Leadership Quote by Eduard Shevardnadze

In Shevardnadze's mouth, "We also have a real opportunity to join NATO" is less an invitation than a geopolitical escape hatch. The sentence is plain on purpose: no soaring rhetoric, no grand civilizational claims. Just "also", "real", and "opportunity" - bureaucratic words doing high-stakes work. "Also" quietly reframes Georgia's future as a menu of viable options, not a fate predetermined by Moscow's shadow. "Real" signals he knows the audience's skepticism: NATO talk can be political theater, a way to sound Western while remaining stuck in the post-Soviet gray zone. He’s insisting this is not a fantasy, not mere aspiration, but a window that could close.

The context is the hard math of the 1990s and early 2000s: a newly independent state with fragile institutions, separatist conflicts (Abkhazia and South Ossetia), and a neighbor that treats its near abroad as a security buffer. For Shevardnadze - a former Soviet foreign minister who helped dismantle the Cold War order - NATO is both shield and signal. Shield, because membership implies deterrence. Signal, because even pursuing it tells investors, domestic elites, and Western capitals that Georgia intends to anchor itself in a rules-based bloc rather than a patronage sphere.

The subtext is bargaining. He’s speaking to Washington and Brussels as much as to Georgians: we can align, but we need backing; we can reform, but we need guarantees. And he’s speaking past Russia: Georgia is not asking permission to exist.