A new cold war in Europe and the Black Sea?

This contribution is a bit out of the ordinary, as it will open up a theme from a book that will come out in France, in French, on the strife in the Black Sea arena and the fight for Ukraine.

{mosads}In this book, I explain the roots of today’s crisis and how the Color Revolutions, lauded from abroad, created chaos at home. The book starts with the failure of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) to be a model for the rising states — the external recomposition, in other words, and how the region joined international organizations and nongovernmental organizations; an in-depth look into the Color Revolutions and how they destabilized and shook up more than they settled; and then I spend some time explaining the Color Revolutions in both Georgia and Ukraine, the rapport de forces between Russia and its former republics/colonies and their desire to leave the Russian sphere of influence. But to go where? Europe has since acknowledged that it cannot and will not fight for Ukraine. That it will not spill its blood for a corrupt, opaque, economically backward country — in sum, a black hole.

According to the research and as I predicted, regional instabilities resulted; Georgia and Ukraine wanted to join NATO and wanted to join the EU. Russia did not want to join NATO nor the EU. So they had clearly diverging objectives, which were difficult to reconcile, concerning security, economics, politics and energy, the latter being key not only for Ukraine, but for the EU and for Russia’s balance of payments. The dependancy of the EU on Russia’s hydrocarbons creates a double dependency, which should require Russia to diversify its economy and Europe to diversify its energy sources. But that will take years, not months. In the meantime, a war is brewing, just like the one that took place in 2008 in Georgia, with destabilization, invasion and amputation of Ukraine’s sovereign territory. 

The conclusion is that Russia and the EU need each other and that to alienate Russia will indeed, and has already, pushed it into China’s arms, in a weakened state. We are also seeing the rise of authoritarian powers and systems — much more expedient and obedient — to get things done. Is the democratic system/model in peril?

Wasylina is the president and founder of the Observatory of the Black, Gulf and Mediterranean Seas.