It's day one in the office after a four-year hiatus, and a flurry of groundbreaking
executive orders are blitzkrieg-ed from the Oval Office. The floodgates have just swung open. The expansion of “expedited removal”. Heightened securitization of the U.S.-Mexico border. A pullout from the World Health Organization. Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. As the winds of far-right populism sweep not only through the Americas, but also across Europe, we witness the emboldening of the Melonis, Orbáns, and other flavours of
hardline nationalists now gripping the reins of power on the continent.
Other parts of Europe are deeply anxious about Trump's return, with concerns over a potential U.S. withdrawal from European security – beginning with Ukraine – a looming transatlantic trade war, and an eventual erosion of multilateralism altogether. These fears are not unfounded. Just recently, President Trump
blasted their trade relationship with the European Union and threatened the
imposition of tariffs. He has also expressed uncertainty about whether the U.S. should allocate any
funds to
NATO, calling on allies to take on a greater share of responsibility for their own security. For all we know, Washington could even consider pulling out of the North Atlantic Alliance altogether and push Europe to fight her own wars, at her own expense.
Yet there are sections of Europe that seem to be in limbo. Georgia is no exception to this; former professional football player, Mikheil Kavelashvili, controversially takes hold of the Presidency, whilst Georgians rally at Freedom Square, clenching royal blue flags that dawn twelve gold stars - pressing the government to shake hands with the European Union. With this in the background, Irakli Kobakhidze, the Georgian Prime Minister, took to X to
congratulate the new U.S. President and hinted at a possible ‘reset’ of U.S.-Georgia relations. It may surprise some that the very nation which has long relied on American support to counter Russian influence is now facing challenges from Washington itself, including
sanctions and
cuts in development aid. So how did this small state in the South Caucasus, grazing the Black Sea and nestled between states such as Russia and Turkey, get here?
Let's pull the lens back; it is the summer of 2023 and the Parliament of Georgia in Tbilisi has just passed a law, backed by the government, that requires non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society groups receiving at least 20 percent of their funding from abroad to register as “organizations serving the interests of a foreign power.” It was quickly dubbed the “Russian Law”, protests erupted, and the European Union came out to express their
opposition to the regulation, stating that it had now put Georgia's membership into the organization on hold. The Biden administration responded by announcing the
suspension of a $95 million aid package for Georgia. Georgian Dream officials countered by deeming such actions as the works of
anti-Georgian elements functioning within the ‘deep state’ networks.
Protests continued sporadically and intensified in October of last year following Georgia's parliamentary elections. The Georgian Dream, with
54 percent of the vote, claimed outright victory, but the opposition called foul. What followed was nothing short of a furor. Opposition parties boycotted the parliament, international observers
reported incidents of vote-buying and double voting, and the people of Georgia, once again, poured into the streets, calling for new elections. While this demand was echoed by the
European Union, the U.S. had yet to follow suit.
Demonstrations grew to become riots, with violent clashes between citizens and the riot police, featuring the use of tear gas, water cannons, and even fireworks, after the government announced a suspension of EU accession talks until 2028 – a decision they have since
walked back. Opinion polls indicated that
79 percent of Georgians supported their country's integration into the bloc, so the halt, quite naturally, triggered widespread outrage. The demonstrations were met with
severe government crackdowns, including the arrest of peaceful protesters and reports of extreme police brutality. Georgian Dream officials, including the former Prime Minister, Bidzina Ivanishvili, began suggesting that a “
global war party” was pushing Georgia to open a “second front” against Russia. These assertions were later repeated by Moscow when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
accused the “collective west” of attempting to engineer a color revolution in the region.
Tbilisi did not stop here; it pressed ahead and fortified its ties with Beijing, beginning with the development of the Anakali deep-sea port. The Georgian government had initially launched the investment with a Georgian-American consortium – comprising TBC Bank from Georgia and Conti Group from the U.S. – to handle the project. The port was slated for completion by December 2020, but in 2019, it faced a major setback when the Georgian prosecutor's office accused the owners of TBC Bank of
money laundering. The government also
alleged that the consortium failed to meet deadlines and secure necessary financing, leading to the termination of the contract in January 2020.
In 2024, the government revisited the project and selected a
Chinese-Singaporean consortium led by China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) to take over the construction. The initiative aims to transform Georgia into a booming trade hub by connecting Europe and Asia, driving economic growth, and attracting global investment. By 2023, China had already become Georgia's
fourth-largest trading partner, with bilateral trade totaling $1.64 billion. This relationship saw an upgrade in 2023 through the Sino-Georgian Strategic Partnership which emphasized stronger political, economic, cultural, and international collaboration.
Many Western scholars interpret Georgia's decision to 'bend the knee and kiss the ring(s)' of authoritarian leaders, especially Vladimir Putin, as driven by a fear of a Ukraine-like scenario – one that could push Eastern Europe beyond its breaking point. However, to simply assert that Georgia's drift away from Euro-Atlantic structures is merely an attempt to appease Moscow oversimplifies the conundrum Tbilisi faces, reducing it to a binary that overlooks the complexities at play. While Western media outlets were quick to uncritically echo the protestors' claims and criticize the “Russian Law” as draconian, they seem to forget that many democracies, such as Australia and Finland, have already implemented similar foreign agent regulations intending to improve the transparency of civil society and limit foreign influence from nations like Russia and China. Quite ironically, it was the U.S.'s own
Foreign Agent Registration Act (1938) that set the precedent for such measures. In fact, one could argue that the legislation holds even greater justification in a state like Georgia, where the
majority of NGOs – unlike in the U.S. – are deeply reliant on foreign funding, rather than the domestic sources that might otherwise provide a sense of local autonomy.
It hardly helps matters that prominent protest leaders have started drawing parallels to Ukraine's Euromaidan, demanding nothing less than the government's removal. This rhetoric of a protest-driven regime change was, and still is, being unsettlingly wielded as justification for calls to oust a democratically elected government. It is also worth noting that the
polls for the 2024 parliamentary elections had already hinted at what was to come – an overwhelming likelihood that Georgian Dream was poised to sweep through and secure the majority vote.
