On July 9-11, 2024, Washington hosted the 75th-anniversary Summit of NATO. The main themes of the Summit were deterrence and defense, Ukraine, and global partnerships.
About the author: Temur Kekelidze is a Senior Fellow at the Georgian Strategic Analysis Center (GSAC) and a career diplomat. He served as Deputy Chief of Mission of Georgia to NATO in 2012-2016 and as Ambassador of Georgia to Cyprus in 2020-2023
The focus on Ukraine wasn’t surprising, given its profound impact on Euro-Atlantic security and NATO’s military-political agenda since the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, and especially after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
Georgia at the Washington Summit
Against the backdrop of the momentous developments in the international arena, which, along with challenges, offer unique geopolitical opportunities, Georgia seems to be disappearing from the NATO agenda. This was most evident at the Washington Summit, which marked the sharp deterioration of NATO-Georgia relations and the de-facto suspension of its membership process into the Alliance.
The absence of the Georgian Prime Minister in Washington, who, like his predecessor a year ago, wasn’t invited to the NATO Summit, was a telling sign. But even more telling was almost complete absence of Georgia from the Washington Summit Declaration, which mentioned Georgia only once, in the context of calling on Russia to withdraw its military forces from Georgia (and Moldova).
This is unprecedented as over 20 years and especially, since 2008, the Summit declarations have emphasized the full range of increasingly diverse political and practical cooperation, and the integration process between the Alliance and Georgia. Perhaps most alarmingly, for the first time since 2008, the Allies didn’t reaffirm the Bucharest Summit decision that Georgia will become a NATO member.
Nor was the Summit encouraging in terms of Georgia’s bilateral interactions, with only a handful of meetings in which his counterparts called on FM Darchiashvili to reconsider the law on agents and return to the reform track. While Secretary Blinken hosted the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan on the sidelines of the summit, there was no meeting with the Georgian foreign minister to discuss Georgia’s NATO integration and recent bilateral developments.
Georgia’s failure in Washington is not an isolated incident. The Summit reflects the recent deterioration of Georgia’s relations with the West, as evidenced by the freezing of its EU accession process and the ongoing U.S. review of its bilateral relations with Georgia. The fallout is a result of the anti-Western policies and Kremlin-style propaganda promoted by the ruling Georgian Dream party in recent years, as well as democratic backsliding culminating in the adoption of the so-called “Russian Law” (Law on Transparency of Foreign Funding).
NATO-Georgia relations setback as part of a larger trend
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NATO-Georgia relations have deteriorated due to the government’s pro-Russian stance, backsliding on reforms, and anti-Western rhetoric. In June 2023, a couple of weeks before the NATO summit in Vilnius, Georgia’s Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili, speaking at the GLOBSEC forum, repeating the Kremlin’s narrative, blamed NATO enlargement and Kyiv’s desire to join the alliance for triggering the war in Ukraine.
Prime Minister Garibashvili didn’t attend NATO Summit Vilnius last year, where the Allies dropped the MAP requirement for Ukraine, making its path to NATO membership much easier. Under different circumstances, Georgia could also have argued for the removal of the MAP – after all, the Allies have recognized since 2016 that Georgia has “all the practical tools to prepare for eventual membership.”
However, the ruling party seems to have no interest in Georgia’s progress toward European and Euro-Atlantic integration, nor in the implementation of democratic reforms, as evidenced by the government’s blatant disregard for EU recommendations necessary for the country’s progress toward the EU. This, by default, would also have facilitated NATO integration. As Secretary General Stoltenberg pointed out to Prime Minister Kobakhidze: “What you do to move towards EU membership goes hand in hand with efforts to become a full NATO ally.”
Over the decades, Georgia has pursued a proactive European and Euro-Atlantic integration policy with an ambitious political agenda, backed by an impressive track record of reforms and one of the largest contributions to Allied missions. This policy has led to Georgia’s NATO aspirant status. Meanwhile, reforms and a proactive EU integration policy led Georgia to become the leader of the associated trio of Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine.
In recent years, however, we have witnessed the reversal of European and Euro-Atlantic integration and its replacement by the so-called “multi-vector diplomacy,” which effectively isolates Georgia from the West and pushes it toward Russia.
One of the most vivid manifestations of the government’s pro-Russian policy was the adoption of the “Russian Law” despite massive street protests and harsh criticism from Western partners. The law was criticized by NATO, along with other international partners of Georgia. The Secretary General emphasized that its adoption “contradicts all efforts to strengthen democratic institutions in Georgia,” while Javier Colomina, Deputy Assistant Secretary General, said that “this draft [law] is a step backward and does not advance [Georgia’s] Euro-Atlantic integration.”
In addition to rhetoric and democratic setback, there are other signs of Georgia’s deviation from the NATO path. The termination of NATO’s SNGP StratCom initiative in March 2024 is one. Another is the government’s decision announced in the beginning of 2024 to build a civilian airport on the territory of strategic Vaziani military base, which could paralyze its normal functioning. The decision was heavily criticized by experts and opposition as damaging Georgia’s defensibility.
The Vaziani base is a multifunctional military facility that hosts the Combat Training Center (CTC) of the NATO-Georgia Joint Training and Evaluation Center (JTEC), among other important components of Georgia’s defense system. The Alliance and individual member states have invested heavily in the development of the base. Its closure will seriously damage Georgia’s defense capabilities, its interoperability with NATO, and Georgia’s overall credibility as a reliable partner and NATO aspirant.
In addition to undermining what has already been achieved, Georgia is missing out on new opportunities: In January 2024, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Romania signed a Memorandum on the “Trilateral Initiative” establishing the Mine Countermeasures Naval Group (MCM Black Sea) to clear the mines in the Black Sea. The MCM was activated on July 1st, 2024. Georgia could receive political and practical benefits from participation in the “Trilateral Initiative,” adding a new dimension to its Black Sea security cooperation with NATO. However, since the announcement of the initiative, there has been no public statement from the Georgian government expressing its willingness to participate in the MCM Black Sea.
The recent decision of the United States to postpone indefinitely the international military exercise Noble Partner, conducted jointly by the United States and Georgia, has negative consequences, among other things, for Georgia’s NATO integration. The exercises of this kind are crucial for increasing interoperability and engagement with Allies. According to Pentagon, the decision, which was announced right before the Washington Summit, was made “due to the Georgian government’s false accusations against the United States and other Western partners about alleged pressure on Georgia to open a second front against Russia, and about alleged participation of Global Party of War [a.k.a. the West] in two coup attempts against the ruling party.” Moreover, the decision is part of the “full review of all bilateral cooperation with Georgia,” which Washington launched on May 30, 2024.
These alarming developments make Georgia extremely vulnerable to the current volatile security environment. The potential severing of the US-Georgia strategic partnership, including the crippling of the well-established bilateral military cooperation, would deal a severe blow to Georgia’s NATO ambitions and its entire national security system.
Change of heart?
It appears that the Georgian government has decided to replace the decades-long proactive and ambitious NATO membership agenda with a passive, low-profile approach, which, if recent developments are any indication, may pave the way for the ruling party to attempt to introduce neutrality. Interestingly, the exploration of neutrality has been activated in parallel to the Washington Summit. On July 10, 2024, the “United Neutral Georgia” civic movement was founded by people associated with the Georgian Dream party.
Coincidentally (or not), this was followed by a long interview broadcast on July 14 by Irakli Rukhadze (also a person associated with the Georgian Dream and former business associate of GD honorary chair Bidzina Ivanishvili), the owner of the main pro-government TV channel Imedi, who criticized the presence in the Georgian Constitution of clauses on EU and NATO aspirations, calling them “nonsense”.
At a critical moment, and as NATO prepares to face threats directed against the rules-based international order, Georgia seems to be absent from its integration agenda, instead of redefining and strengthening its role and place among the Euro-Atlantic nations.
The Washington Summit could have been one of the most important windows for making the case for Georgia and advancing its NATO integration. However, due to the pro-Russian policies of the ruling party, which are pushing the country into the Kremlin-dominated gray zone of isolation and authoritarianism, the Washington Summit resulted in another missed opportunity for Georgia, excluding it from the major developments in the Euro-Atlantic area and distancing it from the NATO membership agenda.
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