Will Georgia Ever Join NATO? Inside Tbilisi's Stalled Alliance Bid

On paper, Georgia is one of the most Western-leaning states to emerge from the former Soviet Union. A one-time victim of Russian aggression, the South Caucasus nation today revels in its pro-West identity. Its people overwhelmingly want to join the European Union. Article 78 of its constitution compels the government to seek NATO membership.

On a practical level, the links with the Alliance are already deep: Tbilisi’s soldiers train with NATO instructors and have served in its missions. If any country was going to be a shoo-in for membership, it would seem to be Georgia.

Or would it? Despite record-high public support for joining, Georgia’s ruling party appears to be going out of its way to sabotage relations not just with NATO, but with the entire West. At a time when Russian missiles fall on Ukrainian cities, Georgia’s prime minister has been repeating Kremlin talking points. The government has accused NATO of trying to open a new front in the war.

In parliament, the ruling party has systematically dismantled the country’s checks and balances—a surefire way of blocking both EU and NATO accession.

How did things come to this? How did overwhelmingly pro-West Georgia end up in a situation where its own government seems to be sabotaging its aspirations? The answer runs through the murky waters of Georgian politics, the long shadow of a single oligarch, and a strategic predicament that may make Tbilisi simply too dangerous, and too difficult, for the Alliance to defend. This is the story of why Georgia’s NATO dream now looks further away than at almost any point in its history.

Euro-Atlantic Dreams

Nestled on the eastern shores of the Black Sea, the tiny, mountainous nation of Georgia sits well off the radar for most Americans and Europeans. At a mere 69,700 square kilometers, and home to just 3.7 million people, the country is semi-invisible in the West. Mention it offhand to most people, and they will assume the subject is Georgia the U.S. state. Yet while this one-time Soviet republic may not frequently intrude on the minds of those living in NATO countries, the same is not true in reverse.

For decades now, Tbilisi has been officially trying to join both the Alliance and other Western institutions like the EU. Article 78 of the Georgian Constitution instructs the government to pursue membership of both. A 2018 amendment went further still, insisting that the nation’s leaders “take all measures (…) to ensure the full integration of Georgia into the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.” This is not merely an elite preoccupation.

Among ordinary Georgians, there is genuine passion for both projects.

While joining the EU is more popular overall—with around 80 percent of Georgians supporting the idea—NATO membership is likewise viewed favorably. A March 2023 poll found 73 percent of the public in favor of joining the Alliance, with only 13 percent against. In many ways, those numbers simply reflect an ongoing process that has been building since the early 2000s. Over the decades, NATO and Georgia have accumulated so many ties that Tbilisi can appear closer to the Alliance than even some of its member states.

Since 2015, the NATO–Georgia Joint Training and Evaluation Center at Krtsanisi Military Base has been responsible for training Tbilisi’s troops. During the Alliance’s Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan, Georgia committed more of its forces—per capita—than any other non-member state. In diplomatic engagement, too, Tbilisi is probably cozier with NATO than any other non-member not named Ukraine. As an Enhanced Opportunities Partner, Georgia has, per the Georgian outlet Civil, “hosted the North Atlantic Council five times, and the NATO Military Committee four times”—a record Civil describes as “unprecedented for a non-member of NATO.”

On top of that, the South Caucasus nation is also a recipient of the Substantial NATO–Georgia Package, a tranche of military aid intended to keep Tbilisi’s forces strong and interoperable with the Alliance’s. Taken together, these commitments make Georgia look like an exceptionally eager suitor—a contestant absolutely determined to reach the finale and prove itself the perfect match. And yet, despite all of it, NATO membership for Georgia looks further away than perhaps it has ever been.

While Ukraine’s potential accession is a live talking point in Alliance capitals—cheered on by places like Ankara and Vilnius, fretted over in Berlin and Washington—Georgia’s candidacy seems to be on ice, perhaps for the foreseeable future. What has pushed relations between these partners into such a deep freeze is the central question. But understanding it first requires a detour through Georgia’s post-independence history—one that illuminates both Tbilisi’s links with NATO and why the country is meant to be seeking shelter under the Alliance’s nuclear umbrella in the first place.

An Era of Instability

While many of the nations that split from the USSR in 1991 managed to do so peacefully, Georgia was one of the unlucky few that immediately plunged into conflict. As a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, Georgia had also been home to a couple of second-tier autonomous republics—or ASSRs—as well as the autonomous oblast of South Ossetia. In the Soviet system, these regions existed to give some semblance of local control to ethnic minorities. In Georgia’s case, that included the Abkhaz people and the Ossetians.

When the USSR imploded and the major republics declared independence, some of these autonomous entities tried to do the same. In Georgia, Moldova, Russia, and Azerbaijan, separatist movements all sought to carve out brand-new tiny states—states that would sit on land the newly independent countries considered their own. The predictable result was war. For its first few years of independence, Georgia was mired in conflict.

And those conflicts ended not with victory for Tbilisi, but with two de facto—if mostly unrecognized—states occupying chunks of Georgian land.

On the Black Sea coast, Abkhazia came to control about half the nation’s shoreline. In the north, South Ossetia clung to the mountains separating Georgia from Russia. Although the fighting had stopped in both regions by 1994, no lasting peace would follow. It would be these frozen conflicts, more than anything else, that would come to define Georgia’s next decade and a half.

At the same time all this was unfolding, another story was taking shape—one that might be called Georgia’s journey toward the West. As early as 1994, Tbilisi had joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace. By 2002, President Eduard Shevardnadze was promising “to knock on NATO’s door” as the Alliance enlarged. But it was Shevardnadze’s downfall in the 2003 Rose Revolution that really gave the process momentum.

With the classically Soviet figure of Shevardnadze gone, space had opened for a brand-new form of leadership—one that was bombastically pro-West.

And no Georgian political figure was perhaps as bombastic as Mikheil Saakashvili. There is a polite habit, in newspapers, of describing certain figures as “colorful”; Saakashvili was more like an explosion in a paint factory, a man of such singular personality that he managed to dominate Georgian politics for nearly a decade. As president, his goal was to drag his nation, kicking and screaming, into NATO. In 2008, he organized—and won—a nationwide referendum on joining the Alliance, a move intended to send a firm signal ahead of NATO’s meeting in Bucharest that year.

Along with Ukraine, the hope was that Georgia would be granted a Membership Action Plan, or MAP—a clear roadmap leading to shelter under the Alliance’s nuclear umbrella. In this, Saakashvili was backed by the United States. But, as the Alliance’s more recent troubles inviting in Sweden demonstrated, having Washington in your corner is not enough. Every single other member must agree for a new country to join. And in 2008, Germany and France were absolutely not in the mood to admit Tbilisi or Kyiv.

The result was an infamous declaration in which the Alliance essentially said: sure, you can join one day—just do not ask when, or how, or what you need to do, or anything else. To call this the worst of both worlds would be a planet-sized understatement. The agreement that Georgia would one day join NATO sent Vladimir Putin into a fury. Yet the lack of any concrete commitment failed to boost Tbilisi’s security.

As Chatham House policy expert Orysia Lutsevych much later told Reuters, “The Bucharest summit left a lot of bad aftertaste and actually created the strategic ambiguity … the permanent NATO waiting room for Ukraine and Georgia.” It was a waiting room Putin was determined to ensure they never left.

Five Days That Changed Everything

Just four months after the Bucharest summit, war broke out between Russia and Georgia. The short version is grim: separatists in South Ossetia shelled Georgia, so Georgia sent in the army—only to discover it had walked into a trap when Russian armor swept across the border. In five days of fighting, 850 people were killed, 35,000 Georgians were driven from their homes, and Russian tanks came within kilometers of Tbilisi. Effectively, the entire Georgian navy and air force were destroyed.

When the shooting stopped, twenty percent of Georgian territory—comprising Abkhazia and South Ossetia—remained under permanent Russian occupation. It has stayed that way ever since. For many Georgians, their swift and painful defeat in 2008 made joining NATO an even more urgent priority. Here, after all, was proof that a small nation on Russia’s border could be invaded and dismembered in less than a week, and that no Western security guarantee would arrive to stop it.

Even after Saakashvili’s party lost power in 2012—with Saakashvili himself stepping down as president in 2013—the drive west remained government policy. It was understood as the only plausible security guarantee for a tiny nation on Russia’s doorstep. Or so the thinking used to go. Because the last year and a half has seen a fundamental shift in the government, a shift that has accomplished what Russian tanks alone never managed: pushing Georgia away from the West, and turning the prospect of Tbilisi joining NATO into something that increasingly resembles an impossible dream.

Sabotage, With a Smile

Going by official statements alone, you would think Georgia was still tracing its old, pro-NATO path. In April 2023, Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili of the ruling Georgian Dream party met NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and told him, “Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspiration remains our top foreign policy priority.” Within the nation’s institutions, the official line is that a 12-step reform plan to boost Tbilisi’s EU candidacy is already underway—one that would likewise have a positive impact on NATO membership.

But this is merely the surface. It is the smiling, pro-Western face that Georgian Dream presents to the world. Start to peel away the makeup, and what lies underneath looks very different. In the 18 months following Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the government grew closer to Russia.

From a Western perspective, disturbingly close. Not only did Tbilisi refuse to join sanctions; it actually increased trade with its former overlord. According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “In 2022, Georgia’s exports to Russia increased by 6.8 percent to $652 million, while imports soared by 79 percent to $1.8 billion: the highest level for the past sixteen years.”

At the same time, Georgian Dream has been sending signals to Putin designed to suggest the party is on his side. About a month after his meeting with Stoltenberg, Prime Minister Garibashvili sat before a security conference in Bratislava and blamed NATO for the war in Ukraine: “One of the main reasons (for the war) was NATO, right? NATO enlargement (…) One of the reasons was Ukraine’s will and determination to become a member of NATO. And so, therefore, we see the consequences.”

Trash-talking a club you claim to want to join is not, as a rule, a sound strategy for being admitted. Yet Georgian Dream routinely disparages NATO with all the gusto of a professional wrestler taunting an opponent.

The pattern is measurable. In the immediate aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Open Caucasus Media analyzed the public statements of party chairman Irakli Kobakhidze. Over five months, Kobakhidze made nine comments critical of Russia, compared with 26 critical of Ukraine, and nearly 60 about the West. These are not isolated outbursts. Multiple high-ranking Georgian Dream figures have repeatedly accused both NATO and the EU of trying “to drag Georgia into the war against Russia.”

The effect of all this has been to drive Tbilisi further from both institutions. The NATO Secretary General’s Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia declared of Georgia’s behavior in 2022 that “We are concerned, as an Alliance and the Allies themselves.” Meanwhile, the Guardian reported that Prime Minister Garibashvili had picked fights with the European Parliament, accusing it of peddling LGBTQ+ propaganda, while his defense minister branded liberalism a threat to the nation’s security.

Anyone who follows European news will recognize the playbook: Georgian Dream appears to be deliberately channeling Viktor Orbán, almost as if the spirit of the Hungarian autocrat had somehow possessed Tbilisi. That impression is largely correct. Foreign Policy spoke with Eto Buziashvili at the Atlantic Council, who argued that the rhetoric was part of a deliberate strategy—a way of ensuring Georgia never joins NATO or the EU, without the politically costly step of simply admitting the government is not interested.

By intentionally pushing the EU’s buttons through Orbán-style provocation, Georgian Dream knows it is torpedoing its bid to join the bloc. Likewise, declaring that NATO started the Ukraine war is all but guaranteed to alienate the entire Alliance.

As Buziashvili put it: “It appears that backsliding of democracy, failed judiciary reforms, political prosecution, assault on free media and pro-democracy activists, and attacks on freedom of speech (are done) intentionally to prevent Georgia from becoming part of the Western institutions.” And as that list suggests, the plot goes well beyond merely badmouthing the West. Over the past couple of years, Georgian Dream has executed a power grab, stacking the judiciary to such an extent that the United States recently sanctioned four senior judges for corruption.

The party has also imprisoned former president Mikheil Saakashvili on what his allies describe as trumped-up charges—and, according to his supporters, may even be slowly poisoning him to death. If nothing else, they appear to be denying him adequate medical care. Taken together, these comments and actions form an almost perfect mechanism for sabotaging the pro-West aspirations of Georgia’s own people, throwing down a roadblock that future governments will struggle mightily to overcome.

At this point a reasonable observer might be confused. Russia attacked these people 15 years ago, and still occupies a fifth of their country—so why would their leaders secretly not want to ever join NATO? To answer that, one word will do: oligarchy. More precisely, a single oligarch, around whom everything in Georgia turns—a man desperate to bend an entire nation to his whims.

The Man Behind the Curtain

To understand modern Georgia, there is no better starting point than its most powerful man: Bidzina Ivanishvili. The founder of Georgian Dream, Ivanishvili is a figure of staggering wealth in a country where the average monthly wage clocks in at around $650. With over $5 billion to his name, his fortune is—according to the Guardian—“equivalent to more than a quarter of Georgia’s GDP.” But his power does not derive from money alone.

Despite retiring as prime minister in 2013 after only a year in the post, and leaving politics altogether in 2021, Ivanishvili still retains a vice-like grip on the ruling party. The current prime minister, for example, is a former employee of his construction firm. The head of security worked in several of his businesses.

The interior minister started out as Ivanishvili’s head bodyguard. If Donald Trump continues to steer the Republican Party along certain trajectories despite no longer being president, Ivanishvili is that dynamic on steroids. According to Foreign Policy, every single current minister was once one of his personal aides.

Speaking to the Guardian, the vice-president of the Georgian Institute for Strategic Studies put it plainly: “We are basically a one-man-dominated political system, where the oligarch Ivanishvili is basically fine-tuning everything.”

And what Ivanishvili appears to want to do right now is fine-tune his nation into becoming a supporter of Russia. Although born in Georgia during the Soviet era, he made most of his fortune in Moscow. Specifically, he was one of the oligarchs who took control of major state industries in the wild days of 1990s privatization, before selling off his accumulated business interests for a killing. Where that wealth is stored today is a matter of some controversy.

Ivanishvili’s name has surfaced in almost every major financial investigation of recent years, from the Panama Papers to the Pandora Papers.

Some suspect at least part of his money is still tied up in Russia, where the Kremlin tightly controls who has access to what—a dependency that could help explain the distinctly pro-Russia direction he has recently been tiptoeing in. As Foreign Policy summarized, “Experts place the blame for Georgia’s hard turn toward Russia with billionaire oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili.”

For the record, Ivanishvili denies all of this. He denies being pro-Russian, and even denies still being active in his nation’s politics. Few are convinced. Back in 2022, the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for sanctions on Ivanishvili—one that highlighted his “destructive role” in Georgia’s economy and political life. Others have gone further. Batu Kutelia, a former Georgian ambassador to the United States, has claimed that “Ivanishvili is the informal ruler of Georgia and a Russian ally.”

In analyses of aspiring NATO candidates, the political dimension usually shares the stage with technical discussion of military prowess and interoperability. In Georgia’s case, though, those other factors are almost beside the point. Under Ivanishvili’s shadow, everything is about politics—and that is likely to remain true at least until the next elections in 2024. Right now, the opposition is trying to fight back against Ivanishvili’s and Georgian Dream’s anti-NATO stances, but it holds far too few seats in parliament to effect any change.

For most Georgians, this must be a profoundly depressing thought: that you live in an overwhelmingly pro-West country, yet because of a single oligarch, all 3.7 million of you are being dragged ever deeper into Vladimir Putin’s ice-cold, suffocating embrace. Still, the story does not end with one man’s reach. It is worth assuming, at least for a moment, that aside from money, Georgian Dream might have rational reasons for its sudden anti-Western course. In that case, what might those reasons be?

Let Down and Hanging Around

For many non-NATO nations in Europe, Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine was a wake-up call about the Alliance’s value. Within months, both Sweden and Finland applied to join. Ukraine, likewise, has pinned its hopes for post-war security on a seat at the table. Even Ireland at least discussed the possibility of joining NATO—a possibility it has since rejected. In Georgia, though, the same onslaught seems to have pushed many government officials in the opposite direction.

Rather than a security guarantee, many appear to believe that taking steps to join the Alliance today would actually put them in greater danger. The logic runs like this: if Putin really is determined to stop NATO expansion, then Russia would be at its most dangerous in the period between Georgia receiving its Membership Action Plan and actually joining. During that window, Tbilisi would not be covered by NATO’s collective defense policy—the famous Article 5 that would bring not just most of Europe’s armies, but also the United States, running to help. And Georgian officials worry NATO would not risk war with Russia for a nation that is not yet a member.

As one Western diplomat in Georgia told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: “Where they used to view receiving a Membership Action Plan as a positive step, the prime minister made it clear in Bratislava that maybe his perception is that steps short of actual security guarantees actually increase Georgia’s vulnerability.” This anxiety has been compounded by a perception in Tbilisi that the West has not done enough to help Ukraine.

To anyone from a country that has poured billions of dollars of equipment into Ukraine, that complaint might sound bizarre—NATO is clearly trying to help drive Russia out as best it can. But that is not how it looks to some in Georgia’s government, for whom a Russian invasion is not a mere hypothetical but something they have actual, recent experience of. Right now, were Russia to strike suddenly from its bases in South Ossetia, Georgia would be in existential danger.

The geography is unforgiving. Unlike Ukraine, where the nation’s sheer size meant the city of Kyiv had days to brace for the arrival of Russian forces, Georgia is so small that there would scarcely be time to watch a feature-length film before armor reached the front door. According to the Guardian, “If the Russians did strike from South Ossetia, they could cut Georgia’s main east-west highway in a few minutes, and be in Tbilisi within a couple of hours.”

From this perspective, anything short of a concerted NATO drive to expel Russia from Ukraine looks underwhelming. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace framed it bluntly: “To Tbilisi, Western military aid for Ukraine looks insufficient to end the war, while Russia has succeeded in retaining control of large parts of the country. Georgian officials believe the balance of power is shifting in Russia’s favor.”

Seen through this lens of cold calculation, tilting softly toward Russia may be the only rational move available to Georgia. It amounts to what Victor Kipiani, chairman of the Geocase think tank in Tbilisi, described to the New York Times as a “balancing act”—an attempt to mollify the angry, giant nation on the doorstep without completely burning bridges with the West. In the simplest possible terms: working with Russia lets the Georgian economy grow fat off increased trade and travel, a tangible plus.

Running for the NATO security umbrella, by contrast, offers both possible benefits and the potential for nationwide catastrophe. As Kipiani told the New York Times, “The country is a prisoner of its own geography.”

Defending the Indefensible?

There is one actor in all this whose views matter enormously and have so far gone unheard: NATO itself. For all the focus in Alliance capitals on Georgia’s democratic backsliding, the truth may be that this is largely a red herring—a distraction from the real issues. That can be deduced from NATO’s own track record of admitting or tolerating members with less than stellar forms of governance.

Greece, for example, remained a member even after the colonels established their military dictatorship. Today, more autocratic governments like Turkey and Hungary remain in the club despite questionable commitments to democracy. More to the point, NATO has recently admitted new members with problematic politics. In 2017, Montenegro entered the Alliance, followed in 2020 by North Macedonia.

In 2021, Transparency International ranked both nations far behind Georgia on corruption. Given all that, it seems unlikely that rule of law is the only thing worrying NATO’s members about Georgia’s bid. So where might the real problem lie?

The most likely answer lies in the two separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Over its history, NATO has occasionally admitted states with disputed territory. West Germany, for instance, joined back when the country’s east was still locked behind the Iron Curtain. Likewise, the Alliance already includes member states with territories its security guarantee does not cover. Guam and Hawaii are both explicitly excluded from America’s Article 5 protection, as is Réunion Island from France’s.

Still, admitting a state with 20 percent of its territory under Russian occupation would be a massive step. Even if the Alliance and Georgia both agreed that Abkhazia and South Ossetia fell outside NATO’s security guarantee, there would simply be too high a risk of confrontation with Russia. Given how carefully NATO has avoided being dragged into the Ukraine war, it is understandable that members might balk at antagonizing Moscow in the South Caucasus—especially considering how hard Georgia would be to defend.

One massive advantage Ukraine has enjoyed in its war is the sheer length of border it shares with NATO countries. Arms and equipment can flow in from Poland, Romania, and Slovakia—and could likewise have flowed from Hungary, had Orbán not blocked them. Georgia, by contrast, borders a single NATO member: Turkey. And that border is relatively short and covered with mountains.

Only two major roads connect Georgia’s interior with Turkey. In the event of a conflict, those would create two obvious strategic chokepoints for Russia to attack, potentially making resupply extremely difficult.

Combine that with the short distance between Russian forces in South Ossetia and the capital of Tbilisi, and it becomes easier to see why NATO members might consider Georgia simply too difficult to defend. As War on the Rocks put it in 2021: “Defending a country (…) as remote as Georgia puts in doubt NATO’s ability to deploy the substantial in-theater and backup forces and equipment this would require. It also puts in doubt America’s willingness to greatly enhance its existing deterrence initiative and not least carry the financial burden.”

The counter-argument is straightforward, and powerful. Putting Georgia’s NATO bid on ice out of fear of Russia effectively hands Vladimir Putin a veto over Tbilisi’s foreign policy. It also raises the uncomfortable question of whether the Alliance truly has an open-door policy, or whether that is simply a comforting fiction members tell themselves. Nonetheless, these are real problems NATO must grapple with when deciding whether to admit Georgia—a decision the Alliance has now successfully been deferring for 15 years.

Grounds for Pessimism, Reasons for Hope

It might feel, at this point, as though the central question—will Georgia ever join NATO?—has been answered with a firm no. There are certainly good reasons for pessimism. A ruling party is consolidating power even as it snuggles up to the Kremlin. The strategic environment is forbidding. And in both Brussels and Tbilisi there is a real fear that even starting the accession process might invite a massive Russian backlash.

Yet, for all that the matter may look settled, there are small grounds for optimism too—not just in the ongoing military cooperation between NATO and Georgia, but in the Georgian people themselves. With around three quarters of Georgians wanting to join the Alliance, it seems reasonable to think their government can only hold them back for so long. The road may not be easy. But if self-determination for all peoples genuinely means anything, it is hard to see how NATO could ultimately refuse Tbilisi’s accession.

Because Georgia is a country that has already endured 15 years of Russian aggression and hybrid warfare—the only other nation in Europe with even the remotest sense of how Ukrainians feel right now. Its past may have been defined by the colossus on its northern border. But if Georgians get their way, then maybe—just maybe—its future will be defined by something else: the freedom to choose a new destiny, far from the Kremlin’s clutches.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does Georgia’s constitution say about NATO and EU membership?

Article 78 of the Georgian Constitution instructs the government to pursue membership of both the European Union and NATO. A 2018 amendment strengthened this, obliging the nation’s leaders to “take all measures (…) to ensure the full integration of Georgia into the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.” Despite these constitutional obligations, the ruling Georgian Dream party has taken actions that effectively block both bids.

Why is Georgia’s own government accused of sabotaging its NATO bid?

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the ruling Georgian Dream party has refused to join Western sanctions on Russia, increased trade with Moscow, blamed NATO for the war in Ukraine, accused NATO and the EU of trying to drag Georgia into the conflict, and systematically stacked the judiciary — steps the United States responded to by sanctioning four senior judges for corruption. Analysts argue this is a deliberate strategy to torpedo accession without openly admitting the leadership is not interested.

Who is Bidzina Ivanishvili and why do analysts blame him for Georgia’s turn toward Russia?

Ivanishvili is the billionaire founder of Georgian Dream, with a fortune exceeding $5 billion — equivalent to more than a quarter of Georgia’s GDP. Though formally retired from politics in 2021, the vice-president of the Georgian Institute for Strategic Studies described Georgia as “a one-man-dominated political system, where the oligarch Ivanishvili is basically fine-tuning everything.” Experts note that every current minister was once one of his personal aides, and his wealth was accumulated largely in Moscow, which some analysts believe gives the Kremlin leverage over him.

What happened in the 2008 Russia-Georgia war and why does it still shape the NATO debate?

After separatists in South Ossetia shelled Georgia and Georgia sent in its army, Russian armor swept across the border. In five days of fighting, 850 people were killed, 35,000 Georgians were displaced, Russian tanks came within kilometers of Tbilisi, and the Georgian navy and air force were effectively destroyed. Twenty percent of Georgian territory — Abkhazia and South Ossetia — remains under permanent Russian occupation. For many Georgians, the defeat made NATO membership more urgent, while for NATO members it raised the risk of admitting a state with a fifth of its land under Russian control.

Why might NATO be reluctant to admit Georgia on strategic grounds alone?

Geography and the frozen conflicts make Georgia uniquely difficult to defend. Roughly 20 percent of its territory is under Russian occupation, raising the risk of direct confrontation with Moscow. Georgia borders only one NATO member, Turkey, across a short, mountainous frontier served by just two major roads — chokepoints that would make resupply extremely difficult in a conflict. Russian forces in South Ossetia could cut Georgia’s main east-west highway in minutes and reach Tbilisi within a couple of hours, making the strategic calculus far more daunting than it was for Sweden or Finland.

Sources

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12. History: https://www.history.com/news/russia-georgia-war-military-nato