The Black Sea’s Ebb and Flow : On the Interaction between a Regional System and the International System

From its emergence onwards, the Black Sea as a regional system was shaped mainly through the internalisation of the international system, be it multipolar, bipolar or post-bipolar/unipolar. However, due to the regional build-up of the conttradictions inherent to post-bipolarity which outpaced the post-bipolar system’s own evolution, this process was reversed. With the Georgian and Ukrainian crises of 2008 and 2014, the regional context was externalised and had its own transformative impact on the post-bipolar international system. Ironically, the externalisation was followed by the peripheralisation of the region from the West’s perspective when the West had entered into a phase of return to collective defence and consolidation in its relations with Russia. This started a new, accelerated build-up of stresses in the Black Sea region, creating the circumstances of a new externalisation, that of the Russian invasion of Ukraine