The Black Sea: A Geopolitical Space of Russian Thalassocratic Ambitions

Abstract

Rarely has a maritime space played such an important role in geopolitics and the regional and international balance of power. The last twenty years have brought dramatic changes to the international system and demonstrated that the end of history predicted by Fukuyama in the 1990s has not come true. Although separated by almost 8000 km, the Seas around China and the Black Sea have reached a symmetrical position in the new confrontation between the Euro-Atlantic allies and the new Sino-Russian axis. Just as the seas in the east and south of China represent a front in the struggle to change the international system between Communist China and the US together with its Asian allies (Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea), so the Black Sea has become a geopolitical space of confrontation between Russia on one side and Europe and the US on the other. The research "The Black Sea: A Geopolitical Space of Russian Thalassocratic Ambitions" wants to analytically present how Moscow tried to achieve thalassocratic ambitions through its expansionist policy in the case of the Invasion of Georgia in 2008, the Annexation of Crimea in 2014, and with the Attack on Ukraine this year. In the center of these expansionist policies there have always been reasons such as the expansion of the Russian sphere of influence, and the blocking of the Euro-Atlantic enlargement, but to all this was also added, in a complementary way, a historical thalassocratic ambition of the Russian Federation.