Changing Geopolitics in the Eastern Mediterranean-Black Sea Region and NATO’s Security Architecture Gap

Prof. Oktay BİNGÖL[1]

Introduction

After the Cold War, many expected military rivalries in the seas around Europe to diminish, with trade, energy, regional cooperation, and economic interdependence defining interstate relations. However, developments in the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean over the past two decades indicate that this optimistic expectation has significantly waned.

The 2008 Russia-Georgia War, Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the full-scale war launched against Ukraine in February 2022 have transformed the Black Sea back into a key military front for Euro-Atlantic security. In the wake of the annexation of Crimea and the Russia-Ukraine War, NATO has significantly bolstered its deterrence and defense posture along its eastern flank. It has begun to treat the Black Sea as an integral part of the Alliance’s broader eastern flank security architecture (NATO, 2026).

While the security transformation in the Eastern Mediterranean stems from different dynamics, it is equally significant. Conflicts in Syria and Libya, the regional spillover of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict following October 2023, the escalation of the Iran-Israel rivalry into direct military confrontation, instability in Lebanon and Syria, and security issues in the Red Sea have all intensified military activity in the Eastern Mediterranean’s immediate vicinity. Adding to this is the military tension that periodically arises from disputes between Turkey and Greece over the continental shelf, the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), territorial waters, airspace, and related issues (Schaller, 2022, pp. 549–568). However, the growing strategic importance of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea stems from more than just military conflicts in the region. The Black Sea–Turkish Straits–Aegean–Eastern Mediterranean axis constitutes a strategic connectivity corridor where military power, trade, energy, digital data, and critical infrastructure converge.

While the Dardanelles and Bosphorus Straits (Istanbul and Çanakkale Straits) form the sole maritime gateway connecting the Black Sea to the world's oceans, major trade and energy routes traverse the region. Furthermore, seabed telecommunications cables, energy links, and pipelines are becoming increasingly critical to the functioning of states, economies, and societies. More than 95 percent of global data flows occur via undersea cables, and these networks facilitate financial transfers amounting to approximately $10 trillion daily (NATO, 2025a; European Commission & High Representative, 2025).

Consequently, the sea is no longer merely a surface traversed by warships, merchant vessels, or energy tankers. The sea surface, the seabed, the air, space, and cyberspace are evolving into parts of a single, interdependent strategic system. In the technological landscape of the twenty-first century, the concept of "sea lines of communication" must expand to encompass not only the routes ships take but also the energy and data lines on the seabed. This shift highlights the importance of controlling sea lines of communication within maritime strategies (Corbett, 1911).

NATO is increasingly acknowledging this transformation. The Alliance Maritime Strategy, published in October 2025, identifies Russia’s military buildup in the Baltic, Black Sea, and Mediterranean regions as a challenge to Alliance security; ...positions the protection of maritime lines of communication and critical maritime infrastructure, continuous maritime situational awareness, countering hybrid activities, and cooperation with commercial actors among the tasks of NATO’s maritime forces (NATO, 2025b).

Therefore, NATO’s problem is not a failure to perceive the threat or a lack of tool development. The core issue is how well existing political, military, technological, and institutional capacities can be adapted to the interconnected and region-specific security challenges of the Black Sea–Eastern Mediterranean axis.

The primary research question of this study is as follows:

To what extent are NATO’s existing political, military, institutional, and technological tools adequate in the face of the emerging security environment along the Eastern Mediterranean–Black Sea axis, and how should the Alliance’s regional security architecture be developed?

Three sub-questions address this main question. First, the study examines the mechanisms linking the security dynamics of the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean. Second, it evaluates gaps in NATO’s capabilities regarding deterrence, situational awareness, critical infrastructure security, responses to hybrid threats, and intra-alliance crisis management. Finally, it discusses a new regional security model—adapted to the unique legal and geopolitical conditions of the Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean—while drawing upon practices developed in the Baltic Sea.

The study’s central argument is as follows:

NATO’s fundamental problem along the Eastern Mediterranean–Black Sea axis is not a lack of absolute military capacity; rather, it is the integration and implementation gap that arises from the challenge of consolidating diverse threats, legal regimes, national jurisdictions, critical infrastructures, and non-NATO actors within a single regional security system.

1. Conceptualizing the Eastern Mediterranean–Black Sea Strategic Maritime Axis

In international relations literature, the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean are traditionally treated as distinct security regions. The Black Sea is primarily associated with Russia, Ukraine, the Caucasus, and the European security system. In contrast, the Eastern Mediterranean is linked to the Middle East, North Africa, energy geopolitics, and Southern Europe. However, recent developments are strengthening the strategic connection between these two areas.

Buzan and Wæver’s (2003, pp. 40–82) Regional Security Complex Theory offers a useful starting point for understanding this shift. According to the theory, the fundamental security concerns of geographically proximate actors can become so intertwined that their security cannot be meaningfully analyzed in isolation.

While the claim that the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean constitute a single, homogeneous regional security complex is debatable, this study argues that the two areas are increasingly interconnected through a strategic maritime axis.

Physically, this axis comprises the line extending from the Black Sea through the Bosphorus, the Sea of ​​Marmara, the Dardanelles, and the Aegean Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean. However, the “Black Sea–Eastern Mediterranean Strategic Maritime Axis” is not merely a geographical corridor. The concept denotes a security system in which military security, the political-legal order, energy flows, digital connectivity, and maritime trade intersect within the same geography—a system in which a disruption in one layer can affect the others.

The system can be evaluated across five layers. The first layer is military-strategic competition. The Russia-Ukraine War, NATO-Russia rivalry, naval and air force operations, long-range precision strike systems, mines, and unmanned aerial, surface, and underwater systems are altering the nature of naval warfare in the region. NATO’s 2025 Maritime Strategy defines sea control, sea denial, power projection, and the protection of sea lines of communication and critical infrastructure as interconnected functions (NATO, 2025b).

The second layer consists of political and legal frameworks. While the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits constitutes a fundamental parameter for military access to the Black Sea, unresolved disputes over maritime jurisdiction and sovereignty in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean impact the security environment.

The third layer is energy security. Offshore hydrocarbon facilities, LNG terminals, pipelines, electricity interconnectors, and port infrastructures are not merely economic assets; they can also become strategic targets during times of crisis and war.

The fourth layer is digital connectivity. Submarine data cables are critical infrastructure for modern societies, spanning everything from government administration and financial systems to military communications and trade. NATO's institutional response to this transformation is its "Digital Ocean Vision," adopted in 2023, which aims to integrate sensors and autonomous systems from the seabed to space (NATO, 2023).

The fifth layer is trade and logistics connectivity. The security of traditional sea lines of communication and ports must be considered alongside seabed energy and communication networks.

The primary consequence of these layers overlapping is the potential for risks to propagate across sectors and security domains. While severing a data cable may initially appear to be a technical or commercial issue, it can quickly escalate into an economic, intelligence, cyber, and military security problem. Similarly, a limited military incident between Turkey and Greece could affect the Alliance’s coordination along its southeastern flank vis-à-vis Russia. The war in the Black Sea involves the Turkish Straits and has simultaneous implications for the military balance, trade, and international law.

Therefore, addressing security in the Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean solely through the lens of conventional naval power or critical infrastructure protection is insufficient.

2. The Remilitarization of the Black Sea and the Changing Nature of Naval Warfare

The first major turning point in the transformation of the Black Sea security environment was the 2008 Russia-Georgia War. The war demonstrated Russia’s readiness to employ military force in its immediate neighborhood and highlighted that the Black Sea-Caucasus region cannot be viewed in isolation from European security. Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 had far more extensive consequences. Control over Crimea expanded Russia’s capabilities to deploy naval and air forces in the Black Sea, enforce anti-access measures, and increase military pressure on Ukraine. The full-scale war that began in February 2022 escalated this transformation into a high-intensity conflict.

Moreover, the Russia-Ukraine War has revealed not only the remilitarization of the Black Sea but also technological shifts in naval warfare. Ukraine’s combined use of shore-based missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned surface systems, and long-range precision-strike weapons demonstrated that a smaller actor could significantly curtail the freedom of movement of a more powerful conventional fleet. This experience holds three implications for NATO. First, force structures reliant on a limited number of expensive, large warships must be supplemented by unmanned, distributed, and low-cost systems. Second, protecting ports and coastal facilities has become as critical as fleet operations on the high seas. Third, maritime situational awareness and early detection capabilities are strategically important, on par with firepower.

NATO initiatives such as the “Digital Ocean Vision” and, subsequently, “Task Force X” reflect the organization's efforts to adapt institutionally in this direction. Notably, Task Force X aims to use low-cost autonomous maritime systems for continuous surveillance, detection, and tracking, and the model is designed to scale to regions beyond the Baltic (NATO ACT, 2025). One of the primary factors distinguishing the Black Sea from other NATO maritime areas is the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits. On February 28, 2022, Turkey invoked the convention's wartime provisions, restricting the passage of warships belonging to belligerent states through the Turkish Straits in accordance with the treaty's terms. This action has positioned Turkey as a key actor in the Black Sea security architecture. Consequently, NATO’s Black Sea strategy necessitates close coordination with Ankara (De Waal, 2026). In this context, Turkey’s Black Sea policy is characterized by balancing, caution in the Russia-West rivalry, and pragmatism (Tekin, 2024). The strategic implication of this is that a continuous, large-scale, out-of-region NATO maritime presence in the Black Sea—modeled on the Baltic approach—is neither legally nor politically viable. Instead, the sustainable backbone of Black Sea security for NATO should consist of enhancing the capabilities of Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria; supporting these nations with NATO’s air, space, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities; expanding the use of unmanned systems; and establishing reinforcement models compliant with the Montreux Convention when necessary.

3. The Eastern Mediterranean: The Intersection of External Threats and Intra-Alliance Disputes

The security architecture of the Eastern Mediterranean is more complex than that of the Black Sea. Regional wars, the presence of major powers, and unresolved disputes between NATO members Turkey and Greece overlap within the same geographical area.

Conflicts in Syria and Libya, Israel’s security policies, the Iran-Israel rivalry, and other crises originating in the Middle East have transformed the Eastern Mediterranean from a mere body of water separating Europe and the Middle East into a direct theater of military operations. Russia’s military presence in Syria—maintained through the end of 2024—has long constituted a key element of the strategic link between the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean. NATO’s 2025 Maritime Strategy assesses Russia’s military posture across the Baltic, Black Sea, and Mediterranean regions, showing that the Alliance also recognizes this strategic connection (NATO, 2025b).

Furthermore, Turkey and Greece have long-standing disputes over the continental shelf, Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), territorial waters, airspace, and sovereignty over certain islands and islets. The aim of this study is not to determine which party’s legal arguments are correct. From NATO’s perspective, the critical issue is the risk that these unresolved political-legal disputes could escalate within a confined geographical area characterized by intense military activity. A significant risk arises from the parties' widely divergent views—particularly regarding the delimitation of the continental shelf and EEZs—and the likelihood that, even if the matter were referred to international adjudication, the outcome might still fall short of a mutually agreed solution (Schaller, 2022). The 2020 Eastern Mediterranean crisis, which saw a standoff between Turkish and Greek military vessels, clearly highlighted the NATO dimension of this issue. After technical talks within NATO, Turkey and Greece established a military de-confliction mechanism on October 1, 2020, and set up a direct communication line to prevent potential incidents at sea or in the air from escalating (NATO, 2020a). NATO subsequently emphasized that while this mechanism would not resolve fundamental political disputes, it could create space for political dialogue (NATO, 2020b). This example also illustrates the scope of NATO’s capabilities: the Alliance can bring the military authorities of two allies together within a single technical framework, facilitate communication, and mitigate the risk of miscalculation. However, it lacks the mandate to resolve core political and legal issues, such as sovereignty or the delimitation of maritime jurisdiction areas. Consequently, NATO's most realistic role in this context is to reduce military risk rather than resolve the disputes themselves.

This distinction is significant. A serious crisis between Turkey and Greece would have repercussions extending beyond their bilateral relations. Turkey occupies a geographic position that links the Black Sea, the Straits, the Aegean, and the Eastern Mediterranean. Meanwhile, Greece is vital to NATO’s southeastern flank due to its location in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean and its military infrastructure. Prolonged military tension between the two allies could undermine NATO’s deterrence, logistics, and decision-making capabilities in the region. Therefore, consideration should be given to transforming the 2020 mechanism—rather than maintaining it merely as an arrangement to be activated during times of crisis—into a permanent Aegean–Eastern Mediterranean Military Risk Reduction Mechanism that operates without taking sides in political and legal disputes.

4. From Critical Maritime Chokepoints to the Seabed: A New Security Frontier

A significant portion of the geostrategic importance of the Black Sea–Eastern Mediterranean axis stems from connectivity. The Turkish Straits, ports, energy facilities, pipelines, electricity interconnectors, and undersea telecommunications cables all exist within the same broad geographic system. For NATO, this shifts critical infrastructure protection from rear-area security to direct deterrence and defense.

According to NATO data, undersea cables facilitate daily financial transfers worth approximately $10 trillion, carry about 95 percent of global data traffic, and support the extraction or maritime transport of a substantial share of the world’s oil and natural gas (NATO, 2023a). In its Cable Security Action Plan adopted in February 2025, the European Union also addressed the issue within a resilience cycle encompassing prevention, detection, response and repair, and deterrence (European Commission & High Representative, 2025). The 2026 Cable Security Toolbox further operationalized this approach through risk mapping, stress tests, and priority cable projects (European Commission, 2026).

The threat is not limited to direct wartime attacks. The primary risks to critical undersea infrastructure fall into five groups. The first includes physical attacks and sabotage—such as severing cables or pipelines, using explosives, attacking facilities, or laying mines. The second involves cyber-physical attacks that cause physical disruption by targeting the digital control systems of ports, terminals, energy facilities, or cable landing points. The third category involves gray-zone activities utilizing vessels, research platforms, or proxy actors with ambiguous commercial or state affiliations. The fourth category comprises electronic and navigational threats, such as disrupting military and commercial navigation through GNSS jamming or spoofing. The fifth category covers conflict spillover, including the use of mines, UAV and missile strikes, attacks on ports, or the extension of hostilities into commercial shipping lanes.

A major challenge in this domain is attribution. Determining whether a cable severance resulted from a technical fault, an accident, or sabotage can be time-consuming. Even if sabotage is confirmed, linking the perpetrator to a specific state can be even harder. Institutional authority also matters. While NATO military assets can monitor and deter suspicious activity, powers such as boarding, seizing vessels, conducting investigations, or making arrests fall under national authorities' jurisdiction. The NATO Secretary General clearly highlighted this distinction when announcing "Baltic Sentry," noting that NATO’s role in detection and deterrence must be complemented by national law enforcement capabilities (NATO, 2025a).

Consequently, the fundamental question regarding critical infrastructure security is not merely "how do we protect the infrastructure?" but rather: Who will detect the threat? Who will determine the nature of the incident? Who will attribute responsibility to the perpetrator? Who will intervene? Who will carry out repairs? At what threshold will NATO’s collective security mechanisms be activated? These questions expose NATO’s primary capacity gap.

5. NATO’s Capability Analysis: From Military Capacity to the Integration Gap

NATO’s institutional capacity regarding critical undersea infrastructure has developed rapidly, particularly since 2022. NATO established the Critical Undersea Infrastructure Coordination Cell in 2023, set up the Maritime Center for the Security of Critical Undersea Infrastructure within MARCOM, and created the Critical Undersea Infrastructure Network in 2024. Through this network, NATO seeks to enhance information sharing among allies, the private sector, civil actors, and—increasingly—the EU and partner countries (NATO, 2023).

The Mediterranean should also be more explicitly included in the agenda of these efforts in 2025. At a NATO meeting in Rome in November 2025, civil and military actors, the private sector, the EU, and NATO partners jointly addressed protecting critical undersea infrastructure in the Mediterranean (NATO, 2025e).

"Baltic Sentry," established in January 2025, represents a further stage of development, integrating NATO and national surveillance capabilities through frigates, maritime patrol aircraft, and new naval drones (NATO, 2025c).

Consequently, the claim that NATO possesses "no tools" for this purpose is no longer tenable. The real challenge lies in transforming these tools into a regional system tailored to the unique security conditions of the Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean.

The most significant finding from this matrix is the distinct asymmetry between NATO’s military capabilities in open warfare and its risk management capabilities in the "gray zone" between peace and war.

Monaghan et al. (2023) argue that, given the vast scale of critical undersea infrastructure and the diversity of threats, it is unrealistic for NATO to protect every piece of infrastructure continuously; instead, regional prioritization and "framework-nation" models are necessary. For the Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean regions, this implies that NATO’s fundamental shortcoming is not a lack of capacity, but rather the geographical and functional integration of existing capabilities.

6. A New Regional Security Architecture: BEMSI

This study does not propose that NATO establish a new, major command or replicate the "Baltic Sentry" model in the Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean. Significant structural differences exist between the Baltic region and the Black Sea–Eastern Mediterranean theater. After Finland and Sweden joined NATO, allied states control most of the Baltic coastline. In the Black Sea, however, the Montreux Regime imposes specific restrictions on warships from non-littoral states. The Eastern Mediterranean features a mix of NATO and non-NATO states, regional conflicts, and maritime jurisdictional disputes among allies within the same geographic area. Therefore, the proposed Black Sea–Eastern Mediterranean Maritime Security Initiative (BEMSI) should function as a modular security system that links existing capabilities, rather than as a new NATO operation.

An Integrated Maritime Security Picture

Leveraging the technological foundation provided by the "Digital Ocean Vision," NATO and national sensors spanning the region from the Black Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean should be integrated at appropriate security levels. A system focused on the early detection of anomalous activities could be established by utilizing data from satellite imagery, the Automatic Identification System (AIS), radar, UAVs, maritime patrol aircraft, autonomous surface and underwater systems, and commercial operators. The objective is not to place all commercial traffic in the region under military surveillance, but rather to achieve risk-based maritime situational awareness.

Strategic Prioritization of Critical Infrastructure

Protecting all cables, pipelines, and energy facilities to the same degree is not feasible. Consequently, critical infrastructure must be evaluated based on criteria such as criticality, vulnerability, substitutability, repair time, and systemic impact. The EU’s 2025–2026 approach to risk mapping and stress testing offers a useful complementary model for NATO. The EU’s 2026 Toolbox evaluates risk scenarios, dependencies, and priority cable projects within a unified security planning framework (European Commission, 2026).

Rapid Technical Attribution Mechanism

Multinational teams—modeled on the "Rapid Maritime Attribution Team" and comprising experts in military intelligence, cybersecurity, marine engineering, law enforcement, and law—could be established under BEMSI. Such a team should not make political attribution decisions; rather, it should expedite the distinction between accidents, negligence, and sabotage, thereby providing a technical basis for decisions by political authorities.

Turkey-Greece Permanent Military Risk Reduction Mechanism

NATO is not an adjudicator regarding the parties' legal arguments. However, the Alliance possesses significant capacity to prevent maritime and air incidents from escalating from political disputes into military conflicts.

The 2020 mechanism could be institutionalized through measures such as 24-hour military communication channels, advance notification of major exercises, incident-prevention procedures for naval and air assets, deconfliction of high-risk activities, and technical analysis of unexpected incidents. Such a mechanism could place an institutional buffer between political disputes and military escalation without prejudicing the parties' legal positions.

A Black Sea Security Model Compatible with Montreux

The NATO model for the Black Sea must treat the Montreux Convention not as an obstacle to overcome, but as a legal reality of the security architecture. Therefore, it would be more sustainable to assign primary responsibility for the Black Sea component to the naval and air capabilities of Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria, while having non-regional NATO elements provide support through air, space, intelligence, cyber, command-and-control, and technological capabilities. This approach is both compatible with the Montreux regime and can help manage the security dilemma by preventing the impression of an unlimited NATO military buildup.

Functional Division of Labor Between NATO and the EU

NATO and the EU possess different comparative advantages regarding critical infrastructure security. NATO’s strengths lie in military intelligence, surveillance, deterrence, defense, and command and control. Conversely, the EU excels in regulation, financing, telecommunications legislation, economic resilience, stress testing, and repair capacity. The EU’s 2025 Cable Security Action Plan and 2026 Toolbox offer significant opportunities to institutionalize this complementarity.

Integrating the Private Sector into the Security System

Private companies operate a significant portion of undersea communication cables and energy infrastructure. In its work on the Critical Undersea Infrastructure (CUI) Network, NATO identifies information sharing among civil, military, and private sector actors as a fundamental requirement. Within the BEMSI framework, criteria for reporting unusual activity, emergency points of contact, data-sharing protocols, repair priorities, and military/law enforcement support mechanisms must be pre-defined in coordination with critical infrastructure operators.

Multi-Domain Exercises

Exercises should not consist solely of high-intensity, conventional naval warfare scenarios.

For instance, a single exercise could simultaneously simulate a mine threat in the Black Sea, a military incident between Turkey and Greece in the Aegean, a cable disruption in the Eastern Mediterranean, a cyberattack on a port, and the jamming of space-based signals. In this way, NATO could test not only its capacity to "fight" but also its ability to manage simultaneous crises spanning different legal and jurisdictional domains.

Considering Escalation Control Alongside Deterrence

Finally, within NATO’s regional security policy, deterrence and escalation control should not be seen as alternatives. Russia’s perception of NATO activities as a threat creates a security dilemma. Therefore, in a region marked by heightened military activity, it is essential to maintain technical communication channels that reduce the risk of miscalculation and misattribution. In this context, BEMSI should not only enhance situational awareness and accelerate response times but also serve as a mechanism to prevent misunderstandings.

Conclusion

The Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean are distinct security zones from historical, legal, and political perspectives. However, developments over the past two decades have increasingly intertwined these two regions via the Turkish Straits and the Aegean. The 2008 Russia-Georgia War, the 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russia, and the Russia-Ukraine War that began in 2022 have transformed the Black Sea back into a theater of high-intensity military competition. Meanwhile, in the Eastern Mediterranean, conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, major-power activities, and disputes between Turkey and Greece have created a multi-layered security environment.

The Turkish Straits and the Aegean, which link these two maritime areas, provide more than just a geographical connection; maritime transport routes, energy systems, ports, pipelines, and undersea data cables are all concentrated within this same strategic geography. Consequently, NATO faces three distinct security challenges simultaneously along the Black Sea–Eastern Mediterranean axis: interstate war and great-power competition; the risk of escalation stemming from disputes between NATO allies; and hybrid and "gray-zone" threats targeting critical energy, transport, and digital infrastructure.

This study first asks whether NATO has proven inadequate in this environment. The assessment leads to a cautious conclusion.

Initiatives established by NATO after 2023—such as the Critical Undersea Infrastructure Coordination Cell, the Maritime Center for the Security of Critical Undersea Infrastructure, the Critical Undersea Infrastructure Network, and the Digital Ocean Vision—along with the "Baltic Sentry" launched in 2025 and the new Alliance Maritime Strategy, demonstrate that the Alliance is adapting significantly to the changing maritime security landscape. As of 2025, NATO has also begun expanding its efforts to protect critical undersea infrastructure in the Mediterranean. Therefore, NATO’s fundamental problem is not a lack of military capacity. The core issue centers on four areas:

Regional integration gap: No standing mechanism manages interdependencies along the Black Sea–Straits–Aegean–Eastern Mediterranean axis as a unified security system.

Attribution and response gap: In hybrid and gray-zone attacks, it is difficult to distinguish accidents from sabotage, identify the perpetrator, and move from technical detection to political decision-making.

Institutional division-of-labor gap: Gaps can emerge regarding the respective competencies of NATO, national authorities, the EU, and the private sector, particularly during incidents involving critical infrastructure.

Intra-alliance crisis and escalation control gap: While NATO may not be able to resolve the political dispute between Turkey and Greece, it can develop mechanisms to prevent that dispute from escalating into military conflict.

Therefore, the study’s conclusion can be summarized as follows:

NATO’s primary security vulnerability along the Black Sea–Eastern Mediterranean axis is not a lack of military power, but rather an integration gap—an inability to unify diverse threats, actors, legal regimes, critical infrastructures, and decision-making mechanisms into a single regional risk management system.

This assessment also shapes the policy recommendation. The solution is not limited merely to deploying more warships to the Black Sea or the Eastern Mediterranean. Such an approach—especially in the Black Sea, given the constraints of the Montreux regime—would face limitations and could exacerbate the NATO-Russia security dilemma. Consequently, this study proposes establishing a Black Sea–Eastern Mediterranean Maritime Security Initiative (BEMSI).

BEMSI is envisioned not as a new command structure or a standing large-scale NATO operation, but rather as a framework that leverages existing NATO, national, and EU capabilities; It should be designed as a modular security architecture that integrates maritime situational awareness, critical infrastructure risk mapping, rapid attribution, Turkey-Greece military risk reduction, NATO-EU complementarity, private sector cooperation, a Black Sea model consistent with the Montreux Convention, and multi-domain exercises.

Such a model must rest on three principles: deterrence while avoiding unchecked militarization; integration while respecting national sovereignty and international law; and alliance solidarity while maintaining neutrality in disputes between allies.

The future significance of the Black Sea–Eastern Mediterranean axis lies precisely here. In the twenty-first century, maritime security is no longer merely a matter of the number of warships or establishing maritime dominance. The maritime domain is evolving into a strategic system where military power, energy, digital data, international law, trade, technology, and societal resilience intersect within the same physical space.

Therefore, NATO’s future success in maritime security will depend not only on its ability to deter open warfare, but also on its capacity to maintain critical connectivity within the "gray zone" between war and peace, to attribute threats rapidly and accurately, to prevent incidents between allies from escalating into conflict, and to balance military deterrence with the control of political escalation.

The Black Sea–Eastern Mediterranean strategic maritime axis will serve as a primary testing ground for how far NATO can adapt to this new security paradigm.

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[1] Prof. Dr., İstanbul Strateji, fertel1999@gmail.com