NATO enlargement is no longer on the table. Coupled with Georgia’s turn toward a multi-vector foreign policy, the alliance sees the South Caucasus as a geography for cooperation, rather than strategic engagement.

NATO’s political cohesion crisis has transformed the alliance enlargement from a forward-operating strategic instrument into a reputational liability. In the South Caucasus, this effectively removes membership as a credible policy trajectory for Georgia, and eliminates any potential aspirations for Armenia or Azerbaijan. The alliance’s regional posture is transitioning from institutional expansion to transactional engagement.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has paradoxically frozen NATO’s South Caucasus ambitions, not accelerated them. Most likely, Turkey’s regional influence will increasingly substitute for NATO’s collective footprint in the South Caucasus.

Since 2022, NATO has undergone a significant doctrinal reorientation. While the accession of Finland and Sweden appeared to validate the continuation of enlargement as a central policy vector, these were exceptional cases – advanced, Western countries with advanced military compatibility and no territorial disputes.

The South Caucasus presents the opposite. Georgia remains the only regional state with an explicitly codified Euro-Atlantic integration plan. Yet, despite decades of participation in NATO-led missions – from ISAF to the Resolute Support Mission – its membership trajectory has stalled. The Bucharest Summit commitment that Georgia “will become a member of NATO” has, in operational terms, been downgraded. Georgia’s case shows the Alliance fatigue regarding open-ended security commitments.

For Tbilisi, NATO enlargement has functioned as both a concrete foreign policy goal and a domestic legitimacy mechanism since the Rose Revolution. However, the current security environment renders Georgian membership nearly improbable. Geopolitics plays a key role here, as the ties between Tbilisi and its Western partners have reached a near critical point. For the US, Georgia’s role has somewhat diminished over the past years. Trade routes in the region diversify, Western presence in Afghanistan has come to an end, and after the war in Ukraine broke out, there is little Georgia could do militarily.

Another critical point to consider is the presence of Russian forces in Georgia’s two occupied regions of Abkhazia and the so-called South Ossetia. To this, should be added Moscow’s demonstrated willingness to escalate militarily in response to perceived NATO encroachment. Moreover, the Western countries too have been unwilling to engage the region militarily by directly confronting Russia. This has never been a realistic goal, and is unlikely to become in the future.

Armenia’s post-2023 reorientation toward the West – following the erosion of CSTO credibility during the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis – has generated speculative discourse regarding potential NATO linkages. This belief, however, is misplaced. Yerevan’s evolving engagement with Euro-Atlantic actors is occurring within a post-membership framework through NATO’s Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP) mechanisms, bilateral military cooperation with Western states, peacekeeping interoperability. More critically, Armenia’s geography – bordering Iran and embedded within Russia’s extended security perimeter – renders Yerevan’s accession untenable.

Azerbaijan has never articulated a formal NATO membership ambition. Baku’s diplomacy is guided by a doctrine of multi-vector strategic autonomy, leveraging partnerships with Turkey, Israel, Russia, China, and Western states simultaneously. Azerbaijan’s military strength has reduced its incentive to pursue deeper NATO institutionalisation. The country’s role as an important energy supplier to European markets enhances its bargaining power vis-à-vis Brussels.

Azerbaijan is all the more in a comfortable position, given its bilateral defense pact (the Shusha Declaration) with Turkey effectively extends a strong security umbrella over Baku. Simultaneously, Turkey’s normalization dialogue with Armenia positions it as a regional stabilizer, capable of shaping post-conflict arrangements in the South Caucasus.

Thus, NATO’s expansion into the South Caucasus would expose the summit to immediate confrontation scenarios with Russian troops, hybrid warfare campaigns targeting alliance infrastructure, and energy transit disruption affecting European supply chains. Much will depend on how the US sees the South Caucasus. The region, traditionally seen by Washington, remains a crucial corridor for energy and trade between Asia and Europe. Indeed, the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline remains a key conduit for Caspian oil to Western markets, and the Baku–Tbilisi–Erzurum pipeline facilitates natural gas exports from the Caspian Basin to Europe, in circumvention of Russia – Washington’s chief competitor in the heart of Eurasia.

The South Caucasus has entered NATO’s post-enlargement strategic environment, in which the Alliance influence will persist through networks, standards, and bilateral military assistance rather than treaty-based guarantees. For Georgia, this necessitates a recalibration of expectations; for Armenia, it confirms the limits of late-stage Western alignment; for Azerbaijan, it validates a long-standing, multi-vector foreign policy doctrine. In short, the South Caucasus will remain, for the foreseeable future, beyond NATO’s formal frontier.

Emil Avdaliani is a professor of international relations at the European University in Tbilisi, Georgia, and a scholar of Silk Roads. He can be reached on Twitter/X at @emilavdaliani.