Western scholars and policymakers have long described Georgia as a “crossroads”, “boarderland”, or “bridge” between the East and the West. The language used is intuitive, as Georgia sits at the intersection of empires, trade routes, and geopolitical ambitions. Many empires have shaped Georgia, such as Russia, the Ottomans, and Persia. However, Georgia has persistently oriented itself toward Europe and the West. The metaphors of a “crossboards” or a “bridge” illuminate a key function of the nation, yet they also obscure important factors. In today’s international environment, which is defined less by institutional expansion and more by greater power competition, the framing of Georgia as a “crossroads” is no longer clear. Instead, this phrasing risks distorting how we understand the agency of Georgia, as well as the nation's domestic politics and strategic choice. The longevity of this metaphor is not accidental. In the 1990s and early 2000s, describing countries like Georgia as “bridges” or “borderlands” served as a concrete political purpose. Organizations like the EU and NATO allowed this engagement without commitment. Nations that had no immediate or short-term prospect of membership could even be kept “in the tent”. They could do this without ever being framed as candidates. Croatia, Romania, and Albania were all described as “crossroads” at various moments in time, until accession or near-accession rendered the metaphor unnecessary. The “crossroads” language functioned as a holding pattern for these nations until they reached their final goal.
Georgia’s experience highlights how political framing was in past decades. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Georgian political elites, particularly those associated with Mikheil Saakashvili, were deeply convinced that Georgia’s future lay in the West. By contrast, public opinion was more ambivalent. Georgia being framed as a “borderland” or “bridge” made it possible to speak about European destiny, without requiring immediate democratic consensus. Europe was not presented as a choice to be debated, but rather as a direction implied by geography and history. The metaphor smoothed over some of the internal disagreement, and secondhandedly helped align Georgia with the West. The same language and rhetoric has had a different impact on other nations in the South Caucasus. In Armenia, the idea of being a “bridge” was often imagined as a permanent condition, rather than a transitional one. In Azerbaijan, where the elites saw little advantage in meeting Western political requirements, the metaphor had far less weight and importance. Even then, “crossroads” was never just descriptive language, but a way of narrating strategic intent.
The high point of this narrative came in the mid-2000s. There was genuine enthusiasm in Washington, DC for Georgia’s NATO membership, alongside Ukraine’s. Figures such as Ronald Asmus made this project central to their life’s work. The idea that Georgia was on a clear trajectory toward Euro-Atlantic integration was mainstream and on the forefront of the minds of many politicians and diplomats. However, this ambition and excitement for Georgia’s entrance into NATO also contributed to the dynamics that culminated in the 2008 Russo-Georgian war. After that conflict, the idea and prospect of the NATO entrance quietly receded. While the metaphor remained, the road it implied and projected had largely disappeared.
Today, the world is no longer governed by membership and enlargement. Instead, the world is directed by spheres of influence, great power rivalry, and declining faith in liberal institutions. Over the past year in particular, the idea that the EU and NATO represent the uncontested high point of political and moral order has collapsed. Being “anti-NATO” or “skeptical of the EU” is no longer politically toxic in the way it once was. For Georgia’s ruling elites, such positions can even be seen as advantageous strategically or domestically. This shift in the political mindset exposes the limits of the “crossroads” framework. It continues to suggest movement towards a goal that no longer exists, which masks the realities of domestic power and political survival. The danger is not only the geopolitical drift, but increased room for political elites to consolidate power without meaningful external monitoring.
An alternative way of understanding this moment draws on what some scholars have described as a return to “neo-royalism”. Rather than a bureaucratic, rules-based order, today’s international politics increasingly resemble the early modern world, where there are a small number of powerful figures determining trade, security, and alignment through personal relationships. In a system like this, flattery, gifts, symbolic gestures, and flexible agreements mean a lot more than institutional compliance. This is not a foreign concept for the South Caucasian nations. Armenians, Georgians, and Azerbaijanis have centuries of experience navigating imperial politics by managing multiple patrons simultaneously. Georgia has already engaged in some of these practices. The significant troop contributions to Iraq and Afghanistan, among the largest per capita in the coalition, were not purely altruistic. They were a form of strategic signaling, a modern version of court politics. Seen through this lens, Georgian behavior is not evidence of confusion or failure, but of adaptation.
The problem is that old metaphors prevent the world from recognizing this adaptation as agency. When Georgia is framed primarily as a space “between”, it is implicitly denied its own political logic. Its actions appear reactive rather than strategic, and deliberate. For policymakers, this leads to miscalculation. If the “crossroads” metaphor has outlived its usefulness, the question becomes what it should be replaced by. Rather than asking where Georgia is headed, a better question might be how Georgia governs itself in a world without destinations. These questions portray Georgia as an actor on the world stage, not just a “bridge”. For decades, Georgia’s future was assumed rather than debated. The EU and NATO were treated as destiny. However, destinies are rarely good for democratic politics. In a world where the old ways are no longer applicable, Georgians themselves may finally have the space to argue openly about what kind of state they want to be, and how they intend to survive.