A Dragon Lurking in the Black Sea: Does The United States Have A Counteroffer to the PRC’s Strategic Toolbox?
Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has transformed the Black Sea region from a power vacuum into a theater of war. While Ukraine inflicted substantial damage to the Russian Black Sea fleet, NATO and the United States made independent moves to underline the region’s new importance to European security. However, security in the Black Sea region will not be a bipolar battleground. In a post-war European security architecture, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), with its attractive geoeconomic toolbox, has the potential to turn the Black Sea from a region far too few cared about into a region of active great power rivalry between the United States, Russia, and the PRC.
The PRC is already deepening its influence in the region. In 2023 Georgia elevated its relationship with Beijing to the strategic partnership level. Turkey is seeking strategic cooperation by tying the PRC’s Belt and Road Initiative to its flagship Middle Corridor project. Thinking ahead to post-war reconstruction, Ukraine could become the next PRC critical infrastructure and diplomacy hub. However, the region also bears some outliers; in recent years, Romania has rejected several PRC offers in critical sectors. For the United States, these changing circumstances should guide a renewed and more robust Black Sea strategy.
Georgia: A Hub for PRC Infrastructure Diplomacy
A member and organizer of the Belt and Road Initiative since 2015, Georgia has maintained positive relations with the PRC over the past decade, primarily in the economic realm. However, the relationship has also taken on a security dimension. PRC-linked economic actors increasingly invest in critical infrastructure, such as telecommunications or ports. This summer, the Georgian government announced that a PRC-led consortium will build a deep-sea port in Anaklia, at the eastern edge of the Black Sea. Although Beijing’s interest in developing the Middle Corridor route to include Georgia remains limited, the PRC is still seen by some Georgian officials as an important pillar that could help Georgia become a “maritime hub” in the region. This massive construction is a key step in that direction, given the importance of this project: the Anaklia port has an annual cargo capacity of 50 million tons, making it a critical node in the European and Asian routes.
The increasing PRC involvement in Georgia also upsets the geopolitics of the region, as it pushes Russian influence back. Beijing does not recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent regions and implicitly rejects Russia’s occupation of the two provinces. From that perspective, scholars have evaluated whether these PRC investments are a force of stability that will hinder Russia’s ambitions in Georgia and the region in the long term. However, recent events prove that Russia is still on the offensive in Georgia and will likely continue to consolidate its power with the controversial reelection of the anti-EU Georgian Dream party last month.
Turkey: The Bridge between East and West
Turkey’s balancing act in the Black Sea will hold long-term strategic implications for the region. Already the strongest NATO member in the neighborhood, Ankara has recently applied to become a member of the BRICS, an influential grouping whose membership includes both Moscow and Beijing. Turkey’s opposition to a permanent NATO presence in the Black Sea weakens regional security cooperation and offers Russia a strategic advantage in pursuing military activities.
In the past decade, Ankara has also developed a policy of engagement with the PRC based on the “win-win” principle of more thoroughly linking the Middle Corridor with the Belt and Road Initiative. This will reshape supply chains to the PRC’s advantage, opening new opportunities for PRC goods and technologies. The New Silk Road route will also create opportunities for increased PRC soft power in the region.
Ukraine: Post-War Reconstruction and PRC Soft Power
The war in Ukraine is another example of the strategic ambiguity the PRC practices in the Black Sea: it helps Russia maintain its war economy (thereby weakening the West) but it also positions itself to spearhead the reconstruction effort and insert Chinese technologies into the Ukrainian market.
Ukraine has been a partner in the Belt and Road Initiative since 2017, welcoming PRC investments in ports, roads, and power plants. Beijing is also present in Ukrainian networks after Huawei won the tender for 4G infrastructure in Kyiv and, despite opposition from allies last year, Ukraine has refused to kick Huawei and ZTE out of its digital reconstruction projects. Moreover, before the full-scale invasion, the PRC had already become Ukraine’s biggest trading partner, with important investments in agriculture and energy infrastructure.
Beijing remains invested in a central role in Ukraine’s reconstruction efforts. In February 2024, two years on from the invasion, the PRC and Ukrainian foreign ministers Wang Yi and Dmytro Kuleba met bilaterally, with the PRC representative emphasizing that “China will continue to play a constructive role in bringing an early end to the conflict and rebuilding peace in Ukraine.” Such involvement is likely to create dependencies for Ukraine’s critical infrastructure sectors. Or worse, it may lure the country into debt-trap diplomacy practices utilized by the PRC on the African continent that benefited from the Belt and Road Initiative projects. These critical infrastructure dependencies might hinder Ukraine’s policy autonomy in relation to its Western allies. In the long run, if left unchecked, the PRC may use Ukraine to bolster its soft power at the gates of Europe.
Romania: Bucharest’s Foreign Policy U-turn Away from Beijing
Romania is one of the few states in the region that has quietly changed the way it responds to Beijing’s diplomatic toolbox in the last decade. In 2014, Bucharest signed 13 strategic agreements with the PRC at once and planned to rely on PRC technology and expertise to modernize the Cernavodă nuclear power plant. By 2021, it had banned CCP-affiliated actors from all of its critical infrastructure public bidding and adopted a 5G legislation that is Huawei-free. Last month, Bucharest also banned PRC equipment from future 6G networks.
This change in foreign policy can be explained by shifting perceptions among Bucharest elites on what the PRC threat means. Once viewed as an opportunity by Ponta’s Social-Democratic Party government, it became recognized as a risk by the right-wing government led by the National-Liberal Party in 2021. However, this explanation alone is not enough, given that two parties with opposite ideologies are now governing together. A more consistent strategic partnership with the United States, in which Bucharest has been loyally and steadfastly engaged, could also be an explanation. After all, the 5G clean network legislation adopted by Romania in 2021 came as a direct result of the memorandum signed with Washington in 2019, born out of the same pressing need to limit Beijing’s digital footprint in the region.
Despite its consistent internal policy record, Bucharest is still refraining from supporting an active de-risking agenda with Beijing. Romania is still a member of the 14+1 format of cooperation between the Central and Eastern European countries and the PRC, and the Romanian government abstained when EU tariffs for PRC electric vehicles were discussed.
Nonetheless, Romania is one of the most vocal advocates for a permanent U.S. military presence in the Black Sea and a steadfast supporter of a more consistent U.S. strategy for the region. While Turkey wields the Montreux Convention to reject a permanent NATO military presence in the Black Sea, Bucharest has embraced an active policy towards a free and open Black Sea that would include a more permanent U.S. engagement in the region, including maritime policing.
Romania’s example of countering Beijing’s growing ambitions in this key region can be viewed as an entry point for renewing a U.S. strategy for the Black Sea that is free from the interference of malign actors. Washington should work more closely with policymakers in Romania to raise regional awareness of the PRC’s sophisticated diplomatic toolbox, and the importance of increasing the resilience of the institutions connected to critical infrastructure protection.
How Should the U.S. Engage in the Black Sea Region?
Unlike Washington’s dichotomous debate between prioritizing Europe or Asia in its foreign policy, PRC’s decision is much more straightforward. Consistent with the bold ambitions of Xi Jinping’s Global Security Initiative, Beijing is leveraging regions that have long been considered “power vacuums” to advance its foreign policy goals. The Black Sea is one of these regions.
In the context of this geopolitical competition, a credible and more creative U.S. counteroffer is needed to maintain a competitive profile in the region in the long run. Such a counteroffer is a geopolitical imperative, especially as Beijing’s interest in Ukraine’s reconstruction grows, and Beijing’s investments in critical infrastructure appear likely to shape Black Sea security. In crafting a competitive counteroffer, the incoming Trump administration should consider the following steps.
First, the U.S. may promote the imperative of critical infrastructure protection for enhancing the resilience of democratic societies. Washington should explain to its regional partners that enhanced critical infrastructure protection and a robust framework for tackling adversarial foreign investments does not benefit just the United States, but also prevent unwanted dependencies on actors with opaque strategic ambitions, like PRC. Working with success stories like Romania, which recently created its own Committee for screening foreign investments inspired by the U.S. model, could help to create training frameworks for enhancing the resilience of economies and preventing the weaponization of critical infrastructures.
Second, Washington should back a strategy for a “free and open” Black Sea. While Congress has already included the Black Sea Security Act in the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, the U.S. government should formulate strategic objectives in the region more precisely, and commit to funding these objectives. Such a strategy must include upgrading the deterrence posture in the region by organizing military exercises with like-minded partners and nudging the riparian allies to modernize their own capabilities.
Third, the U.S. should invest in the priority projects of the Three Seas Initiative. The United States has been a strategic partner of this regional cooperation format, aimed at strengthening the connectivity in the CEE through projects in three strategic areas – energy, digitalization, and transportation, since the first Trump administration. In this capacity, Washington should consider investing in the priority projects that were already submitted by member countries, but also by associated partners like Moldova and Ukraine. It should also consider increasing its foreign direct investment in regional interconnectivity projects that will strengthen the North-South corridor. Now approaching its 10-year anniversary, it is the ideal time for the United States to support such policy measures that will boost the profile of the format before it goes dormant.
The PRC is expanding its political capital in the Black Sea region, building the massive Anaklia port in Georgia, courting Turkey towards BRICS membership, and eyeing a critical infrastructure diplomacy project in the reconstruction of Ukraine. For the benefit of stability and democracy in the region, the United States should consider a renewed Black Sea security strategy that starts with matching Beijing’s promises for regional connectivity and continues with a continuous military presence guaranteed by NATO.
Views expressed are the author’s own and do not represent the views of GSSR, Georgetown University, or any other entity. Image Credit: DoD