Politics & Power Quote by Eduard Shevardnadze

It’s the voice of a small state trying to speak itself into permanence. When Eduard Shevardnadze insists that “the entire world community recognizes Georgia,” he’s not offering trivia about memberships; he’s issuing a warranty. Recognition, in this register, is security. For a post-Soviet country still wrestling with the aftershocks of empire and internal fracture, the fear isn’t merely poverty or instability - it’s erasure, the sense that borders can be rewritten by stronger hands unless they’re nailed down by institutions.

The rhetorical strategy is incremental, almost bureaucratic, and that’s the point. United Nations. Council of Europe. European Union. Each body functions as a rung on a ladder from contested periphery to normalized statehood. The line “everything is being prepared” is classic transition-era political language: it promises momentum without naming deadlines, obstacles, or veto players. It’s reassurance packaged as process.

The deeper subtext is that “Europe” isn’t just geography; it’s a civilizational claim and a disciplinary promise. By framing EU entry as imminent, Shevardnadze ties Georgia’s identity to Western rules, markets, and protections - and, implicitly, away from Russia’s gravitational pull. This is aspirational branding, but also a domestic bargaining chip: if the nation is “on the road to Europe,” reforms and sacrifices can be cast as necessary tolls.

Read this way, the quote is less prediction than political technology: a way to manufacture legitimacy at home and deterrence abroad by borrowing credibility from the world’s most prestigious clubs.