The European Union’s engagement in the South Caucasus is most commonly interpreted through the lens of democracy promotion, normative power, and conflict resolution. From this standpoint, the EU appears as a largely non-geopolitical actor whose policies are guided by values rather than power considerations.
But such readings capture only part of the picture. When examined through the lens of offensive realism—the school of thought most prominently associated with US political scientist John Mearsheimer—the EU’s involvement in the region can also be understood as producing outcomes consistent with great power competition, particularly with regard to constraining Russia’s ability to consolidate regional hegemony.
Tying Down Rivals
Offensive realism starts from the assumption of an anarchic international system in which great powers seek to maximize their relative power to ensure survival. Because global hegemony is unattainable, they aim instead to dominate their own regions while preventing rival powers from becoming regional hegemons elsewhere.
A central implication is that great powers have a strong interest in tying down potential rivals in secondary theaters, thereby limiting their ability to concentrate resources on strategically vital regions. Peripheral regions are not marginal; they are valuable precisely because they absorb a rival’s power and constrain its strategic freedom.
Contesting Russia’s Sphere of Influence
Applying this logic to EU-Russia relations in the South Caucasus leads to a compelling reinterpretation of European policy. Although the EU doesn’t openly frame its actions in terms of containment or balance-of-power politics, its engagement in Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan has had the effect of contesting Russia’s privileged position in a region Moscow considers part of its core sphere of influence.
Through instruments such as the European Neighbourhood Policy, the Eastern Partnership, association agreements, regulatory alignment, economic integration, and monitoring missions, Brussels has introduced alternative political and economic pathways that reduce these states’ exclusive dependence on Russia.
From an offensive realist standpoint, what matters is not the EU’s declared intentions but the structural consequences of its actions. Mearsheimer’s framework explicitly downplays the importance of stated motives, emphasizing instead how shifts in power distribution and strategic constraints shape state behavior. Even normatively justified policies can generate realist outcomes if they alter regional balances of influence. And the EU’s involvement in the South Caucasus—regardless of its normative rhetoric—functions as a mechanism that complicates Russia’s efforts to achieve uncontested regional dominance.
Binding Russia to Its Periphery
Preventing Russia from consolidating regional hegemony in the South Caucasus carries broader strategic implications. A Russia that has to devote military, political, and economic resources to managing influence and responding to external actors in its southern neighborhood is a Russia with reduced capacity to project power westward—toward Eastern Europe, the Baltic states, and the European security architecture more broadly. Competitive external involvement in the South Caucasus effectively binds Russia to its periphery. This dynamic is consistent with offensive realism’s expectation that rival great powers will seek to keep each other strategically overstretched rather than allow them to secure stable dominance in their home regions.
Importantly, this logic does not require the EU to behave as a classical unitary great power. EU foreign policy is fragmented, consensus-based, and often reactive rather than strategically centralized. The cumulative impact of EU policies—regulatory expansion, economic conditionality, diplomatic engagement, and a limited security presence such as the EU Monitoring Mission in Georgia and Armenia can still shape regional power relations. In the South Caucasus, this has translated into a more pluralistic external environment in which Russia is no longer the sole, or even dominant, external reference point for regional elites.
A Strategic Secondary Theater
Viewed this way, the South Caucasus emerges as a strategically significant secondary theater in EU-Russia relations. While it doesn’t rival Eastern Europe or the Baltic region in terms of immediate security salience for the EU, its importance lies in its indirect effects on Russian power projection.
By sustaining engagement in the region, the EU contributes to a geopolitical environment in which Russia must continuously invest resources to defend influence that is increasingly contested. From an offensive realist perspective, this outcome is strategically advantageous regardless of whether it is consciously pursued.
This interpretation also helps reconcile apparent contradictions in EU policy. On the one hand, Brussels consistently emphasizes cooperation, multilateralism, and conflict resolution. On the other hand, its actions repeatedly provoke Russian resistance, countermeasures, and accusations of encroachment.
Offensive realism explains this tension: Even non-military forms of influence—institutional integration, economic reorientation, regulatory alignment—can be perceived as threats in a competitive international system. From Moscow’s perspective, EU engagement in the South Caucasus undermines Russia’s ability to dominate its neighborhood, thereby triggering coercive responses that have ranged from energy pressure on Armenia to outright military intervention in Georgia.
Small States Caught in Between
Viewing EU policy through an offensive realist lens also has important implications for understanding the behavior of the states in the region. Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan operate under conditions of severe structural constraint, balancing between competing external powers. The EU’s presence expands their strategic options, allowing for varying degrees of balancing, hedging, or selective alignment.
At the same time, this very expansion of options intensifies geopolitical competition, reinforcing the South Caucasus’ role as a contested space rather than a stabilized periphery. EU engagement both empowers small states and embeds them more deeply in great-power rivalry.
Normative Power, Realist Outcomes
Interpreting EU behavior in offensive realist terms does not deny the relevance of norms, identities, or domestic politics. Rather, it suggests that these factors operate within a structural environment shaped by power competition. Normative policies can coexist with, and even facilitate, realist outcomes. The EU’s self-image as a normative power doesn’t preclude its actions from contributing to the containment of a rival great power.
Offensive realism thus provides a complementary, rather than exclusive, analytical lens—one that helps explain why EU-Russia relations in the South Caucasus have become increasingly adversarial despite the EU’s continued normative discourse.
For European policymakers, this realization should be clarifying rather than alarming. If EU engagement is already generating strategic effects in the South Caucasus, then Brussels should act more deliberately in leveraging that dynamic. Rather than treating the region as a peripheral extension of Eastern European security, the EU should recognize it as a geopolitical space where normative commitments and strategic interests intersect.
Deepening engagement—through strengthened economic integration, expanded security presence, and sustained support for institutional reform—should therefore be understood not merely as a values-driven undertaking, but as a core strategic investment in Europe’s wider security architecture.
Reading EU engagement in the South Caucasus through the prism of offensive realism highlights an often-overlooked strategic dimension of EU foreign policy. By constraining Russia’s ability to achieve uncontested regional hegemony and by tying Russian resources to a contested periphery, EU involvement generates outcomes consistent with core offensive realist expectations.
Whether intentional or not, these dynamics reinforce the South Caucasus’ role as a geopolitically consequential region and underscore the continued relevance of power politics in shaping EU-Russia relations.
Giorgi Gvalia is a professor of international relations at Ilia State University in Tbilisi.
Bidzina Lebanidze is a political scientist at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, where he leads the BMBF-funded “Jena-Cauc” research project on the South Caucasus.
