Black Sea

The recent NATO Heads of State and Government Meeting in Brussels highlighted NATO’s declining relevance in the South Caucasus and the declining relevance of the region to NATO. The reasons for this lie both within NATO and within the...

Established in 1997, GUAM—a platform named after its members Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova and originally created to improve multilateral collaboration between member states—is now celebrating its 20th anniversary. Despite this milestone year, the organization now lacks a clear...

In early March 2017, Vlad Plahotniuc, media mogul and head of the ruling Democratic Party in Moldova, proposed a bill to change the country’s parliamentary electoral system from proportional to first-past-the-post. Plahotniuc realized that under the current proportional electoral...

The European Union has taken a major step in its long-lasting struggle with Russia for hegemony over Eastern Europe. In a highly anticipated decision, the EU granted visa-free travel to Georgia in February of this year, and is getting...

Several weeks after winning a plurality in Bulgaria’s late March parliamentary election, Prime Minister Boyko Borissov did something unprecedented: he brought the nationalist United Patriots (Obedineni Patrioti) into his coalition government. The United Patriots is an electoral alliance of...

Russian dominance over natural gas deliveries into Europe has been weakening, thanks in large part to the new ways in which natural gas can be transported as well as new sources of supply. These developments are transforming the geopolitics...

Russia’s neighbors are on high alert: the unexpected annexation of Crimea, the stealth intervention in eastern Ukraine, and the emergence of the Novorossiya project have heightened the perception of the growing Russian military threat in the region and beyond....

The importance of the Black Sea region to Russian security has risen over the past decade from an area of general concern to a central theater of national defense and power projection. Russia’s security needs and stated intentions reflect...

When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the consequences were harsh for the invader—global outrage over and condemnation of the Kremlin’s actions were quickly followed by the application of Western sanctions against Moscow. Although these actions did not stop President...

When leaders of Azerbaijan and Georgia took part in a session titled “The Silk Road Effect” at the 2017 World Economic Forum in Davos, they were predictably eager to promote the importance of the China-led Silk Road Economic Belt...