The Black Sea: How America can avoid a great-power conflict

Posted December 15, 2020

External Article: National Interest

General Phil Breedlove, USAF (ret.), a distinguished professor of the practice in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, has co-authored, “The Black Sea: How America can avoid a great-power conflict,” in the National Interest. The article written with Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow and director of Research of the Foreign Policy Program at The Brookings Institute, is about how the U.S. can effectively compete in the Black Sea against Chinese and Russian influence during this period of peace.

Find an excerpt: 

None of this is to say that America needs to prepare for war against China, or Russia for that matter, in the Black Sea region. The Black Sea is far from the Chinese coasts; the main military concerns are with China in the western Pacific region. Moreover, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, told a group of people at the Brookings Institution on Dec. 2, America is in a period of great-power competition but it is not in a period of conflict, and the goal should be to keep things that way while competing effectively against Russian and Chinese influence.

Read the article on National Interest.