Russia’s Black Sea Naval Ambitions

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s SitRep. It’s been a busy week around here. Robbie’s writing from the South Caucasus, where he’s been traveling with top NATO officials, while Jack just got back from two days with the U.S. Army’s top officer testing out robots in the California desert.

Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: Russia wants a new naval base on the Black Sea, China may be on track for an invasion of Taiwan, and fake news is becoming a big problem in Africa.

Russia’s New Black Sea Ambitions

Over two years into the war in Ukraine, Kyiv has decimated Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, destroying or damaging numerous powerful Russian warships, pushing them from their main Crimean base of Sevastopol, and leaving Moscow scrambling to reshape its naval strategy as well as look for safer harbors.

To accomplish that last goal, the Kremlin has set its sights on Abkhazia, a breakaway region of Georgia along the Black Sea coast. Late last year, in a move that alarmed officials in Georgia and the West, Russia confirmed plans to construct a new Black Sea naval base in Abkhazia as an alternative safe harbor for Russian warships, farther than the Crimean Peninsula from the threat of Ukrainian drones and missiles.

So far, officials in the region said, that base consists of just one long pier and a lot of big talk by Moscow and its puppet government in Abkhazia about drastically expanding the base’s infrastructure.

That could change soon if Russia begins pouring resources into the project in earnest, current and former Georgian officials said—and they concede that they’re effectively powerless to stop it given Russia’s control over Abkhazia.

NATO chief visits the South Caucasus. Russia’s Black Sea ambitions were a main topic of conversation for NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and top Georgian officials during his high-profile visit to Tbilisi on Monday, part of a bigger tour of the South Caucasus this week that also included stops in Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Robbie joined Stoltenberg on his trip. Amid a dizzying schedule jampacked with meetings (and coffee) and more meetings (and more coffee), he caught up with Stoltenberg and other current and former officials in Tbilisi on the future of Russia’s Black Sea ambitions.

“Russia’s war puts freedom of navigation in the Black Sea at risk,” Stoltenberg said, though he touted Ukraine’s recent naval successes that threw a wrench in Moscow’s best-laid plans. That includes destroying 15 Russian naval vessels, according to Ukrainian officials, including in 2022 sinking the Black Sea Fleet’s flagship, the Moskva. “With our support, Ukraine has pushed back, destroyed, or damaged a significant part of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet,” Stoltenberg said.

Stoltenberg’s visit was a big deal in Georgia, which has long aspired to join NATO to cement its Western orientation and get out from under the threat of Russian domination but has been stuck in the accession waiting room for the better part of two decades. Stoltenberg visited Tbilisi to reinforce the message that Georgia would one day join NATO, though most officials concede privately that that’s a long way off, particularly as war rages in Ukraine.

NATO flags lined Tbilisi’s main streets as Stoltenberg’s motorcade drove through the city, and throngs of press and photographers covered his every meeting with top Georgian officials. Beyond the compounds of the prime minister and president’s office, buildings were adorned with anti-Russian graffiti and Ukrainian flags, a not-so-subtle signal of where much of Georgia’s population stands on the current war.

Black Sea backup plans. The planned Russian naval base in Abkhazia is emblematic of the challenges Georgia faces in trying to join NATO, and of how the war in Ukraine has altered the geopolitics of the South Caucasus.

The bottom line is that a Russian naval base in Abkhazia couldn’t replace Sevastopol’s deep-sea port capabilities, even with years and perhaps a decade of construction and dredging.

“A new base will certainly strengthen [Russia’s] posture in the eastern half of the Black Sea region” if it indeed follows through on such plans, said Emil Avdaliani, a professor of international relations at the European University in Tbilisi. But, he added, “Whatever the base is in Abkhazia in several years’ time, it is unlikely to replace Russia’s use of Crimean ports in its military calculations.”

“At best, the naval base in Abkhazia will be complementary,” Avdaliani said.

But it could still become a potent staging ground for the next phase of Russia’s power projection in the Black Sea—and a new way to ramp up pressure on Georgia.

Even if an Abkhazia base can’t completely replace Sevastopol, it can still help Moscow retain its geopolitical edge in the region, said Georgian and NATO officials.

Touting plans for a naval base enables Moscow to remind Georgia—and, by extension, NATO and the European Union—that despite Russia’s ongoing military quagmire in Ukraine, it still aims to strengthen its grip over the breakaway territories of Georgia that it supported in its 2008 invasion. (That invasion, shortly after NATO declared Georgia and Ukraine would one day join the alliance, served as a grim harbinger of the bigger war to come in Ukraine.)

Blocking the “Middle Corridor.” Georgia has ambitious plans to establish itself as a key node in the “Middle Corridor” transit route that links European and Asian energy markets and economies via the South Caucasus while, crucially, bypassing Russia altogether. This is an opportunity that came about when Europe started decoupling from Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine.

(The Georgian government, analysts say, also hopes the West can overlook its worrying backsliding on democracy given its strategic importance along the Middle Corridor.)

What’s good for the Middle Corridor is, by extension, bad for Russia and its goal of retaining control in the South Caucasus. A new naval base couldn’t completely derail the Middle Corridor plans, but it could at least slow or complicate them.

As part of its Middle Corridor ambitions, Georgia has long-standing plans to build its own deep-sea commercial port on the Black Sea.

The construction of a new Russian naval base a few miles up the coast from that would be bad for business, and Moscow even just talking about plans to do so is likely giving companies interested in developing a commercial port with Georgia second thoughts.

That seems to be Russia’s immediate aim. “In the short run, it’s more about blackmailing and trying to put pressure on Georgia and its Middle Corridor plans than a major base replacement plan,” David Sikharulidze, a former Georgian defense minister and ambassador to Washington, told SitRep.

“However, it should be taken seriously in the longer-term perspective, because the Kremlin may start placing naval infrastructure there if there is not enough pressure from the West on the occupied territories of Georgia and a political and economic price to pay for this.”

Let’s Get Personnel

U.S. President Joe Biden has nominated Michael Sulmeyer to be assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy. Sulmeyer is currently the principal cyber advisor to Army Secretary Christine Wormouth.

Rush Doshi is set to join Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service as an assistant professor in security studies this fall. Doshi was the deputy senior director for China and Taiwan affairs on the National Security Council until earlier this year.

Doshi and Sue Mi Terry have also joined the Council on Foreign Relations as fellows. Terry, who comes from the Wilson Center, will be a senior fellow for Korea studies.

David Cattler has been appointed director of the U.S. Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency. He was previously NATO’s assistant secretary-general for intelligence and security.

Spencer P. Boyer has joined DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group as a partner leading the firm’s new national security, defense, and aerospace practice. He was previously deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy at the Pentagon.

Farah Dakhlallah has been appointed NATO’s new spokesperson.

On the Button

What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.

Preparing for war. China’s military and nuclear buildup is as large as any seen since World War II, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command chief Adm. John Aquilino told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday, and “all indications” suggest that the country’s military is on track to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping’s directive to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.

The U.S. military has been observing increasingly worrying signs from China, Aquilino said, including simulating air and naval blockades of Taiwan as well as adding more than 400 fighter jets and 20 major warships since he took command in 2021. The Chinese military has also doubled the number of cruise and ballistic missiles in its arsenal since 2020.

Equally worrying to U.S. officials are China’s alliances with Russia and North Korea. “We’re almost back to the ‘axis of evil’ when you plug in Iran to this problem set,” Aquilino said. “So we ought to act accordingly.”

Getting spoofed. Civilian aircraft flying near war zones in the Middle East and northern Europe are getting caught up in potentially dangerous GPS spoofing incidents, our colleague Amy Mackinnon reports. Last August, pilots in the Middle East said their navigation systems had been overtaken by spoofed GPS signals, putting them far off course and, in some instances, causing them to lose the ability to navigate. “It’s not an idle problem. This could lead to real international incidents,” Todd Humphreys, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, told Amy.

Fake news, real problems. Disinformation campaigns are surging across Africa, with a fourfold increase since 2022, according to a new report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a congressionally funded institution within the Department of Defense. The majority of these campaigns—nearly 60 percent—are sponsored by foreign states, with Russia taking the lead as the primary purveyor of disinformation on the continent. West Africa, which has seen a spate of coups in recent years, has been a particular target.

“There is a strong link between the scope of disinformation and instability,” with real-world consequences, the report notes. “Disinformation campaigns have directly driven deadly violence, promoted and validated military coups, cowed civil society members into silence, and served as smokescreens for corruption and exploitation.”

Snapshot

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan (R) meets with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on March 20. EVELYN HOCKSTEIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Hot Mic

Our Foreign Policy colleague Rishi Iyengar interviewed U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the top Democrat on the House China committee who helped craft a high-profile new bill that could ban the popular app TikTok in the United States if its parent company, the China-based ByteDance, doesn’t divest itself of the app. The two spoke shortly after the bill passed the House in a 352-65 vote. Here’s what the congressman had to say:

Foreign Policy: How are you feeling after the vote?

Krishnamoorthi: I’m feeling good. I think that it was a vote that surprised a lot of people in terms of how lopsided it was. It was an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote. In this particular case, I think people understood the gravity of the national security concerns and the careful balancing of those concerns against people’s rights to free expression, and of course trying to make sure the TikTok platform continues to operate.

Foreign Policy: How do you feel about the bill’s path forward?

Krishnamoorthi: I’m cautiously optimistic. I think that we’ve had multiple very positive conversations in the Senate. That being said, we very much want to respect the process that leader [Chuck] Schumer is going to set forth for consideration of the bill, and we look forward to talking to him and others about how to proceed.

Foreign Policy: What do you make of the Biden campaign’s continued use of TikTok, and former U.S. President Donald Trump’s sudden backtracking on a TikTok ban?

Krishnamoorthi: First of all, if I might just say one thing, which is this is not about a ban, it’s about a divestiture. And it’s really not about TikTok; it’s about ByteDance.

With regard to President Biden, I think that obviously it’s still legal, and tens of millions of people have it on their phones. I would just ask them to exercise caution when using it. I don’t have it on my personal phone, it’s banned from government devices, and so I think that the risks are present. You just have to be very, very careful.

I think with regards to President Trump, I can’t quite understand his flip-flop. Some people chalk it up to some election politics, maybe a campaign donation, who knows? It did not sway, as you can tell, my House colleagues on the other side.

Foreign Policy: How concerned are you that TikTok can just play the waiting game and drag this out to the November election and sort of reset the clock based on who wins? Is that something you’ve thought about?

Krishnamoorthi: Oh, I certainly think that they are contemplating that. The challenge for them is it’s not every day you get 352 people in the House to agree on something. So when you see the freight train coming down the track, the question is: Do you get out of the way, or do you get run over? And I just think that they should do whatever they can to address the underlying concern here.

Put on Your Radar

Thursday, March 21: U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas visits Guatemala. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg meets with Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob. The foreign ministers of the Visegrad Group countries—the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland—meet in Prague. The European Union begins a two-day leaders’ summit in Brussels, with United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres joining as a special guest. Denmark hosts the two-day Copenhagen Climate Ministerial.

Saturday, March 23: Slovakia is set to hold its presidential election, pitting parliament speaker Peter Pellegrini, an ally of Prime Minister Robert Fico, against former Foreign Minister Ivan Korcok, a former diplomat seen as pro-Western.

Sunday, March 24: Senegal holds its rescheduled presidential election, after the country’s top court ruled that President Macky Sall’s plans to hold an election after his term expired were unconstitutional.

Monday, March 25: U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo are set to meet at the White House.

Tuesday, March 26: French President Emmanuel Macron begins a three-day trip to Brazil.

Quote of the Week

“We don’t care about his opinion, we don’t care about his limits, we don’t care about Macron, and we are going to kill all the French soldiers who come to Ukrainian soil.”

—Piotr Tolstoi, vice president of the Russian state Duma, saber-rattles back at Macron, who has suggested that France could deploy troops to Ukraine.

This Week’s Most Read

• China Is Selectively Bending History to Suit Its Territorial Ambitions by Frederik Kelter
• The World’s Biggest Crisis Is the End of Scarcity by Francis J. Gavin
• Russia’s Military Is Already Preparing for Its Next War by Amy Mackinnon

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Overtime. Rep. Darrell Issa of California was running long at the end of a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing—he thought he was the last speaker—when Chairman Michael McCaul interjected and called time. You won’t believe what happened next (warning: foul language ensues).