence of a Black Sea identity, created instability and prevented the creation of a comprehensive regional security framework.
Thus, making a brief review of the main vulnerabilities present in the Black Sea basin, it should be noted that each of them has a direct impact on regional security. In order to reduce the danger of situations that would lead to the destabilization of regional security, there is a need to join forces with all states bordering the Black Sea basin to eliminate or reduce the presence of these vulnerabilities.
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