NEUTRALITY AS AN ALTERNATIVE
Recently, discussions surrounding neutrality have intensified within Georgia’s political discourse, where it is frequently portrayed as an alternative to the historical and civilizational European choice of the country. A well-coordinated propaganda campaign seeks to persuade the public that neutrality represents an effective response to the challenges facing Georgia, including the preservation of stability and the promotion of social well-being.
At first glance, neutrality as a model of foreign and security policy may appear to be an attractive alternative. However, historical experience clearly demonstrates that formal neutrality is incapable of providing genuine security guarantees for vulnerable states, particularly when they exist in the vicinity of an aggressive and revisionist power such as Russia.
The experiences of Georgia’s closest partners, Moldova and Ukraine, provide compelling evidence in this regard. Under its 1994 Constitution, Moldova was officially declared a permanently neutral state. Similarly, in 2010, Ukraine’s supreme legislative body adopted the Law on Military Non-Alignment, which prohibited the country from joining any military or political alliance, including NATO. Despite these constitutional and legislative commitments, Moldova’s territorial integrity remains unresolved to this day, while Russian military forces continue to maintain an illegal presence on its territory. Likewise, in 2014, Russia annexed Crimea and launched military aggression against Ukraine, resulting in the occupation of a significant portion of Ukrainian territory that continues to this day.
Russia’s unprovoked and large-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, ultimately exposed the fundamental shortcomings of neutrality as a viable security option for states such as Georgia. This reality is perhaps best illustrated by the decisions of Sweden and Finland to join NATO. For decades, both countries maintained policies of military non-alignment while simultaneously developing highly capable armed forces and robust systems of societal resilience that were widely regarded as exemplary within the international community. Nevertheless, the security environment created by Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine underscored the absence of a credible alternative to collective defence under NATO, prompting both Sweden and Finland to abandon their longstanding policies of non-alignment.
The aforementioned cases clearly demonstrate that the declaration of neutrality, in any form, cannot be regarded as the principal mechanism for ensuring Georgia’s national security. First, in the context of occupied territories and persistent military-political pressure, discussions of neutrality are fundamentally detached from reality. For a state facing geopolitical circumstances such as Georgia’s, membership in a strong collective security alliance remains the only credible deterrent against threats emanating from Russia. Second, claims that NATO membership would permanently preclude the restoration of Georgia’s territorial integrity are unfounded. There is neither evidence nor any guarantee that Russia would return Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region in exchange for Georgian neutrality. On the contrary, previous examples demonstrate that declarations of neutrality have not neutralized existential threats but have instead created favourable conditions for further Russian expansionism.
Furthermore, it is important to emphasize that neutrality, by definition, entails refusal of a state to participate in military or military-political alliances. As such, it stands in direct contradiction to the principles enshrined in Article 78 of the Constitution of Georgia, which commits the state to pursuing integration into the European Union and NATO.
It is equally noteworthy that the emergence of a public debate on neutrality coincides with the suspension of Georgia’s European Union accession process and the deterioration of relations with Western partners. Against this backdrop, it can be argued with a high degree of confidence that Russia is the principal beneficiary of this information campaign and, as in many previous instances, is advancing its objectives through domestic intermediaries. For decades, Russia has sought to undermine the aspiration of Georgia people to reclaim their historic place within the European family through destabilization activities. It is therefore entirely consistent with Russian strategic interests that an alternative to Georgia’s historic European choice be promoted in the form of neutrality.
Consequently, any decision by Georgia to declare neutrality in any form would create a political and security vacuum. Under such circumstances, Russia would acquire significantly greater opportunities to expand its influence over Georgia’s domestic and foreign policy. This would, in effect, entail an informal transfer of the sovereign rights of the country to Russia.