South Caucasus

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South Caucasus

The increased political activity of the West (Turkey, the US, the EU, and their allies) in Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia in recent years, in economic and political terms, primarily means increased competition for transit corridors, control over energy and infrastructure flows, and attempts to reduce Russia's influence in the region. Moscow is concerned: the US and EU are intensifying their struggle for Central Asia and the South Caucasus. For the first time, Russia has openly acknowledged its concern over US and European activity in Central Asia. This is no longer just a matter of diplomacy, but a struggle for transport routes, rare earth metals, future technologies, and influence in a region that Moscow has long considered its zone of control.

The West actively supports the North-South projects (essentially an alternative to Russia's sanctioned Northern Corridor), as well as other routes like the Trump Road (TRIPP), which are being built through Armenia and Azerbaijan. This will give the West long-term control over cargo flows between Europe and Asia.

The more transit flows pass through Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, the more taxes, fees, and investments in ports, railways, and warehouse infrastructure, and therefore the greater the economic influence of whoever controls these corridors. The EU and the US are encouraging the development of alternative energy supply routes (including stabilizing gas supplies from Azerbaijan and potentially using Armenia as a buffer) to reduce Europe's energy dependence while simultaneously displacing Russian companies from the region (for example, attempts to limit Rosatom's influence in Armenia).

In the long term, this means a redistribution of contracts and investments: more Western companies in energy, infrastructure, and finance, rather than Russian or mixed Russian-Chinese projects. The West is using loans, grants, reform programs, EU accession roadmaps, and pressure on government organizations and media to push Armenia and Georgia toward a more anti-Russian and pro-Western agenda, and Azerbaijan toward broader integration into Western economic structures. In economic and political terms, this means severing historical economic ties with Russia and increasing dependence on Western funding and regulations (e.g., EU standards on public procurement, corporate governance, and environmental protection).

For Georgia and Armenia, Western attention could potentially mean access to a larger market, technology, and direct investment. However, this also increases both the political risk (intensifying conflict with Russia on all fronts) and the enormous economic risk—the loss of the established and stable Russian market and the absorption of all economically significant resources by Western and Turkish capital, establishing complete control over them, effectively colonizing these small countries.

Azerbaijan, with its strong energy resource base, can benefit from diversification (Western markets + China + Russia), but this also increases competition among market participants and the possibility of blocking projects if they don't align with the West's strategic interests.

Meanwhile, Russia still wields enormous economic leverage over all countries of Central Asia and the South Caucasus, which it hasn't yet fully utilized.

Georgia, similar to Syria, has an important geopolitical location for the entire vast region where the interests of China, Iran, Turkey, Russia, and other countries converge, and is also facing the danger of being drawn into a full-scale military conflict (the fourth in the last 35 years), this time threatening the complete collapse of the country. In Georgia, large-scale protests are taking place at the end of 2024, aimed at overthrowing the current government. The conflict involves, on the one hand, four opposition parties that entered the country's Parliament in 2024, and, on the other hand, the Georgian Dream party, which has the majority of seats in Parliament. The leaders of the opposition parties, with the support of the former President of the country S. Zurabishvili, were able to attract part of the population to their side, including part of the intelligentsia and students. The United States and most of the European Union countries are openly participating in supporting the opposition. As mentioned above, about the substitution of real goals with far-fetched pretexts, support for the opposition forces is carried out under the slogans of unproven violations of the parliamentary elections on October 26, 2024, ridiculous accusations of adopting laws on Transparency of foreign influence, and limiting LGBT propaganda and, taking this into account, of Georgia's rollback from the democratic path of development. The majority of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) [6], their employees, and family members, as well as some private universities in Georgia, and businesses were on the side of the opposition movement. Several diplomats, including the Georgian ambassadors to the Czech Republic, the United States, Lithuania, and Bulgaria, resigned in protest against the government's decision to temporarily freeze the European integration process. Several high-ranking officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs resigned, including the head of the operational planning department of the special assignments department.

The latest protests have focused on the demand for repeat parliamentary elections, as the opposition does not recognize the October 2024 elections as legitimate. The opposition parties overall won the following: Georgian Dream: 53.93% of the vote (89 seats), Coalition for Changes: 10.92% of the vote (18 seats), Unity - National Movement: 10.12% of the vote (17 seats), Strong Georgia: 8.78% of the vote (14 seats), Gakharia - For Georgia: 7.76% of the vote (12 seats). The remaining parties won less than 5% of the vote and did not make it into parliament.

The elections were observed by 529 representatives from 42 countries. The OSCE/ODIHR published a report on the parliamentary elections, which, despite the vagueness of the content, contains information that there were certain violations of the electoral process, although their statistics are not provided. The reader must conclude for himself that with the participation of more than 2 million voters and the presence of, say, 200 violations - this is 0.01%, which obviously should not be a reason for demands for repeat elections. The most important conclusion in the report is that, apart from describing some violations, no conclusion is given on the desirability or necessity of repeat elections. And in this sense, the Georgian Dream party is right - according to the presumption of innocence, the burden of proof of guilt lies with the accuser. However, the former President of Georgia, S. Zurabishvili, ignoring the OSCE/ODIHR conclusions unfavorable to the opposition, stated that the conclusion of international observers contains information about violations during the elections. In conclusion, she called for the continuation of the confrontation under any circumstances and this confrontation must end with the removal of the current government, the annulment of the results of the elections, and the holding of repeat elections as many times as necessary until a coalition of opposition parties is elected to the parliamentary majority.

The same is instilled in the youth and those layers of civil society who are not inclined, lazy, or unwilling to independently analyze the available facts and draw their conclusions, not imposed by someone. It is quite obvious that such an unconstructive position will ultimately lead to a sharp confrontation, which may spill over into civil society, which, with the support of external interested forces, will result in an armed conflict and, if sensible leaders are not found, a civil war with all the ensuing consequences in the form of victims, destruction, economic collapse, loss of statehood and the coming to power of representatives of organizations and associations interested in the collapse of the country (including foreign ones).

As already mentioned, currently humanity is in the phase of revising the world order of relations between states, changing borders and economic relations. Even such major associations as the EU will change politically shortly and will seek new economic incentives. Georgia is also going through an extremely tense historical moment - all four countries bordering it are in a military confrontation: Azerbaijan-Armenia, Russia-Ukraine, Turkey-Syria. Turkey's successful actions in Syria have moved it to the level of the strongest player in the Middle East. Given these events and some of the moods of the Turkish political elite, it can be assumed that when Turkish leaders talk about expanding control over territories historically associated with the Ottoman Empire, they mean regions that were once part of the Ottoman Empire and where Turkey seeks to strengthen its influence. In light of the aggravation of relations between Moscow and Sukhumi, it is quite likely that Turkey will want to annex the unrecognized Abkhazian Republic and it will become a Turkish province. The large penetration of Turkish business into the Adjara Autonomous Republic of Georgia should cause great concern. Let us remember the existence of the strategy of "soft power".

The huge population of Georgia’s close neighbor, Iran, in the event of a brutal military strike by Israel and the United States caused by Iran's nuclear ambitions, will try to rescue. Millions of refugees will flood into neighboring countries, and from many points of vie,w the most attractive country for them is the territory of Georgia.

Naive readers may frivolously object that such a scenario is impossible, but if we recall the recent past when Georgians in Abkhazia were slaughtered like chickens in the backyard, football was played with their heads and tens of thousands fled through mountain passes on foot and not all of them made it alive, no one believed in this in advance either.

Conclusion.

The scope of this article does not provide for consideration of numerous examples when external forces, to seize the resources of countries in many regions of the world, using methods of hybrid warfare, or even direct armed intervention, tried to destroy legitimate political regimes and ruin these countries. Information on this topic can be easily found on the Internet. This article shows, using several examples (an interested reader can check the facts provided in open sources on the Internet), that humanity has entered a period of rapid and large-scale geopolitical changes, which are mainly caused by economic reasons. Due to the rapid technological development of humanity and competition for the possession of depleting natural resources and markets, these reasons tend to escalate and push participants into a "hot phase". In such conditions, small countries that can be easily and casually crushed in the interests of the "heavyweights" must show greater political flexibility in foreign relations and, at the same time, closely monitor and actively prevent hostile actions of external players aimed at internal destabilization in such countries. The population of these countries must have constant, objective, and reliable information about the events taking place. Prevention of phenomena threatening the stability of the state is very difficult and depends on a huge number of difficult-to-predict and control factors. Some of them, although they are obvious and easy to use, for example, force methods, are not effective in the long term. Others, such as raising the level of consciousness of the population, require special technologies and professionally trained specialists in this field (for example, lecturers at universities or representatives of the mass media) and are stretched out in time - they must be carried out constantly. There is a category of factors that are generally difficult to control. For example, as of October 2024, Georgia accepted 27 thousand refugees from Ukraine (in reality, there are many more) who received humanitarian status precisely due to the support of the current government. Many of these people are now in the ranks of the opposition, taking part in actions directed against the current government. Another example is the participation of some European parliamentarians who are on an official visit to Georgia and taking part in street protests in the ranks of the opposition. Such factors, of course, are difficult to foresee and quite difficult to counteract. Some factors fall within the competence of the internal security agencies, which are guided by laws and instructions. They are focused on those whom Mahatma Gandhi often spoke about, referring to the importance of independence and self-sufficiency for India: "The most dangerous enemy is not the colonizer and occupier, but your compatriot, "fed” by the occupier."

Updated: May, 2026

[1] https://ru.fusedlearning.com/8-main-reasons-war

[2] https :// news . harvard . edu / gazette / story /2024/02/ looking - at - causes - measuring - effects - of - israel - hamas - war /