The Foreign Policy of Post-Soviet Georgia: Strategic Idealism and the Russian Challenge

This article discusses Georgia’s foreign policy in the aftermath of the disintegration of the USSR in the early 1990s in regard to its relations with Russia. This perspective reveals the entrenched traditions of strategic idealism in the country’s political culture, and argues that this approach has shaped Georgia’s foreign policy strategies. On this basis, regardless of the geographic and geopolitical challenges, since the early years of independence, Georgia has remained committed to the pursuit of EU and NATO membership. This Western-oriented geopolitical predisposition caused the gradual deterioration of its ties with Russia, and eventually led to the current deadlock in bilateral relations. Through its analysis of the foreign policy of the Georgian Dream coalition, the article concludes that current relations between Russia and Georgia vacillate between rapprochement and confrontation, jeopardizing the security of the region as a whole.

Authors: Vasif Huseynov
381