The Pontic Revolution: How the War in Ukraine is Transforming NATO’s Black Sea Flank
Forthcoming
With the Russian war in Ukraine entering its third year revolutionary dramatic changes continue to unfold on multiple fronts and strategic axes in a key global crossroads elevating the Black Sea as the centerpiece of Europe’s largest conflict since the end of the Second World War. One of the emerging areas of research and focus for The Saratoga Foundation in the months ahead will be the war in and around the Black Sea.
The ongoing war in Ukraine continues to have a major transformational impact on NATO and its eastern borderlands influenced by geography, military logistics, and the changing character of warfare.[1] Not since Herodotus first wrote about the Pontus Euxine in the fifth century B.C. has the Black Sea risen to such great importance to the West as technological developments in warfare usher in a Pontic Revolution in grand strategy and Western understanding about NATO’s Black Sea flank.
Western notions of what is the edge of Europe and what is Eurasia are being redrawn. Nowhere is this more evident than seeing members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard operate jointly with Russian forces from Crimea launching nightly drone attacks on Odesa. What might have been unthinkable in terms of our notions of how the West sees allies and alliances in Eurasia are no longer obscured by the geographical boundaries of the Black Sea region.
Revolutionary developments in warfare are appearing on the battlefields of Ukraine and around the Black Sea. Technological advances in multiple domains are occurring in the use of ground, air, and sea drones. Ukraine’s introduction of kamikaze sea drones into the Black Sea is having a revolutionary impact on naval warfare inflicting major punishment on the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
New geopolitical realities also are arising regionally and extra-regionally because of the war. Neo-Promethianism is on the rise in Ukraine as officials in Kyiv seek new ways to export this ideology to Russia’s beleaguered nationalities. Elsewhere, the war has elevated the strategic importance of inland waterways in the Black Sea as the Danube has risen to become Ukraine’s transportation lifeline to the West fostering the creation of an alternative trade corridor to Europe due to Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports. NATO allies Romania and Poland are establishing new overland links to Ukraine creating a transportation revolution along the Alliance’s eastern flank consisting of critically needed munitions and other supplies in the form of a Carpathian Burma Road through eastern Poland and Slovakia.
Amidst these developments a new gray zone of insecurity is emerging between Ukraine, NATO, and its non-NATO neighbors that threatens to widen the tectonic faultlines of conflict emanating around the Black Sea. A group of pivotal “gray zone” states are emerging along this faultline consisting of Belarus, Moldova, and Georgia which raises the threshold for the Ukraine war spilling over into these countries that could further alter the regional balance of power.
These and other transformational changes are occurring in the Black Sea region due to the Ukraine war as it rapidly reshapes NATO’s eastern flank and The Saratoga Foundation will be there to monitor these developments closely.