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US to step up Black sea surveillance

April 5, 2019 | Expert Insights

The United States is set to unveil a Black Sea package, adding more warships and surveillance in the old Cold War arena on the 70th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the backbone of the Western alliance.

Background 

The Black Sea is a body of water and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean between the Balkans, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Western Asia. It is supplied by a number of major rivers, such as the Danube, Dnieper, Southern Bug, Dniester, Don, and the Rioni. Many countries drain into the Black Sea, including Austria, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey and Ukraine.

The Black Sea drains into the Mediterranean Sea, via the Aegean Sea and various straits, and is navigable to the Atlantic Ocean. The Bosphorus Strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the Strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean Sea region of the Mediterranean. These waters separate Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Western Asia. The Black Sea is also connected, to the North, to the Sea of Azov by the Strait of Kerch.

The 1936 Montreux Convention provides for a free passage of civilian ships between the international waters of the Black and the Mediterranean Seas. However, a single country (Turkey) has a complete control over the straits connecting the two seas. The Convention also governs the passage of vessels between the Black and the Mediterranean Seas and the presence of military vessels belonging to non-littoral states in the Black Sea waters.

In December 2018, the Kerch Strait incident took place. The Russian Navy and Coast guard took control of three ships belonging to their counterparts. The ships were trying to enter the Black Sea and were instead detained by the Russian navy for trespassing “sovereign waters”.

Analysis 

The three-day occasion to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) will see the foreign ministers of 29 NATO members gathering in Washington, and it is expected to be laden with ceremony and symbolism.

Yesterday, NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg was slated to address the joint chambers of Congress - the first time the head of NATO has been invited to do so. Another event was to be held in the Mellon Auditorium, where then President Harry S. Truman had hosted the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949.

The message will be one of unity and reassurance. But behind the bubbly, there will also be some serious business. At age 70, the NATO is gearing up for a new phase - countering a revisionist old enemy, Russia; and containing a rising power, China. NATO also faces the challenge of a US-led exit from the 17-year war in Afghanistan without allowing space for radical groups to gain traction there.

President Donald Trump has triggered unease over the degree of US commitment to NATO. His escalating demands that NATO partners pay their fair share of defence costs has put pressure on members such as Germany and Italy.

Since 2016, NATO members have stepped up their spending by US$40 billion (S$54 billion). A senior US State Department official told: "We anticipate there will be, by the end of 2020, more than US$100 billion in additional new spending from our allies on defence." Despite the unease, Mr. Trump has strengthened the alliance by sending a signal to Europe that it needs to step up to its own defence rather than rely on the US to do the heavy lifting. NATO and the European Union had been forced to see an urgency in the Euros getting their act together in terms of the EU's future, economic competitiveness and European security, without America, or despite America. 

The Black Sea package "beefs up the surveillance, both air surveillance as well as more of the NATO country ships going into the Black Sea to assure that there is safe passage from Ukrainian vessels through the Kerch Straits, the Sea of Azov," ambassador Kay Bailey Hutchison, US Permanent Representative to NATO, said.

Assessment 

Our assessment is that the expansion of US presence in the Black Sea is a reaction to the Kerch Strait incident which was in violation of International Law and the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas. We believe that the new US Black Sea package may be too little, too late - as both Russia and Turkey are forming closer defence cooperation and encircling US allies in the region, including Ukraine. 

Map Courtesy: Tentotwo*derivative work: Hogweard [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]c