Frontier Europe Initiative

The Black Sea: Economic Region or Intersection?

For those who study the countries and regions that surround it, the Black Sea is many things -- a global trade thoroughfare, a zone of contestation, a cradle of civilizations, and a dying ecosystem. But, curiously, one of the more opaque factors is whether the Black Sea region -- the states and polities on its littoral and immediate hinterland -- is a region at all.