The United States’ snubbing of Georgia has nothing to do with the Caucasian country’s democratic backsliding.
Vice President JD Vance’s recent visit to Armenia and Azerbaijan—while bypassing Georgia—has drawn attention to Tbilisi’s declining standing in Washington. Most commentators attribute Washington’s apparent disengagement from Georgia to the country’s democratic backsliding.
While this narrative is intuitively appealing, it is ultimately incomplete. The more compelling explanation lies not in normative failure but in strategic recalculation: Georgia’s geopolitical value to the United States appears to be diminishing at a time when Tbilisi itself seems increasingly reluctant to sustain close alignment with Washington and the broader West.
For much of the post-Cold War period, Georgia was widely regarded as Washington’s most reliable and outspoken partner in the South Caucasus. It pursued NATO and EU integration openly, contributed troops to US-led missions, and positioned itself as a reformist outpost in a difficult neighborhood. Today, however, Georgia appears largely absent from US regional itineraries and strategic conversations. This is not primarily because it has become less democratic, but because it has become less strategically useful.
There is no denying that Georgia’s democratic trajectory has dipped in recent years. Political polarization and repressive legislation for political parties, civil society, and academia have strained relations with Western partners. Yet democratic backsliding alone rarely explains sustained US disengagement. Washington maintains close partnerships with a wide range of regimes whose democratic credentials are, at best, questionable—provided they serve clear strategic purposes.
This logic is explicitly acknowledged in recent US strategic thinking. The National Security Strategy makes clear that Washington will not allow regime type to constrain cooperation where interests align, noting that the United States “must not overlook governments with different outlooks with whom we nonetheless share interests and who want to work with us.” In other words, democracy is a preference, not a prerequisite, for sustained engagement.
In practice, geopolitical utility consistently outweighs normative considerations. States that matter strategically continue to receive attention; those that do not are gradually deprioritized. Georgia increasingly falls into the latter category.
Georgia’s Shrinking Strategic Portfolio
Georgia’s earlier importance to the United States rested on several pillars that have weakened or disappeared altogether.
First, its logistical and transit role is no longer unchallenged. Georgia has traditionally served as a key corridor linking the Caspian region to the Black Sea and onward to Europe. However, as the Armenia–Azerbaijan peace process progresses and Washington signals growing interest in alternative regional connectivity initiatives such as the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), Georgia risks losing its long-standing transit advantage and strategic value.
Second, Georgia’s military relevance, while never central to US strategy, has declined with the end of the Afghanistan mission. Georgia was among the top non-NATO contributors to ISAF and the fifth largest contributor overall, a role that once enhanced its standing in Washington. With that mission concluded, Georgia’s value as a contributor to US global military efforts has naturally diminished.
Third, the strategic picture of the Black Sea has changed. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, US and NATO attention in the Black Sea region has increasingly focused on alliance members and treaty allies such as Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Georgia, while geographically relevant, is politically peripheral to these core defense calculations.
President Donald Trump’s foreign policy adds another layer to this realism. His approach is driven not only by national-interest calculations but also by a preference for visible, personalized diplomatic victories he can publicly claim.
Unlike Armenia and Azerbaijan, where Trump has claimed credit for ending a decades-long conflict, Georgia presents no analogous opportunity. There is no headline-ready “deal” to be brokered in Tbilisi. The conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia remain entrenched, and any meaningful attempt at resolution would require direct and potentially costly confrontation with Russia—a risk the Trump administration is unlikely to assume. As a result, the White House perceives Georgia less as a venue for diplomatic success than as a source of strategic liability.
Armenia and Azerbaijan Eclipse Georgia
Georgia’s relative marginalization becomes clearer when contrasted with its neighbors. Armenia has gained new strategic significance as it explores diversification away from Russia. Even tentative moves toward closer cooperation with Western actors make Armenia an object of US interest—not because its democratic credentials are flawless, but because its geopolitical orientation appears to be shifting.
Meanwhile, Azerbaijan’s role in European energy security, its decisive position following the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, and its ability to shape regional connectivity projects give Baku leverage that Washington cannot ignore.
The starkest illustration of this new hierarchy is the exclusion of Georgia from the administration’s flagship “Board of Peace” initiative. While authoritarian leaders like Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko have been invited, the Georgian leadership has not received an invitation. This distinction is instructive: Belarus, despite its pariah status, is a key actor in the Russia-Ukraine war and holds leverage over regional security.
Georgia, by contrast, currently offers neither strategic realignment nor leverage over key regional outcomes. Add to this Georgia’s reluctance to align clearly with US regional interests, and it should be no surprise that Georgia has largely fallen off Washington’s strategic radar.
The Trump administration’s approach to partnerships is shaped by a simple logic: partners that align clearly on major geopolitical issues are prioritized; those that hedge and remain ambiguous are not. Ambiguity reduces predictability, complicates cooperation, and lowers the expected payoff of engagement. In an era of strategic competition and limited attention spans, such states are quietly downgraded.
This helps explain why Georgia is not “punished” in dramatic fashion but is instead ignored. The absence of high-level visits is not a sanction; it is a signal of reclassification—from strategic partner to secondary actor.
Seen through this lens, Georgia’s problem is less about failing to meet US expectations for democracy and more about failing to convince Washington that it still matters strategically. The two issues are related, but not in a straightforward causal chain. Democratic backsliding has damaged Georgia’s normative standing, but the decline in its geopolitical utility ultimately accounts for Washington’s growing disengagement.
About the Author: Giorgi Gvalia and Bidzina Lebanidze
Giorgi Gvalia is a professor of Political Science and International Relations and a Jean Monnet chair at Ilia State University in Tbilisi, Georgia. His research focuses on international relations theory, small states in international politics, and the security and geopolitics of the South Caucasus and the wider Black Sea region. His work has appeared in journals such as Security Studies, Foreign Policy Analysis, and East European Politics.
Bidzina Lebanidze is an associated fellow at the Institute of Slavic and Caucasus Studies at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, where he leads the “Jena-Cauc” research project, focusing on EU foreign and security policy in the South Caucasus and Eastern Europe. He is an associate professor of International Relations at Ilia State University and a senior analyst at the Georgian Institute of Politics.
