SECURITY IN THE BLACK SEA REGION BEFORE AND AFTER 2014
SECURITY IN THE BLACK SEA REGION BEFORE AND AFTER 2014

Summary/Abstract: The paper focuses on developments that took place after November 2013, starting with Euromaidan (a challenge against the supremacy of the Russia) and the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014. The crisis continued with the escalation of tension between Russia and Turkey in 2015, originating from the fact that the two countries provided support to opposing sides in the Syrian civil conflict. Tension was further increased with the establishment of a missile defense station in Romania in 2016. These incidents, which took place over a three year period, worsened the security situation of the Region. The factors behind them are investigated through the prism of the multiple hierarchy model developed by Douglas Lemke and Randal Schweller’s arguments on international security. I conclude that a spill-over effect of an on-going civil war in a nearby region may lead to an immediate but short term crisis among regional actors while the incompatibility between the efforts of the dominant country to maintain the status-quo and the efforts of the dissatisfied states to change the order and other non-regional great powers’ support to the latter group of states are the basic causes of the tension in the Black Sea Region. Revisions regarding these two models are suggested in terms of the clarification of the status-quo, measuring satisfaction of the regional states, different stances towards the regional and the global hegemons, factors behind the efficiency of the great power interference and the effects of the balance of dissatisfied and satisfied states on security.

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