Georgia in the Thucydidean Trap: Neutrality, Power Obsession, and the Slow Erosion of Choice

In his opening remarks during President Trump’s recent visit to China, China’s leader Xi Jinping invoked the ancient Greek historian Thucydides and, in a shot across the bow of hegemonic rivalry, asked: “Can China and the United States transcend the so-called ‘Thucydides Trap’ and forge a new paradigm for major-power relations?”

I sincerely hope that China and the United States will safely escape the Thucydidean Trap through pragmatism, realism, and strategic restraint. But that trap does not exist only for superpowers. History — and increasingly the future itself — lays versions of it before smaller states as well. For countries like Georgia, the danger is not becoming one of the giants in conflict, but surviving the turbulence created by their rivalry, distraction, hesitation, and shifting definitions of “stability.”

I would place Georgia within that same conceptual framework. And today, I would like to reflect on one particularly sensitive — and, I would argue, strategically dangerous — topic for Georgia: “neutrality,” a concept increasingly discussed in Tbilisi’s political and intellectual circles.

There is something almost surreal in the seriousness with which neutrality is debated in Georgia today. Not because neutrality is, in itself, absurd, but because in Georgia’s case it requires the deliberate suspension of geography, history, and power relations.

Neutrality is not an aspiration. For Georgia, it is a condition granted by others. And Georgia has never lived in a neighbourhood where conditions were granted freely.

I have spent much of my professional life watching how great powers speak about Georgia and, more importantly, how they think about it when they believe no one is listening. That experience leaves little room for illusion. In international politics, sympathy is fleeting; structure is durable. Georgia’s structure is unforgiving.

The classical Thucydidean Trap describes the danger that arises when a rising power confronts an established one. But for small states like Georgia, the trap takes a different form. We do not trigger confrontation between giants; we suffer its secondary effects.

For us, the danger is not only war between great powers. It is what happens when those powers become distracted, transactional, inward-looking, and begin exporting uncertainty instead of order. In such moments, proximity matters more than promises. When elephants fight — or mate — the grass underneath suffers all the same.

Georgia lives permanently inside this small-state version of the Thucydidean Trap. Our fate is shaped less by our ambitions than by how larger powers redefine “stability,” “order,” and “neutrality” in their own interests.

Georgia’s geography does not negotiate. Russia, Turkey, and Iran have never viewed the South Caucasus as a neutral space. Historically, it has always served as a buffer, a corridor, a frontier, or strategic depth. Today, that old geopolitical map is overlaid by newer actors — the European Union, NATO, the United States, and China — but the essential fact remains unchanged: neutrality here is never interpreted symmetrically.

For Russia, Georgian neutrality means something very precise: no NATO, no EU, no meaningful Euro-Atlantic integration, no Western security presence, and ultimately Russian veto power over Georgia’s strategic choices. In practice, neutrality means control without annexation.

For the United States, especially in its increasingly transactional mood, neutrality risks becoming disengagement: fewer obligations, fewer guarantees, less strategic investment.

China views Georgia primarily through the lens of commerce, logistics, and connectivity. Beijing seeks access and stability, not responsibility for Georgia’s security.

Only the European Union links its engagement to Georgia’s internal institutional strength — rule of law, accountability, democratic standards, and democratic alternation of power. Ironically, this is precisely why parts of Georgia’s ruling establishment increasingly portray the West as a threat: because reform constrains unchecked power.

And so the unavoidable question emerges: whose neutrality are we actually discussing?

The uncomfortable answer is: mostly Russia’s.

Yet Georgia’s true Thucydidean Trap may lie elsewhere. Not simply in navigating competition among great powers, but in whether the country itself develops into a resilient, democratic, and institutionally coherent state capable of surviving such competition without losing its sovereignty from within.

For Georgia, the real danger is not only external pressure. It is the gradual erosion of institutions, the weakening of democratic culture, and the recurring obsession with retaining power at any cost. In such an environment, neutrality ceases to be foreign policy and becomes a mechanism for preserving political permanence.

This is where the discussion becomes particularly dangerous. Neutrality in Georgia is increasingly presented not as strategic balance, but as liberation from Western “conditionality” — from demands for reform, accountability, institutional restraint, and alternation of power. Delay and hesitation from the West are then instrumentalised domestically as proof that Georgia must lower its ambitions and accommodate geopolitical gravity.

But prolonged ambiguity creates a vacuum, and a vacuum never remains empty.

The tragedy is that Russia’s offer is not really made to Georgia as a state. It is made to those who seek stability without reform, predictability without accountability, and longevity without democratic alternation. The bargain is old and brutally simple: fewer Western ties in exchange for fewer questions about governance.

Yet Russia’s understanding of “stability” has always required the limitation of sovereignty around its periphery. The cannonade of the 2008 war with Georgia and the continuing tragedy of Ukraine leave little room for illusion about that reality.

Small states do not survive by pleasing everyone. They survive by anchoring themselves institutionally, strategically, and normatively — even when the process is slow, frustrating, and imperfect.

Georgia cannot become Switzerland simply by declaring neutrality. Swiss neutrality emerged from historical consensus, international guarantees, and internal institutional strength. Georgia possesses none of those luxuries. Neutrality without guarantees is not neutrality. In geopolitics, it is a matter of strategic nakedness.

Ultimately, Georgia’s only sustainable path remains European and Euro-Atlantic integration — not because it is easy or because the West is flawless, but because it is the only available framework compatible with sovereignty, democratic development, and long-term institutional resilience.

The true Thucydidean danger for Georgia is not war between giants alone. It is erosion disguised as pragmatism — and the slow surrender of strategic choice in exchange for temporary political comfort.