Trong một hòa bình Nga-Ukraina, Hội nghị Montreux sẽ nhấn mạnh vào việc bảo vệ hòa bình biển Đen của NATO.

Before the battle for Ukraine winds down, NATO has a duty to prepare a peacekeeping plan for the Black Sea. Until the Black Sea states of Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Georgia field strong navies of their own, each capable of contending with Russia’s aggressive and oversized Black Sea forces, it will be up to NATO peacekeepers to maintain the freedom of the sea.

The Black Sea nations are not stupid. They’re building bigger navies as fast as they can. Ukraine, of course, is committed to build up a modern warfighting fleet, with Türkiye already building several combatants. Romania is eying French-supplied Scorpene submarines and Bulgaria is purchasing two German-built Multipurpose Modular Patrol Vessels, but the progress has been halting and slow, with proponents likely targets for Russian disruption.

Regardless of the outcome in Ukraine, it will take years for Black Sea states to protect their local maritime interests. And, even if Russia is defeated on land, Russia’s Navy will remain a powerful force. It will serve as a key means for Russia to make maritime mischief, sparking fear and disrupting freedom of navigation across the Black Sea basin. Old habits are hard to break; Russia’s long-held expectation of dominating the entire Black Sea will remain a nationalistic rallying cry for years to come.

The Republic of Türkiye, as the future dominant maritime force in the Black Sea, would be a natural guarantor of a peaceful Black Sea, but the Black Sea gatekeeper, as the manager of the Straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, Türkiye appears more intent upon maintaining Russian and NATO ties than in making tough calls on deterrence and maritime norms.

Unless Russian naval units are completely banned from the Black Sea, post-War Black Sea peacekeeping will fall to non-Black Sea members of NATO. To do it, a multi-national base somewhere in Romania, would be ideal. Built along the lines of Rota, Spain, where four American Arleigh Burke-class destroyers enjoy a forward home port, a local base would be ideal, but a quaint, diplomatic relic from the 1930’s, the Montreux Convention, stands in the way.

The Convention makes the maintenance of a Black Sea NATO peacekeeping flotilla no easy task. Planning for this task must get underway now, and sketched out during the July 11-12 NATO Summit.

Black Sea peacekeepers may require new tactics, weapons, and vessels that can only come from early consultation.

The Montreux Convention: A Peacekeeping Challenge

The Montreux Convention of 1936 is an old treaty. Last modified before World War II, the agreement governs the movement of warships through the Straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. It limits the tonnage, time and types of non-Black Sea warships that can pass through Turkish waters and operate in the Black Sea.

The diplomatic relic makes sustained, multinational maritime peacekeeping a tough task. For an ancient diplomatic tool, the Montreux Convention is has held up surprisingly well against the march of naval technology, though it could use a modern refresh, accounting for the global increase in average naval combatant displacement and other things.

Right now, the Convention allows non-Black Sea navies to operate a combatant force of up to 30,000 tons (and in some cases up to 45,000 tons) in the Black Sea. Since no single non-Black Sea power can contribute more than two-thirds the aggregate tonnage at any one time, a NATO Black Sea peacekeeping flotilla must be multinational.

A Black Sea peacekeeping force must be a fleet of lightweight combatants, too. According to the Convention, no single non-Black Sea warship can displace more than 10,000 tons.

Any conventional warship ship slated to participate the Black Sea peacekeeping flotilla must also be reliable. The Montreux Convention mandates that non-Black Sea warships must leave the Black Sea basin after twenty-one days, so nothing can break down mid-voyage.

Black Sea peacekeeping will be no pleasure cruise. If NATO wants to establish a peacekeeping presence in the Black Sea without requesting changes to the Montreux Convention, warships on peacekeeping duty will be on a relentless schedule, transiting in and out of the Black Sea on a near-monthly basis.

But the Montreux Convention, as written, offers some interesting loopholes that NATO might consider exploring later this month.

Use Modified Ships Or Tactics To Sidestep Peacekeeping Barriers:

Without a change to the Montreux Convention, operating a multinational fleet of conventional warships in the Black Sea will be difficult. And, even if NATO complied with the Montreux Convention, planning out a comprehensive presence, China or other Russian-friendly nations could easily disrupt NATO’s peacekeeping schedules by deploying into the region and, with Türkiye’s acquiescence, gobbling up a significant portion of the Black Sea warship tonnage allocated for non-Black Sea nations.

Handling the Montreux Convention will be tough on NATO Navies. To go about reconstituting civil, rules-based operational norms in the Black Sea, NATO could consider some delicate sidestepping of the old Convention—maintaining the letter of the law if not the spirit of the Montreux regulatory regime.

If there is some appeal for pushing at the limits of the possible, NATO might explore allocating some Point-class roll-on/roll-off merchant ships, oilfield response vessels or other civilian and NATO-flagged “vessels of convenience” to Black Sea duties. Ships—like the Point-class—that are both capable of operating in the region and have “relatives” that were previously modified for military work might be a particularly useful fit.

Once these civilian vessels are in the Black Sea, they could quickly be modified in, say, Fincantieri’s Vard Group Romanian shipyards, fitted with modular weapons systems or equipped with U.S. Marine Corps ground and rotary-wing platforms—just as the Marines aboard the USS Boxer operated back in 2019, as the vessel operated in the Persian Gulf. Once equipped to hold their own, these improvised warships can begin operating as peacekeeping ships.

Assuming, say, a ten-year commitment and access to a Black Sea maintenance base, these improvised military vessels wouldn’t need to transit to-and-from the Black Sea. If Türkiye complained, the ships could easily be transferred from NATO management to nominal administration by Romania or some other like-minded Black Sea state.

The Montreux Convention also cuts “naval auxiliary vessels specifically designed for the carriage of fuel, liquid or non-liquid” from major regulation. Their tonnage does not count against the 30,000 to 45,000 ton limit. If these auxiliary vessels—potentially older Henry J. Kaiser-class tankers or other auxiliaries already set to leave service—were refreshed, equipped with rudimentary cooperative engagement capabilities and modified to either temporarily carry Standard missiles, electronic warfare equipment, or some other modular strike weapons outside of the weapon types specifically identified in the Convention, these armed auxiliary ships could offer a useful maritime backstop to future NATO peacekeeping efforts. They’d still need to leave every few weeks, but they’d be a great deterrent and serve as a potential extra magazine for the smaller NATO combatants.

Time is short. The West needs to start figuring out how to manage the Black Sea after war in Ukraine comes to an end. Regardless of how that fight ends, a free and open Black Sea is key to a durable regional peace. The faster NATO starts figuring out how maritime peacekeepers might help moderate Russia’s longstanding and outsized Black Sea ambitions, the better.