Black Sea regional security: present multipolarity and future possibilities

Abstract: Three theories that can be usefully employed to analyse the security of the Black Sea region are structural realism, security communities and supranationality (based on the European Union (EU) model). Given that the Black Sea area currently has too many conflicts and rivalries to be a truly cooperative region or a 'security community', we must examine its dynamics in terms of its present realism, especially in the east of the region ('what is'), as well as considering its future ('what could be'). Regionalisation and Europeanisation are both possibilities for the longer term but, for the development of a fully cooperative region, possibly based on the EU model, it is posited that a condition of 'balanced multipolarity' must initially exist. The paper analyses the extent to which this type of polarity applies at the moment and then uses all the theories to outline possible ways forward for the region.