USS America, LHA-6 ( Credits- Wikimedia Commons / United States Navy) Source- The National Interest Author- Nikolas K. Gvosdev Earlier this month, I had the privilege of being on a panel as part of the Naval War College’s Regional Alumni Symposium, discussing the strategic importance of the Black Sea region, along with Michael Kofman of the Center for Naval Analysis and Chris Marsh of the School of Advanced Military Studies. After all, as Marsh noted, the Black Sea is assuming much greater importance as part of China’s ambitious “one road, one belt” system, designed to link the Asia-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic worlds—a point made graphically clear by Parag Khanna’s “connectography” maps, while Kofman called attention to Russia’s new power-projection capabilities emanating from Crimea. Yet for all our eloquence in calling for the Black Sea to assume greater importance in American strategic thinking, equally compelling cases were being made for why additional U.S. attention