Post cold war American-Russian competition in Black Sea: The recreation of containment

The divided world entered into a new process with the end of the Cold War. The Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact disappeared and the USA stood alone as the sole superpower. The Cold War struggle between the Soviets and the USA and the perpetual containment policies of the USA underwent a considerable transformation after the Cold War. The USA, while envisaging co-operation with Russia, the successor state of the Soviet Union, did not refrain from pursuing a "containment policy" to limit its power as well. Russia, on the other hand, responded warmly to cooperation with the USA in the early 1990s during the recovery process but starting from the mid-1990s it put forth the "near abroad policy" against the USA's containment policy and set the former Soviet geography as its own area of interest. The post-Cold War relationship between the USA and Russia encompasses both cooperation and contention. This complex web of relationship is reflected in the areas of politics, security and economics.While the two countries were open to cooperation regarding the issues of terrorism, human rights, democracy and the limitation of the weapons of mass destruction, they entered into rivalry about the topics of energy and the control of energy routes. One of the most visible manifestations of this competition took place in the Black Sea region. As the USA tried to spread to the former Soviet geography through NATO, Russia pursued more hard-hitting policies and even used the military option as witnessed in the crises of Georgia and Ukraine.