Policy-maker
The report looks at the Caucasus–Black Sea region – the arc from the eastern Balkans across the Black Sea into the Caucasus – with a particular focus on Georgia. It’s a small geography with outsized importance: it sits on energy routes, East–West trade corridors, and the contact line between Russia, Turkey, and the Euro-Atlantic space.
The basic claim is that this is not a level playing field. It’s a landscape of asymmetry. Major powers set most of the rules and control the hard power and markets; smaller states like Georgia live with the consequences. Add in dependence on external capital, demographic pressure, and the legacy of empires and weak institutions, and you get a structurally tilted environment.
In that setting, smaller states are constantly pulled into zero-sum contests: pipeline routes framed as wins or losses for blocs, alliance choices treated as existential, territorial disputes that crowd out everything else. That’s how you end up with repeated wars, frozen conflicts, and a region that’s more frontline than platform.
The report argues for a different strategic posture. It treats peace as a hard asset and complexity as a resource. In a region where conflict is the default, genuine peace and predictability create leverage: they attract better capital, make you a preferred corridor, and give you diplomatic weight as a place everyone needs to use rather than fight over.
At the same time, the region’s complexity – overlapping alliances, legal regimes, and corridors – doesn’t have to be a liability. For a state that’s peaceful and institutionally competent, it creates options: diversified partners, multiple routes, and a national niche as a connector and problem-solver rather than just a buffer.
So the policy question is: will the Caucasus–Black Sea region harden into rival blocs and permanent frontlines, or can countries like Georgia deliberately choose a different game – one that uses peace and institutional quality to turn a dangerous neighborhood into a platform for connectivity and resilience?
