Armenia’s prime minister won re-election on June 7 in spite of the clergy, Moscow, and history. He proved that with proper leadership, hard work, and the courage to look forward rather than back, leaders can take their people along even the hardest roads.
Pashinyan showed that even a small, landlocked nation in a difficult neighborhood can refuse to act as a pawn in someone else’s game, and start building its own place in the world through open borders, better transport and data connections, and integration into global trade corridors.
By working toward a settlement with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh and opening the door to normalization with Turkey, Pashinyan has created a chance that this fractured corner of the world could function as a cooperative region, rather than a collection of frozen conflicts and closed borders.
Armenia is not the only small country in the neighborhood where there was reason for hope. For years, Georgia championed a better neighborhood and became a beacon for post-Soviet transformation, consistent and deliberate in its European, democratic choice, even under the most relentless pressure from Moscow.
Georgia was never confused about where it belonged, and it built the infrastructure to go with its choice. These included the BTC and TANAP energy pipelines, the BTK railway running from Azerbaijan to Turkey, road and energy connections, and trade corridors. None was an accident of geography. They were the product of deliberate political choices, of trust built over years, of enormous Western investment in Georgia.
These foundations have now been undermined by the Georgian Dream government, which won power in 2012 and has eroded many of the democratic and diplomatic gains of the previous years in order to hold onto it.
The US push for a settlement with Azerbaijan (and the associated TRIPP road corridor), however promising in the wake of Armenia’s vote, faces a structural problem precisely because Georgia is now nearly absent from the picture. That is a gap no serious strategy can afford to ignore, and a region defined by its interconnections cannot be stabilized by a deal that accounts for only part of it.
The question is whether Washington recognizes that the South Caucasus is a puzzle and that Georgia is a key piece. If it does, Washington could exercise considerable leverage in Tbilisi, certainly more than anyone else. Applied with consistency and purpose, that could bring Georgia back to a path it never should have left.
Georgia did not lose its potential; it lost its way politically. Washington helped build Georgia’s path to democracy and cooperation, and can help rebuild it now.
Some will argue there are ways to bypass Georgia (Armenia also borders both Turkey and Azerbaijan, for example). But these come at far greater cost, in time, in money, and in political capital. The more rational course is to treat Georgia as a central player on which a functional regional architecture depends.
The Georgian Dream government is acutely aware of this calculus and is playing its own hand accordingly. It has been deepening engagement with China through high-level meetings, declarations on deep and comprehensive strategic cooperation, and a deliberate presentation of alternatives. By publicly elevating its partnership with Beijing, Tbilisi also appears intent on signaling to Washington that it has other strategic options, using its ties with China as leverage to challenge US influence and demonstrate that American disengagement will not leave Georgia without powerful partners.
But Tbilisi knows the path back to stability runs through Washington, and the conditions for that are well understood: democratic governance, the primacy of the rule of law, and a return to the Euro-Atlantic path that Georgian Dream has been turning away from.
Washington understands this, too, and it is the only player with the tools to act. The European Union (EU) has influence but has already been rebuffed on accession and lacks the hard tools to compel action. Meanwhile, Russia’s interest is in Georgian instability, not in making Georgia a stable and sovereign state.
Iran has its own regional calculations, but no credible offer to make to a country whose society is genuinely European. China can offer investment and political flattery, but not the security or the future that Georgians voted for.
It is Washington, through bilateral security relationships, financial institutions, and the backing of Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic orientation, that holds the cards.
Targeted pressure on individuals responsible for democratic backsliding, conditionality to security cooperation, and direct diplomatic engagement are instruments that have been used effectively elsewhere. What has been missing is the sustained will to deploy them in Georgia.
Washington wants a South Caucasus deal that works, not one that looks good on paper but falls apart when it comes into contact with reality. Pressing for democratic stability in Georgia is not a detour; it is the most direct path.
The South Caucasus has seen peace initiatives before. They have come with summits and frameworks and cautious optimism, and they have unraveled. The region has lived through cycles of ceasefire and conflict, of Western engagement followed by fatigue and retreat, of progress that looked durable until it was not.
But this moment is different. For the first time, there is a leader in the region who has staked everything on a genuine transformation and won a democratic mandate for it. Notably, this came with significant support from the US, despite Russia’s aid for the opposition.
Acting in Tbilisi and winning in the South Caucasus are not choices between two separate objectives; they are the same thing.
Tinatin Khidasheli heads Civic-IDEA, a think-tank fighting the Soviet legacy in Georgia, confronting Russian propaganda, and advocating for a sound defense and security policy. Tinatin is the author of the first Georgian-language book on Hybrid Warfare and teaches Hybrid Warfare and Defense Policy in Georgia. Mrs. Khidasheli served as Georgia’s first female Minister of Defense. She is a lawyer by education, holds an LLM in International Law from Tbilisi State University, and an MA in Political Science from the Central European University in Hungary. Mrs. Khidasheli is a Visiting Researcher at the Graduate School of Law, Hitotsubashi University.
