By Giorgi Gvalia and Ivane Lomidze
Georgia’s deteriorating relations with the EU and the U.S. are commonly explained in two ways. One interpretation emphasizes domestic political survival, arguing that Georgian Dream increasingly views Western pressure for competitive elections, institutional constraints, and political accountability as a threat to its continued hold on power. The other stresses geopolitics: deeper alignment with Western policies toward Russia is seen as increasing Georgia’s exposure to retaliation, which the country lacks the security guarantees to withstand. These explanations are usually treated as alternatives. This piece argues instead that they reinforce one another. From Georgian Dream’s perspective, Western pressure can weaken the government politically and economically, while Russian coercion could destabilize both the state and the ruling party. Political survival and geopolitical caution therefore produce the same policy preference.
BACKGROUND:
Both Russia and the West can impose costs on Georgia’s government, but their instruments and potential consequences are fundamentally different. Western governments can use sanctions, diplomatic isolation, visa restrictions, political conditionality, and the suspension of assistance or institutional cooperation. They can also support civil society, independent media, and other institutions that constrain the ruling party’s political dominance.
Such pressure matters to Georgian Dream. Nevertheless, the government may view it as containable, and potentially reversible. Sanctions can be endured or partially circumvented. Diplomatic criticism can be presented domestically as unfair foreign interference. Political protests can be managed through administrative and coercive instruments. Georgian Dream may also expect that elections and changes of government in European capitals will eventually produce a more accommodating Western approach.
From the government’s perspective, Russia presents a different category of danger. It occupies Abkhazia and South Ossetia, maintains military forces on Georgian territory, and can escalate pressure with little warning. Moscow can employ military force, economic restrictions, incidents along occupation lines, political destabilization, or hybrid measures against which Georgia possesses limited defenses.
Most importantly, a confrontation with Russia would not threaten only Georgia as a state. It could also directly jeopardize Georgian Dream’s hold on power. A military crisis could generate additional territorial losses, economic disruption, displacement, public panic, and political instability. Even if the government survived the immediate confrontation, it could be blamed for provoking a conflict that Georgia had neither the resources nor the allies to win.
Political survival and state survival therefore become closely connected. A government principally concerned with remaining in office has powerful incentives to avoid military escalation, because a national-security catastrophe would almost inevitably become a political catastrophe.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine heightened the salience of war and vulnerability in Georgian political debate. Georgian Dream used this context to justify restraint toward Moscow, repeatedly invoking the prospect of a “second front.” Rather than treating this claim as an established security assessment, its importance lies in how it has structured the government’s domestic narrative. Georgian Dream has associated its continued rule with peace and stability, while portraying opponents and Western critics as favoring policies that, in the government’s account, could increase Georgia’s exposure to conflict.
IMPLICATIONS:
This calculation helps explain why Georgian Dream may regard its present course as rational. From the government’s perspective, the relevant choice is not between the West and Russia, but between two different categories of risk.
This distinction explains why domestic political survival and geopolitical caution travel in the same direction. Avoiding confrontation with Russia protects Georgia from an immediate security threat, while simultaneously protecting Georgian Dream from the political consequences of a national crisis. Resisting Western pressure, meanwhile, allows the party to preserve its domestic position while signaling to Moscow that Georgia will not become an active participant in Western efforts to contain Russia.
Georgia’s expanding relations with China, Central Asia, Turkey, Azerbaijan and the Gulf states reinforce this calculation by creating the expectation that trade, investment, transit cooperation, and participation in the Middle Corridor can partially offset the economic and diplomatic costs of deteriorating relations with the West. If these ties cushion some of the costs of Western estrangement, resistance to Western pressure becomes more sustainable. From the government’s perspective, Georgia has no comparable means of offsetting the consequences of direct confrontation with Russia.
Moreover, Georgian Dream views these partnerships as politically less demanding because they are not accompanied by democratic conditionality associated with Western engagement. They also serve a domestic political function by allowing the government to argue that, despite tensions with Brussels and Washington, Georgia is not internationally isolated and continues to attract diplomatic engagement and economic partnerships. Unlike deeper integration with Western institutions, engagement with these actors is also not perceived by the government as likely to provoke Russian retaliation or coercion.
This perspective highlights that Georgian Dream’s foreign policy is shaped by its assessment of relative risks. Its policy can therefore be understood as asymmetric threat management. Georgian Dream accommodates the actor whose coercive power it cannot counter and confronts the actors whose pressure it believes it can survive.
However, the internal logic of this strategy does not eliminate its potential longer-term trade-offs. While it may reduce the risks Georgian Dream regards as most immediate, deteriorating relations with the West could gradually affect Georgia’s economic opportunities, institutional cooperation, international support, and capacity to respond to future Russian pressure. At the same time, continued accommodation could lead Moscow to expect further restraint from Tbilisi. A strategy aimed at minimizing immediate risks may therefore narrow Georgia’s external options over time, particularly if Russian pressure intensifies.
CONCLUSIONS:
Understanding Georgian Dream’s conduct requires attention to the hierarchy of risks underlying its decisions. Western political and economic pressure is unlikely to alter the government’s behavior as long as it is regarded as more manageable than the perceived consequences of antagonizing Russia. This does not imply abandoning political conditionality, but it suggests that Western policy must also address the security concerns that lead Georgian Dream to view accommodation with Russia as the least risky option for preserving peace and maintaining its domestic political position.
Ultimately, however, the internal logic of this strategy does not guarantee its long-term success. While Georgian Dream’s approach may insulate the ruling party from immediate political and security crises, it risks hollowing out the state’s future capacity for independent action. By prioritizing short-term threat management over deep institutional integration with the West, Georgia may find its strategic options increasingly narrowed. Over time, the erosion of Western support and the accumulation of Russian expectations could leave the country more isolated and vulnerable to the very coercion the government’s policy seeks to manage. The ‘rationality’ of this calculus may therefore provide immediate political survival at the cost of long-term strategic resilience.
AUTHOR’S BIO:
Giorgi Gvalia is Professor of International Relations and Jean Monnet Chair at Ilia State University in Tbilisi, specializing in small-state foreign policy, Realist IR theory, and South Caucasus geopolitics.
Ivane Lomidze is Associate Professor of Sociology at Ilia State University, whose work focuses on the normative and theoretical foundations of political realism.
