Description
Aiming to foster economic cooperation among member states leading them to ensure political stability and security The Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) is important since warring states in the Black Sea region are its members. Recent examples are Russia and Ukraine. Russian-Ukrainian conflict indicates that BSEC failed to be involved in a regional crisis. This paper aims to analyse the impact of Russian-Ukrainian conflict on BSEC’s functionality. Combining a comprehensive review of BSEC documents and case studies, asks “how did Russian-Ukrainian conflict impact the perception of regional cooperation within the BSEC?”. It is argued that accepted notions/aims on regional organisation are creating ‘security community’ or managing conflicts/crises in the region. However, these failed in BSEC example because states in the region are less enthusiastic about internalising European model and so it is difficult to explain Black Sea cooperation from western point of view. The Russian-Ukrainian conflict indicated that even though countries in the region have been seriously affected by the consequences of the conflict, they could not be able to act in common under the BSEC umbrella. States rather prefer to take single actions. BSEC has played no role in managing these conflicts/crises and its progress has been marred because of them.
