Stephen Blank, Senior Fellow,
Foreign Policy Research Institute
www.fpri.org

In Memory Of Janusz Bugaski, Friend and Colleague

It might seem odd to write about the Three Seas Initiative since it appears to be merely another proposal for Central and Eastern European integration of which there have been and continue to be many. And since we hear little about it, it would be easy to assume that it has become just another program with opportunities for ministerial conferences in nice cities. But that attitude would be a mistake for the program appears to be growing in scope and range. As of 2022 there were 81 existing programs under this rubric, 48 of them being priority programs.ⁱ Today, at last count, there are 143 projects, 89 of which are priority projects.ⁱⁱ Clearly these figures signify steady growth.

Yet there remains the real danger of this initiative becoming merely another of the many bureaucratic programs aiming at the integration of Central and Eastern Europe. Indeed, there is no shortage of regional and sub-regional fora aiming at the reintegration of Central and Eastern Europe. However, since the quest for new programs associated with this initiative and the integration of these European lands continues, that quest testifies to a continuing sense of incompletion regarding the overall project of European integration, particularly at a time when Russia is at war with Europe to prevent just this outcome, the primary historic and geopolitical threat to Russia throughout its modern existence.

Nevertheless, if we face facts honestly, despite this “mania” for new integration projects, the Three Seas Initiative has faded in interest. At a conference several years ago the State Department desk officer for this project stated that nobody came to see him except Polish diplomats and visitors. This, in itself, was a telling sign of problems at the heart of this initiative for it confirmed that regional governments viewed this program as a purely Polish rather than an inter-state or genuinely European project. Therefore, they had little or no interest, either individually or collectively in it despite the first Trump Administration’s support for it. And given the history of this initiative’s precursors, this was an understandable if not misplaced perception.

Even so, there are vibrant, vital living elements of this initiative that merit revival and that should be implemented sooner rather than later. Neither is this a pro-Polish assessment because Poland was the moving spirit behind this initiative. Although Poland obviously stands to benefit immensely from a renovated and implemented project of this kind; it is more useful to all partisans of Europe regional integration that will lead to the idea of a Europe whole and free, the mantra of the 1990s, to place this program in the broader context of European history. Once that is done it becomes clear that there are truly important economic and geostrategic elements of this or analogous new ideas that should be put into practice as soon as possible. In doing so I am emulating the philosopher Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) who sought to determine what is alive and what is dead in Hegel’s philosophy. To the extent that our efforts are successful it becomes clear why this project is vital to Europe as a whole if it seeks to regain a commanding and unified strategic role in its own affairs not to mention the global agenda. The first precondition for such a project, however, must be that it is a robust program, enjoying the tangible support of all of its progenitors and beneficiaries and therefore presents a clear, compelling, and attractive vision of the future. Therefore, it must be and hopefully evolve into, at least for the foreseeable future, more than another tired bureaucratic formula.

For this reason, if we are to gain a deeper insight into what are the vibrant elements of the current Three Seas Initiative program, we need to situate it and its antecedent projects in their true current historical situation. Doing so transcends the original Polish project of the 1920’s known as Intermarium, (Between or Among the Seas). Rather than seeing the Three Seas Initiative as a Polish project that merely updates the original Intermarium program that aimed to create a Polish-led zone between a revanchist Germany and Soviet Russia after 1920, we would do better to see both the original Intermarium program, other contemporary, and subsequent security projects for Central and Eastern Europe in the broader stream of efforts of efforts to restore some stable version of the Habsburg, Hohenzollern, and Romanov empires in interwar Europe. Indeed, the first such project was Friedrich Naumann’s Mitteleuropa grand design of 1915 postulating a German empire in these lands.ⁱⁱⁱ Yet, the pervasive insecurity of the states that emerged from the breakup of these three empires continues into the present along with the abiding historical inability and willful disinterest of most West European states concerning this region. More threatening than this pervasive insecurity is the fact that Western efforts to counter a revanchist Russia driven by dreams of a renewed empire have proved to be tentative, halting, and consequently astrategic. Hence the ongoing drive since World War I to forge some sort of durable integration process from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

This century-long process to forge Central and East European security and integration at the regional and continental level even in the 1920s went far beyond the Polish government’s sponsorship of the Intermarium and neo-promethean movements to encompass the whole region from the Baltic States and Sea to the Black Sea. There were many such initiatives all of which were abortive, but which nonetheless testified to a profound European sense of loss after World War I not unlike the realization today that all of Europe is under attack from Russia.

Indeed, it is that sense of loss, a feeling that Europe is not only incomplete but that it is vulnerable to fresh outbreaks of large-scale violence, e.g. the wars over the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the Russo-Ukraine war that began in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea but that has intensified with the invasion of 2022 that remain the beating heart and driving momentum behind post-1945 projects for European integration right up to the present. Thus, the Three Seas Initiative is not merely a child of earlier Polish initiatives, themselves a result of a profound sense of insecurity, but also should be visualized in the context of interwar projects in the 1920s not only for the ”lands in-between”: (Zwischen Laender) but also for Franco-German reconciliation and the postwar projects that spawned both NATO and the European Union.^iv

While efforts to use the processes of European integration for the disproportionate benefit of any particular European state, e.g. Poland as was the case in the Intermarium or neo-Promethean movements vitiated those projects from their inception in the 1920s; projects based on the invitation to the United States like NATO and the EU have proven wildly successful despite these structures’ current challenges. The economic development of Poland and the Baltic States since 1990 as well as the Balkans would be inconceivable without the economic support of the EU and the defense umbrella of NATO.

Therefore, several key principles emerge as being critical to any truly successful program for the reintegration of Central and Eastern Europe. First, as noted above, to be successful any such vision must enjoy robust, tangible, and long-term support from all the participants. Second, these projects, to succeed, must promote material and relatively equal benefits to all their participants and thus preclude the suspicion, barely dormant under the rhetoric of internationalism, that one state, most likely the proponent of the project, aims to secure an excessive or disproportionate gain at the expense of or relative to other states.

Third, it should be clear from the historical record that America’s enthusiastic buy-in must help sustain this proposal from start to finish with regard to both defense and economics, including energy and multiple forms of connectivity. Admittedly at the moment, given the rhetoric and policy of the Trump Administration, and its ignorance of European, conditions, needs, and interests, this is a demanding and quite possibly insuperable barrier, at least in the immediate and short-term. But American policy is not carved in stone and given the threats from Russia, China, and Iran (that being terrorism) to European security in all its dimensions it is necessary to continue the fight for Trans-Atlanticism in all of its domains. Just as earlier historians discerned a Schiksalsgemeinschaft (Community of values) arising on both shores of the North Atlantic in the 1950’s; we must realize the enormous economic, political, and military contributions to a democratic peace that American support for continuing European integration offers to governments on both sides of the ocean.^v The advantages accruing to the U.S. from an integrated Europe must be strongly and repeatedly articulated and both European and American elites must also advocate strongly for it. Likewise, we must strongly articulate how American withdrawal from Trans-Atlantic security weakens America and undermines its security, both economic-political and military.

For example, the history of the last 80 years and the present crisis triggered by Russia’s war against Ukraine and Europe repeatedly make clear that the alternative to a U.S.-led Europe is the redivision of Europe into mutually suspicious and quibbling coalitions of states, i.e. the renationalization of European security, a trend that led to two world wars. This trend redounds exclusively to Moscow’s and/or Beijing’s benefit. Trump’s ignorant fulminations aside it remains the case, as Bismarck wrote 150 years ago, that “Europe” as a political entity does not exist. But that should only incite us to build that entity which, as history shows us, is the only real precondition for security, and a vital geostrategic voice in the contemporary world. Therefore, a real Europe must be built by consensus not coercion. Indeed, since the alternative to Transatlanticism is, as suggested above, the renationalization of European security that trend also ultimately entails a strong trend towards the diffusion of nuclear weapons to individual European states if not beyond as well as the expansion of Russian and Chinese subversive influence.^vi Therefore, Europe and the U.S. must remain married to each other in both economics and defense. For despite the rhetoric of Trumpism here and abroad which must be contained if not reversed, there is no European security order that is compatible with Russian empire. And that empire is only conceivable with a permanent state of war in Eurasia that can only engender similar reverberations abroad as are now demonstrably occurring.

Consequently, the fourth precondition for success and one that goes far to revitalize the ideas of the Three Seas Initiative that foster genuine regional integration from the Baltic to the Black Sea is to include Ukraine as a full and equal partner in defense, governance, general security, connectivity, economics, etc. sooner rather than later. Doing so immediately boosts Ukraine and surrounding states’ territory for peace reform and security. But beyond the immediate impact and message to Russia that Europe will defend itself against Moscow’s new imperial offensive, the immediate impact of a vibrant integration project that includes Ukraine from the outset demonstrates that the European ambition to overcome the sense of loss or of incompleteness and vulnerability that existed since 1918 is not only alive but also thriving. And it adds teeth to the objective of denying victory to Russian aggression, revanchism, and imperialism.

Such actions will provide a decisive impetus to victory in Ukraine, the defeat of Russian forces, the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial and political integrity, i.e the right to join alliances, reparations, and if possible, war crimes prosecutions. Russian spokesmen have repeatedly and falsely claimed that Europe is attacking them.^vii They have done so to deter Western large-scale support for Ukraine and preserve Russian escalation dominance. A large collective, unified Western support for Ukraine is both necessary for victory and the project of a united Europe, and to gain escalation dominance over Europe. Indeed, this writer has argued for Ukrainian membership in NATO and the EU to make Putin’s nightmare a real one and force an end to the war.^viii

Putin’s war against Ukraine and Europe teaches us conclusively that by not redressing this loss of unity of Central and Eastern Europe with the continent as a whole we invite renewed imperial wars and adventures there to restore the Cold War along with states owing fealty to interwar totalitarianism. Another lesson is equally clear. Victory in Ukraine is a necessary precondition for peace and prosperity from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Just as the inverse statement above that Russian empire is incompatible with any secure European order holds true, so does the insight that there can be no genuine regional or continental European security without a free, democratic, and secure Ukraine. Indeed, this is an outcome that could engender democratizing and deimperalizing reforms in Russia. For if the fantasy of empire is irrevocably lost, the justification and necessity for classic Russian autocracy goes with it, opening the door to reforms from below as well as from above. Therefore, the proclamation and implementation of a true program for regional integration must go forward. And while the U.S. must be a vital component of this program when, how, and where, it chooses to do so; this program must also fully include Ukraine too.

So, if the necessity for recreating post-Habsburg networks remains compelling, we must move to examine the ideas propounded in the original Three Seas Initiative to extract and reformulate what remains vital and usable in those ideas and advance towards a new, more acceptable program of action. This imitative and its associated projects must meet the criteria and conditions stated above while knitting together the states from the Baltic to the Black Sea in a union utilizing the most modern technologies and economic instruments. It must also reduce Central and Eastern Europe’s vulnerability to energy blackmail and state capture. For these reasons the program must address north-south trade, transport, and connectivity, including energy links, as did the original program. This entails an emphasis on north-south rather than east-west projects in these fields. Its leadership must be at the same time visionary and pragmatic to execute the mandate of an increasingly integrated and modern region.

For example, I have previously outlined a program for replacing Russian energy dominance in the Balkans that has spawned numerous opportunities for Russia to instigate numerous ongoing efforts at state capture and subversion.^ix As I wrote then, since Balkan and overall European security are inextricable and indivisible progress in one theater requires progress in the other to achieve lasting security, any serious aggravation of Balkan tensions would engender serious repercussions for both the EU and NATO and not only in the Balkans. It would certainly accelerate pressures to derail the entire integration project for both the EU and NATO in and beyond the Balkans. By calling the EU and NATO enlargement processes into question it would expose these organizations’ unwillingness to defend those processes or the European status quo and trigger trends encouraging a stronger Russian push to restore the empire and further consolidate it and the Putinist autocracy indefinitely.^x Any such restoration will also rejuvenate Russia’s non-military and military influence campaigns in and beyond the Balkans.

Therefore, the first requirement of a successful integrationist policy in the Balkans mandates a genuine commitment to Ukraine’s victory, that is, restoring its sovereignty, integrity, and integration with European security organizations. Second, that policy must coincide with the concurrent intensification of programs to bring about Balkan membership in those organizations and admit Ukraine to regional and sub-regional institutions, e.g. the Three Seas Initiative. Only under such conditions can we even conceive of, let alone bring about improved governance and resolution of ethic agendas that will deprive Russia of many of the pretexts it now utilizes for leverage in the Balkans. Logically, this entails a coordinated Western program of multi-dimensional support: economic, military, and political for both Ukraine and the neighboring Balkans.

Although space considerations preclude an extensive review of the requirements incumbent upon all these states and European organizations to bring about multi-dimensional improvements in regional governance; it seems that focusing on taking on Balkan energy agendas makes a lot of sense here. Using Western resources and policy instruments in the energy field strikes at Russia’s declining and now threatened energy presence in Europe and the revenues it has accrued thereby because those funds and presence comprise the fiscal foundation of Russia’s many-sided presence across the Balkans. For example, leaked documents have again confirmed Russia’s concealed Kremlin control over the Turk Stream pipeline from Turkey to Bulgaria, Serbia, and Hungary.^xi Sanctions have provided a great opportunity to increase the energy (specifically gas) connections between countries like Azerbaijan and Balkan states like Serbia and Bulgaria.^xii However, failure in Ukraine or the tangible signs of security institutions weakness will disrupt if not reverse those trends and regenerate Moscow’s opportunities to establish energy connections throughout not only the Balkans but even neighboring Central European states like Austria.^xiii

Not only would such deals help move Bulgaria, Serbia, and Austria who, despite widespread Russian economic-political influence there, strongly favors inclusion of the Balkans in the EU, further out of Russia’s orbit and facilitate European integration, such agreements also expand the integrationist ties between Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.^xiv Serbia has even signed a defense deal with Azerbaijan that will also expand its discretion on that agenda.^xv Moreover, Serbia has exported several hundred million dollars of weapons to Ukraine thereby incurring considerable. Russian anger.^xvi Enhancing the Balkans’ energy and subsequent economic-political connections to Europe would also undermine Russia’s unceasing efforts to subordinate both Central Asia and the Caucasus to it through control of pipelines and energy infrastructure. Given what Russian imperialist programs mean to all these regions, attenuating Moscow’s capabilities should be a high priority and justifies programs to enlarge the EU to these areas at least in terms of its influence if not membership. While it is necessary to press on with fortifying front-line states in both te Northern European area like Finland, the Baltic States, and Poland, it is an equal priority to move forward to achieve both a resolute defense of the Balkan-Black Sea zones and the finalite of EU integration.

Moreover, a major program to reduce Balkan dependence on coal and oil while simultaneously transitioning to both natural gas and ultimately green energy sources, although very difficult, will facilitate Ukrainian integration to Europe since it has the means not only to supply its own energy needs if it reconstructs after victory, it also has a substantial gas export capability, as does Romania. As 2023 report observed,

Ukraine’s ambition of becoming a natural gas exporter may be ambitious, but the country’s political elites are serious about these plans. In June 2023, during a conference in London on Ukraine’s post-war recovery, Deputy Head of the Office of Ukrainian President Rostyslav Shurma announced that, apart from providing 10 bcm of biomethane to Europe, Ukraine will be able to export 15 bcm of natural gas in the future.  Some steps are being made in this direction. Even in war time, Ukrainian extractive industries are trying to develop further. Ukrainian public and private companies are building their expertise in unconventional extraction methods, such as natural gas extraction from coal beds and horizontal drilling, or in new ways of exploration, like focused magnetic resonance.^xvii

Ukraine is also, despite the war, exporting record amounts of electricity to Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Moldova, and Hungary.^xviii If we can get Ukrainian, middle Eastern, American, and African gas and green energy to the Balkans with a modernized infrastructure then we can not only reduce Russian opportunities for regional subversion but also dramatically improve regional governance over time, sponsor European investment and integration trends within the Balkans, dramatically enhance regional environmental quality and thus achieve lasting progress on Balkan security.^xix Indeed, the sheer scope of the investments needed here could act as a major spark by which the overall European economy could experience a much-needed transformation along with those of Ukraine and the Balkans. A perfect institutional vehicle for such energy and infrastructure-driven reconstruction could be the Three Seas Initiative, which could, thereby, also achieve a much-needed reinvigoration as a powerful engine of regional development and integration. Likewise, EU agreements on energy with Serbia offer possibilities for reducing conflicts with Kosovo that do so much to facilitate Russian influence in Belgrade.^xx And these programs should occur in conformity with the expansion of the pipeline infrastructure needed to diversify the sources of Balkan energy imports from abroad.^xxi Experience also shows that concurrent processes of conflict-reduction with this economic revitalization would reduce chances for Russian meddling because they would occur in tandem with the precondition needed for this outcome. That precondition takes place when European security structures actively manage the conflict-reduction processes in the Balkans as NATO’s experience shows in Kosovo.^xxii

By fully integrating Ukraine, even now with Balkans, in this fashion we would make a major advance to the integration of Ukraine with its neighbors and other regions like the Middle East. But this is only one example of what can be done. The important thing here is not pride of ownership but rather action for the benefit of European security and the lasting security of Central and Eastern Europe.

Finally, recent trends suggest how elements of this program can come into being. Although Trump granting Orban’s Hungary a year of relief from sanctions on oil and allowing Russian oil and gas to keep flowing through the Balkans is a serious mistake, revealing as well the incompetence of this administration rewarding European security, other trends are more hopeful.^xxiii In the Balkans these hopeful signs are discernible in the victory of pro-Western parties in Moldova in 2024-25, the large-scale Serbian supply of weapons to Ukraine, and in the new Greco-American energy deal described below.^xxiv Specifically Greece will buy American LNG that will then be supplied through Greece-based pipelines through the Balkans to Europe.^xxv Greece will buy a minimum of 700 million cubic meters of liquified natural gas annually for the next 20 years from U.S. supplier Venture Global, a deal that will allow the U.S. to supplant much of Russian gas supplies, which with oil furnish the basis of Russian power in the Balkans.^xxvi

To the extent that the Three Seas Initiative completes projects like the Trans-Ionian pipeline that will connect Balkan pipelines, e.g the Trans-Ionian pipeline from Greece through Albania, to the giant Croatian refinery on Krk Island, this energy that will go to Greece can go as far as Italy and Austria, i.e. Central Europe. If these projects can be completed this will go far to undermining Russian influence, integrating the Balkans, and Central Europe, and cementing U.S. involvement in the Three Seas Initiative.

It is concrete programs like these examples that will defeat Russian efforts to prevent European integration, foster that integration, and hopefully extend Washington’s participation in this initiative. Therefore, if the impulse toward integration can continue as manifested in the projects undertaken by this initiative, we can envision the strengthening of Europe and its democratic values. Therefore, the work must go on even when we encounter obstacles because, as we have seen the alternatives to this integration are unthinkable.