As a small country in an unstable but strategically important region, finding sustainable security and a geopolitical “home” was always going to be a challenge for Georgia. The location of the South Caucasus at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East meant that external powers have long vied for influence there, often stoking conflict among regional states. In Georgia’s case, its search for security was further complicated by internal divisions in Georgian society, which often made the country easy pickings for larger neighbors with predatory designs.

Over the past decade, NATO’s containment line has steadily shifted eastward, stretching from the Baltic Sea in the north through the Black Sea region and into the Eastern Mediterranean. This repositioning started in 2008, when the Black Sea began to be a conflictual area: Russia invaded Georgia that year, and in 2014 Russia annexed Crimea and then went into a full war with Ukraine beginning in 2022. These events underscored the growing volatility on NATO’s eastern periphery and exposed critical weaknesses in regional infrastructure that continue to hinder military integration and rapid reinforcement.