(How the West’s Strategic Hesitance Spoils Security and Democratization in the South Caucasus)
Author: Dr. Shalva Dzebisashvili, Chairman of the UGSPN Board.
Introduction
It must be clearly stated from the outset that this contribution is not a fundamental critique of the West, nor does it present other, non-Western alternatives as viable options for the future socio-political development of the South Caucasus. Instead, it attempts to examine Western policies and actions, those of the EU and its major member states, as well as of the United States. In doing so it attempts to identify possible, perhaps significant, gaps between officially declared policy objectives, policy actions, and the broader strategic approach to the region, if such an approach has existed at all since the early 1990s. The absence of a (West’s) strategy, that is, of strategic objectives or mere reliance on declarative policies not backed by coherent strategic plans typically results in serious setbacks and failures. History offers multiple examples of such breakdown points, including Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Russia, to name only a few. Such strategic failures are further aggravated by a serious erosion of trust in the West in the affected regions, as well as by the West’s declining capacity and willingness to support and defend democratic transformation in local societies. Understanding oneself as a strategic actor implies the willingness and ability to devise and implement corresponding strategic plans, support regional allies, and resist geopolitical rivals. Accordingly, this piece of analysis examines the historical background of early Western engagement in the South Caucasus, analyzes the main mechanisms and objectives of influence, and explores the fundamental divergence and inconsistencies between policy declarations and actual policy implementation during and after the period of color revolutions in the region. Ultimately, current European and US regional priorities are assessed against sober geopolitical realities in order to answer the following question: Is there a clear and coherent Western strategy for the South Caucasus, and if not, what consequences may follow?
Definition of the West and Western Engagement in the 1990s
Without dwelling too much on definitional origins, the notion of the West in the South Caucasus was largely a Soviet legacy that regarded the “capitalist world,” under the US leadership, as the “collective West.” Within this collective understanding, Europe, i.e. the major European nations, naturally found its place alongside the United States as an equally important constituent of the West, albeit with less autonomy and freedom of action when geopolitical and strategic security interests were at stake. Thus, when the Berlin Wall fell and existing movements for national independence gained strength in the South Caucasus, the Western approach to strategic engagement with the post-Soviet regimes was far more complex and controversial than might be initially assumed. First, European nations had to address the issue of German reunification and the subsequent reintegration of the former Warsaw Pact countries. This task was far from simple, as the US and European perspectives differed significantly. Second, Russia’s dominant role, which overshadowed other priorities concerning the remaining Soviet republics, became even more firmly established. Russia’s aging nuclear arsenal, deteriorating technology, and collapsing economy had to be addressed first in order to prevent a chaotic collapse of the Soviet Union and later to preserve Yeltsin’s unpopular and fragile regime, which was nevertheless still perceived as democratic. President George H. W. Bush’s iconic “Chicken Kiev” speech in 1991 before Ukraine’s national parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, vividly illustrated Western timidity toward the idea of Soviet disintegration, the prioritization of Gorbachev’s vision of a more decentralized but still united Soviet Union, and the general disregard for the national liberation of the Soviet republics. Consequently, the demands of national liberation movements in Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan found little resonance in the West, encountered an information vacuum, and were successfully marginalized by the central Soviet, and later Russian media outlets, which served as the principal source of information about the region for Western audiences. As the South Caucasus became engulfed in a spiral of Russia backed ethnic conflicts, Russia’s efforts to present events in the region to the West through the “Russian” filter and to preserve its image as the only power capable of “understanding” and “mediating” between local violent groups found highly receptive ground. The West largely accepted the illicit agreement about Russia’s leading role as mediator in the region. Russian military forces not only changed uniforms and transformed themselves into formally UN-led peacekeepers in Georgia, but also effectively secured a dominant regional security role by pressuring Georgia and Azerbaijan through their military presence in Abkhazia, the Tskhinvali region, the so-called South Ossetia, and through military bases in Armenia. Faced with pressing security challenges in conflict zones and growing domestic opposition, the initially elected democratic leaders were soon replaced by more authoritarian and pro-Russian figures, and member of elite soviet party nomenklatura such as Eduard Shevardnadze and Heydar Aliyev in Georgia and Azerbaijan, respectively, and the strongly pro-Russian so-called Karabakh clan, represented by Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, in Armenia.
Western influence in the region in nineties never went beyond attempts of general democratization, conflict prevention and management, peacebuilding and confidence-building mechanisms, as well as humanitarian and development assistance. The rapid accession of all three South Caucasus republics to NATO’s Partnership for Peace framework in 1993–1994 served the purposes of security-sector reform and the establishment of civilian control over the military, an arduous objective predominantly promoted by the United States. The same applies to the launching of transregional projects intended to foster cooperation in the energy and transport sectors, including TRASECA, INOGATE, and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. As for the fundamental issue of regional security, the Minsk Group was created largely to preserve the existing status quo rather than to resolve the Karabakh conflict quickly. Georgia, meanwhile, was offered the Boden Plan, the high point of Western diplomacy, which theoretically could have provided a practical conflict-resolution mechanism for Georgia. However, the plan was rejected by the Kremlin because it would have undermined Russia’s military presence in Georgia’s separatist regions and thereby removed a major instrument of political pressure on Tbilisi. Eventually, an ideal situation was consolidated for Russia: the role of ultimate arbiter in the region was effectively delegated by the West to the Kremlin in favor of “overall stability” and stable relations with Russia. The 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which effectively deprived Ukraine of its nuclear capabilities in a manner favorable to Russian interests, remains a glaring example of this hypocritical stance, as it promised security guarantees to Kyiv from the “West” that, as it turned out, never intended to be fulfilled in practice.
Color Revolutions, the Illusion of the Strategic Shift and the Risk of Déjà Vu
The color revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan reinvigorated Western engagement in these republics and generated considerable hope for a strategic repositioning of the West in the post-Soviet space. This appeared to mean that democratic and pro-Western political parties and governments would enjoy unconditional support from Europe and the United States in their efforts to complete democratic transformation and resolve security-related problems of territorial integrity and the Russian threat. Indeed, the United National Movement government led by president Mikheil Saakashvili established very close, almost personalized, relations with George W. Bush’s Republican administration and enjoyed active US support for the idea of rapid NATO membership. However, this initiative met stiff European resistance, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders, and reduced the chances of granting the Membership Action Plan (MAP), a precursor to full membership at the Bucharest Summit in April 2008. Instead, Ukraine and Georgia received only a formal promise of future membership. It was no secret that Germany’s primary interest was not the security of the most democratic and pro-Western countries of the former Soviet bloc, but rather the general stability in its eastern neighborhood, economic expansion and and implementation of the Nord Stream gas pipelines proposed by Russia. This project placed Germany under heavy dependence on Russian energy and drew many German politicians into dubious practices, including former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who later held a senior position within Gazprom.
Double standards became even more evident as Russian violations of peacekeeping agreements, particularly after the Bucharest statement of April 2008, rapidly escalated into a general military provocation in July followed by the full-scale invasion August 2008. Georgia’s attempt to respond militarily to the invasion, that is to defend its territorial integrity was subsequently labeled an irresponsible action of Saakashvili’s government. Even worse, Heidi Tagliavini’s fact-finding report deliberately adopted a language neutral toward Russia and accused the Georgian side of initiating military action, despite the report’s own account of a long series of Russian provocations and escalatory measures. As a result, Georgia faced an unofficial arms embargo by the United States and European countries, a deterioration of diplomatic ties, minimal punitive measures against Russia, such as the one-year suspension of the NATO-Russia Council and, most surprisingly, the initiation of the reset policy with Russia by the Obama administration in 2009. Symbolically, the reset button jointly pressed by Hillary Clinton and Sergei Lavrov bore an incorrect Russian translation meaning “overcharge” or “overload.” NATO went even farther by calling Russia strategic partner in its 2010 strategic concept. It came to symbolize not only US and West’s strategic incompetence but also future strategic failures in relation to the Kremlin. The logic of business as usual with Russia continued to dominate the thinking of Western politicians even after the annexation of Crimea and clear evidence of serious electoral fraud in Georgia in 2020.
When Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement lost the 2012 parliamentary elections and agreed to transfer power peacefully to the winner, the Georgian Dream (GD) party led by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, the decision was welcomed by Georgia’s Western partners and perceived as a clear sign of democratic consolidation, an unprecedented development in Georgia and in the South Caucasus more broadly. However, early warnings of an accelerating power grab and monopolization of political institutions were largely ignored in the West. Waves of political purges, including in public offices, as well as multiple cases of corruption, increasing political control over the judiciary, and cronyism between 2016 and 2020 (well documented by multiple credible sources) did not provoke any serious response, criticism, or policy revision from Georgia’s Western partners. Georgia celebrated the introduction of visa-free travel with the EU in 2017 and continued to enjoy strategic partnership with the United States. Key US diplomats in Georgia kept their criticism of the ruling party moderate, while German Embassy established very friendly relations with the Georgian Dream’s rank and file, becoming a major target of criticism in the German media. Even the evidence of rigged parliamentary elections in 2020 did not produce a fundamental change in the Western position. The President of the European Council, Charles Michel was predominantly occupied with pressuring opposition parties to end their boycott and enter parliament, despite the solid evidence of vote manipulation in favor of the ruling party. It took another round of mass falsification in the 2024 parliamentary elections and Georgian Dream’s official suspension of EU membership talks to raise alarm in Western capitals. The EU radically downgraded relations with Georgia, introduced limited sanctions against GD officials, and effectively de-facto removed Georgia from its strategic agenda concerning EU and NATO enlargement. Similarly, the United States suspended its strategic partnership with Georgia, sharply reduced political ties, and removed Georgia from its regional priorities. In fact, since November 2024, neither the EU nor the United States have adopted any meaningful strategy toward Georgia that would draw lessons from the past mistakes and end the existing mode of passive reaction. Instead of applying an effective carrot-and-stick approach to make Georgian Dream comply with Georgia’s and Europe’s shared strategic objectives, Georgia was largely removed entirely from the West’s agenda,
Instead, the West appears to be repeating in Armenia the same miscalculation it made in Georgia. While abandoning (for the time being) Georgia, once celebrated as the beacon of democracy, European diplomacy is now fully focused on Armenia, where Pashinyan’s government, which emerged from the 2018 Velvet Revolution, pursues increasingly pro-Western policies and thus draws the Kremlin’s wrath. Yerevan is celebrated in Brussels and other European capitals as democratic and strategic partnership frameworks have been established. Furthermore, the prospect of EU membership is being discussed, despite Armenia’s continued membership in the Russia-led Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and the Eurasian Economic Union. While actively encouraging Yerevan to continue its Western integration efforts, Western capitals rarely discuss Pashinyan’s growing reliance on some tools of authoritarian mode of governance. If left unchecked, this tendency may lead to highly unpleasant consequences, given Europe’s strategic and security limitations in accessing and directly supporting Armenia. As in Georgia’s case, where the West was unable and unwilling to provide decisive protection from the Russian threat, Armenia lacks the same type of support that would guarantee its survival in the face of Azerbaijani and Turkish military dominance. Ironically, the TRIPP-project, celebrated as the major and strategic US-engagement in Armenia and the region, lacks any serious security mechanism and preserves uncertainty about project’s future political and security outputs. The resulting strategic dilemma – linking security with democratic consolidation, on the one hand, and insecurity and strategic complementarity with growing authoritarianism, on the other – is equally valid in Armenia. Pashinyan himself clearly pointed to this challenge by stating that Armenia’s greatest problem with Europe was the lack of progress between the EU and Georgia. It could hardly be stated more clearly: if Europe has no plan for Georgia and its European future, it will be very difficult for Armenia, if not impossible to deepen its Western trajectory as well. Ironically, Pashinyan’s victory in the 2026 parliamentary elections reinvigorated Georgia’s case in Brussels. At the same time, a clear warning signal was sent to European capitals when Nikol Pashinyan’s first official meeting after the election victory was held with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.
Strategic Action vs. Strategic Hesitance
It is clear that the West’s hesitant actions and self-imposed limitations have severely damaged the prospects for both democratic and security consolidation in the South Caucasus, a a tendency broadly consistent with Russian expectations. Georgia’s increasingly pro-Russian stance since the 2012 elections rests on two fundamental pillars. First, the inability of Western partners to provide solid security guarantees inevitably makes Russia the dominant factor, capable of pressuring Tbilisi and seriously interfering in Georgia’s domestic politics. Second, the absence of security pushes any political regime in Georgia to seek accommodation with the dominant regional powers in the South Caucasus (Russia, Turkey, and Azerbaijan), which in turn inevitably creates highly favorable conditions for a more authoritarian mode of governance. The same logic can readily be applied to Armenia. A form of déjà vu may emerge in the region unless a radical change is made in the West’s strategy towards the region. The absence of clear strategic objectives in the region produces half-hearted actions and policies based on self-imposed limitations. The statement by Chancelor Scholz in 2022 at the congress of European Socialists in Berlin about the united Europe stretching from Lisbon to Tbilisi, is not a mere subjective opinion, but rather formal declaration that begs respective actions. Georgian Dream’s authoritarian rule would be fundamentally shaken if the EU and NATO (or its future reincarnation) guaranteed Georgia’s security against the Russian threat. Direct European access to Armenia through Georgia would offer Yerevan a serious geostrategic alternative and far more credible mechanisms of European conditionality capable of securing Armenia’s European perspective in return. At a time of renewed geopolitical rivalry and hard-power competition, Western inaction in the South Caucasus would amount to an inability to achieve any strategic objective if Georgia’s and Armenia’s European perspective is still considered. Instead, it would encourage other regional powers to create a buffer zone, a separate sphere of influence detached from the West, in which democracy and democratic institutions no longer have a place. The West seems to not have learned from its earlier illusion, i.e. false belief that authoritarian regimes can be transformed (to a more democratic form) through close cooperation and trade. In light of this reality, calls to preserve and deepen Western, particularly European, integration in the region, without active strategic moves by the West that guarantee security and thereby promote democratic consolidation, border on hypocrisy. It is also incomprehensible how the European enlargement policy can be generally formulated and implemented without the subsequent integration of EU’s security and defence policies in it. The tango of Western integration requires two dancers. If one partner is absent or performs half-heartedly, the entire performance is inevitably damaged – a prospect of the 2008 Bucharest declaration that no one wishes to repeat.