WP: Keeping Georgia Strategically Important for the West

The Washington Post published an article on Georgia’s Foreign Policy, comparing Russian and EU tendencies in the country prior to the 2016 parliamentary elections.

Foreign Policy Research Institute Scholar Michael Cecire, in his publication, states that Georgia is not on the verge of a Kremlin-inspired political takeover, but neither is growing Russian influence a fantasy, as a December post by Dustin Gilbreath in The Monkey Cage appears to suggest.

According to the article, getting a feel for Georgia’s geopolitical trajectory is too important to get wrong. “Georgia is arguably the stablest and most democratic of the post-Soviet republics outside of the Baltics, and plausibly the last hope in a region that has seen years of political stagnation and regression. The United States and Europe have poured billions into promoting democracy and economic development there, and Tbilisi has consistently responded with an enthusiastic embrace of Westernization.”

The article says the government in Tbilisi is doing just about everything right. But expansion fatigue in the United States, and especially Europe, is breeding fatalism in Georgia, and incubating a political environment, where pro-Russia factions’ anti-west crusades are gaining traction.