On 24 January, U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that Vice President J.D. Vance would travel to Armenia and Azerbaijan in February. Vance’s planned visit marks an important acceleration of U.S. engagement with the South Caucasus, representing the highest-level visit by an American official to the region since former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney South Caucasus in 2008 - a continued indication of renewed U.S. attention to regional stability and connectivity. 

Conspicuously omitted from this equation is the third South Caucasian brother, Georgia. Responding to questions regarding Georgia’s exclusion, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze explained that Vance’s visit has a narrowly defined focus linked to the American-supervised TRIPP initiative. “Therefore, it is logical that its main addressees are Azerbaijan and Armenia. What else can I say?” Kobakhidze remarked.

While framed as a technical clarification, the response suggests a degree of unease within Tbilisi. Georgian officials have increasingly attributed the deterioration in relations with Washington to unresolved issues originating during the Biden administration. Yet the emphasis on TRIPP, precipitated by Georgia’s exclusion from the Trumpian ‘Board of Peace’ signing in Davos, points to a broader dynamic unfolding: key U.S.-backed political and connectivity initiatives in the South Caucasus may now be advancing without Georgia as a primary interlocutor.

So, is Georgia becoming increasingly isolated in the emerging post-war order in the South Caucasus? And if so, what factors are contributing to this trajectory? Is the development of the TRIPP route among the drivers reshaping regional connectivity, or does the explanation lie more broadly in the Georgian government’s approach toward its neighbours and its management of key strategic partnerships? These are the factors that must first be assessed before drawing conclusions about Georgia’s shifting position in the region.

First and foremost, the historic peace deal signed between Azerbaijan and Armenia on August 8 in Washington, and the subsequent normalisation of trade relations between the two countries, represents a structural shift that is reshaping the regional connectivity landscape of the South Caucasus. Speaking at the World Economic Forum, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev confirmed that Azerbaijan has lifted all restrictions on the transportation of cargo to Armenia from Russia and Kazakhstan, adding that the Armenian side has now requested transit access through Azerbaijani territory for shipments bound for Russia.

At present, these cargo flows continue to transit through Georgia. However, President Aliyev noted that alternative routes may gradually emerge as regional transit arrangements evolve, suggesting that the opening of direct Armenia–Azerbaijan corridors is a matter of time, and it is ‘not far away’. 

The current phase of regional connectivity should be understood less as a rupture, than as the gradual reactivation of an inherited infrastructure network. Much of the South Caucasus’ transport system was already in place from the Soviet Union, but remained partially blocked or underutilised due to prolonged conflict in the region. However, with the normalisation process underway, these constraints are beginning to ease, allowing existing routes to regain functionality and new ones to be built as well. The region's accumulated operational experience over the past three decades, too, allows for a relatively quick and efficient escalation of said processes, especially compared to alternative corridors further south that remain constrained by sanctions or political instability. 
For Georgia, whose post-Soviet relevance as a transit state was shaped largely by the absence of alternative routes due to closed Armenian borders with Azerbaijan and Türkiye, this marks a qualitative change.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Georgia has played the role of Armenia’s only logistical gateway to the outside world, including to Russia. And while it is widely interpreted within Georgia’s opposition parties that the development of alternative trade routes, including the Middle Corridor, might lead to Georgia losing its key role in the transit ecosystem of the region, the ruling Georgian Dream Party has responded in a calm manner. Member of Parliament and Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Regional Policy and Local Government Irakli Kadagishvili stated, “Georgia will not lose any function,” indicating that the country will remain a key part of the existing logistical chain. 

Kadagishvili has a point. What is often overlooked in this discussion is that Georgia’s importance is anchored in a set of strategic projects and communication lines that already operate at large scale. Key east–west routes running through Georgia, including the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan energy corridor, rail connections such as Baku–Tbilisi–Kars, and road infrastructure linking Baku, Tbilisi, and Batumi, form an integrated transit system with substantial throughput capacity. Taken together, these routes give Georgia a level of operational depth that remains significant in regional terms and, in some segments, compares favourably with alternative corridors, including those transiting Türkiye.

Even as regional connectivity diversifies, Georgia’s role as a transit state is defined by capacity and maturity. Over the next decade, at least, Georgia is likely to remain one of the region’s primary transit platforms simply because it already possesses a functioning, multi-directional infrastructure that can absorb additional volumes without requiring political renegotiation or large-scale construction. Rail, road, ports, and energy corridors are already integrated into international supply chains, and their throughput remains competitive by regional standards.

Georgia’s rail network, for instance, remains a high-volume transit system by regional standards: cargo transported by Georgian Railway totaled 13.7 million tons in 2024 (broadly stable year-on-year), with transit remaining a core component of its freight base. Likewise, the Georgian segment of the Baku–Tbilisi–Kars railway has recently been modernised, raising annual capacity from 1 million to 5 million tons. 

This is particularly relevant as the broader Eurasian transport market continues to expand, rather than merely redistribute. New routes emerging through Armenia and Azerbaijan are being developed in parallel with existing ones, and not as immediate substitutes. In this context, Georgia’s advantage lies in its ability to attract and redirect traffic as volumes grow, rather than in maintaining monopoly control over specific flows. As long as regional normalization proceeds, Georgia will inevitably have to account for these changes, but so will its neighbours. As of today, Georgia remains an important strategic partner for Azerbaijan, rooted in its shared economic interests and regional priorities dating back to the 1990s and initiated by the First President of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev and his counterpart Eduard Shevardnadze. 

All this cooperation, however, contradicts a media scandal that emerged in early December 2025, where Azerbaijani media outlets claimed that Georgian customs officers were systematically mistreating Azerbaijani cargo at the border. The incident concerned the temporary detention of five Azerbaijani trucks at the Georgian border, transporting tobacco products. According to available information, documentation issues were identified in only two cases, after which the situation was resolved through direct coordination between the relevant transport and customs authorities of both countries. Ultimately, the cargo was allowed to proceed.

Despite this, the episode was rapidly amplified in the media space. Azerbaijani outlets portrayed the incident as systematic obstruction, while in Georgia the issue was taken up by opposition-linked actors, including groups associated with former president Saakashvili, framing it as evidence of deteriorating relations with Baku. 
In practical terms, however, the scale of the incident remains marginal. More than one hundred thousand cargos transit the Georgian–Azerbaijani border annually, making the temporary detention of five vehicles statistically insignificant. This is particularly important given that Azerbaijan has, over the past three years, significantly expanded its transport sector, increasing the number of licensed freight carriers from approximately 4,000 to 14,000, with operating licenses issued for seven-year periods. Against such volumes, the December incident reflects an administrative irregularity and not a structural disruption. 

The Azerbaijani freight truck case, rather, reflects elements commonly associated with hybrid attacks in the information domain. A limited administrative issue was amplified through selective media coverage, transforming a minor incident into a broader political narrative. In practical terms, the situation amounted to making a mountain out of a molehill, yet the effects were felt primarily at the level of media and public discourse rather than in the functioning of bilateral mechanisms. The Georgian Prime Minister Kobakhidze himself, insisted that no such issues exist, adding that Georgia is “ready to have an open and honest conversation about any possible difficulties”. 

As such, when it comes to Azerbaijan, Georgia is and will remain a vital strategic partner. But what about its other neighbours and the outside world? How has Georgia’s foreign policy recalibration under the Georgian Dream impacted its regional and global significance? 

Well, for starters, the most visible shift has been diplomatic. In recent years, Georgia has increasingly appeared absent from the formats where South Caucasus connectivity and security questions are discussed, even as the region itself has become more strategically relevant to external actors. This does not imply that Georgia has been formally excluded from all processes, but it does suggest a decline in its visibility as an agenda-setting participant. The contrast is particularly noticeable when Armenia and Azerbaijan are increasingly engaged through new international platforms, while Georgia’s representation is either limited or, at times, missing altogether. 

A striking example is Georgia’s consecutive two-year absence from the World Economic Forum. During the same period, Armenia and Azerbaijan participated in Davos-linked discussions, including peace- and connectivity-focused formats, reflecting their centrality to ongoing post-war negotiations in the region. Georgian officials explained the absence by pointing to the lack of an active conflict in the country, arguing that the invitations were directed primarily at states undergoing conflict-related processes. 

At the same time, Georgia’s foreign policy messaging has increasingly relied on declarative alignment with the Euro-Atlantic space, without consistently translating into concrete diplomatic leverage. Relations with the United States and several European partners have become more complicated in recent years, while Georgia’s diplomacy toward its immediate neighbourhood has remained cautious and largely reactive. In a regional environment shaped by post-war normalisation and corridor diplomacy, this approach has limited Georgia’s ability to shape outcomes. 

A further sensitive dimension of this recalibration concerns Georgia’s posture toward Russia-linked regional processes. While Armenia and Azerbaijan advance new transit arrangements through mutually negotiated frameworks, Georgia has periodically been drawn into discussions surrounding transit initiatives connected to Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

A recent analysis by Jamestown drew attention to this divergence. In Abkhazia, reporting by Ekho Kavkaza indicates that a customs terminal is under construction near the section of territory under Tbilisi’s control, reportedly with the involvement of the Russian organisation Assembly of the Peoples of the World, headed by former head of Russia’s Federal Customs Service Andrey Belyaninov. Local media have further reported that Igor Giorgadze, who fled to Russia in the 1990s after being sentenced in Georgia, is among those associated with the project.

Similar discussions are underway in the South Ossetian region, where the de facto authorities, together with Russia’s state development corporation VEB.RF, have been reported to discuss a Transcaucasian railway linking Russia through South Ossetia toward the Middle East. While Georgian Dream officials have not confirmed involvement in either case, the circulation of such projects introduces ambiguity into Georgia’s transit position at a time when predictability and transparency are increasingly central to regional connectivity initiatives.

Other factors, too, including internal instabilities within the Georgian government, may help explain its diminishing visibility in the new global order, because any unstable regime becomes less attractive to international partners. 

As the South Caucasus enters a post-war phase marked by expanding connectivity and diversification, Georgia’s future regional role will depend on its ability to adapt to these changes.