Black Sea-Caspian Region and the Eurasian Chessboard |
Black Sea-Caspian Region and the Eurasian Chessboard
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Washington should start viewing the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and the Caspian Sea as an integrated region.
The war launched by Russia against Ukraine in February 2022 has evolved far beyond a regional conflict. It is now a defining force reshaping the broader Eurasian security environment. Its duration and cascading secondary effects are forcing governments, markets, and militaries to operate on a longer strategic horizon—measured in years, not months. Insurance markets are recalibrating risk, logistics routes are shifting, supply chains are being reconfigured, and sanctions regimes are becoming more entrenched even as the methods used to evade them grow more sophisticated.
History suggests that wars of this magnitude rarely end with a simple restoration of the status quo ante. The aftermath of World War I produced the League of Nations; World War II gave rise to the United Nations and NATO. The end of the Cold War in 1991 redrew the map with new states in Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus emerging onto the scene. Today’s conflict is proving similarly transformative. It has exposed the inadequacy of the post-1991 European security framework and accelerated the emergence of a new geopolitical order. It is increasingly clear that treating the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and the Caspian Sea as separate strategic “folders” no longer reflects reality.
It is time that policymakers adopt a more useful framework: viewing this arc as a single interconnected system—the Black Sea-Caspian Region (BSCR). This is not about redrawing maps, but about using a more accurate analytical lens. Geography here is best understood not in terms of states, but as a network of nodes and corridors—ports, straits, pipelines, railways, digital cables, and mountain passes—whose functionality determines the resilience of Eurasian connectivity.
In classical geopolitical terms, this region forms a critical segment of the Eurasian Rimland, where control over chokepoints and transit corridors often shapes broader strategic competition. The BSCR is not peripheral.........