NAVIGATING THROUGH THE WATERSHED Explaining Georgia’s and Moldova’s Foreign Policy from the Lens of Neoclassical Realism

Abstract

The EU candidate countries and post-Soviet states, Georgia and the Republic of Moldova, are in a watershed era. They navigate the international landscape that emerged on the day of Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine – in a world where the old order has died, and the new order has not yet been born. The turning point goes straight into their geographical position in the borderlands between the EU and Russia. This thesis examines why Georgia and the Republic of Moldova have adopted different foreign policy strategies since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It reveals that Georgia, once a leading EU partner, is now pursuing a multi-vector foreign policy, while Moldova seeks shelter-seeking towards the EU while maintaining military neutrality. The study addresses two research gaps by explaining these divergent policies and testing neoclassical realism through a comparative case study using Most Similar Systems Design. The neoclassical realist framework is refined by combining leader perceptions and strategic culture with factors from Cantir & Kennedy’s (2015) multi-level framework: power disparity, intensity of external threat, permissiveness of the external environment, intensity of threat to elite survival, and permissiveness of the internal environment. Using a mixed-methods approach, including elite interviews and text analysis, findings confirm that international systemic incentives shape foreign policy options, while domestic factors modify the actual choices. Thus, this thesis provides new insights into how external and internal factors explain the foreign policy differences of small states in similar geopolitical contexts.