Georgia

Georgia has a roughly one-in-five chance of being directly involved in significant armed conflict within the next three years, with most risk concentrated in Russia-linked escalation around Abkhazia/South Ossetia rather than deliberate Georgian initiation.

Risk remains low-to-moderate. Expect continued political unrest cycles and heavy-handed policing risk, plus persistent gray-zone pressure and occasional detentions or incidents near administrative boundary lines. The most credible near-term kinetic scenario is a brief, localized clash triggered by an arrest, shooting, or crowd incident near the lines, followed by rapid de-escalation under international scrutiny.

Risk edges higher if domestic legitimacy continues to erode and Western security cooperation stays chilled, reducing deterrence and crisis-management bandwidth. A hardened Russia-West confrontation could also increase opportunistic pressure in the South Caucasus. Offsetting this, deeper trade integration and sustained state capacity in border control and internal security would keep most confrontation in the hybrid/incident band rather than sustained war.

Security situation Georgia is not in active large-scale war, but it sits adjacent to unresolved, Russia-backed breakaway regions where Russian forces and de facto authorities can generate coercive pressure and localized incidents. The most plausible direct-conflict pathway remains a limited clash along administrative boundary lines that escalates beyond policing capacity.

Threat drivers The dominant driver is Russia’s coercive leverage and its demonstrated willingness to use force, intimidation, and gray-zone tools in its near abroad. A second driver is Georgia’s internal political polarization and democratic backsliding signals, which can weaken crisis management, increase protest–security force confrontation, and create openings for provocation or miscalculation. A third driver is the cooling of high-trust security cooperation with key Western partners, which can reduce deterrence-by-engagement and degrade interoperability over time, even if Georgia remains a non-ally.

Resilience and systemic firebreaks The strongest stabilizer is strategic restraint: Georgia has limited conventional capacity relative to Russia and strong incentives to avoid any move that could be framed as a casus belli. Geography and force asymmetry push Tbilisi toward defensive postures and de-escalation. Russia’s bandwidth remains constrained by larger strategic priorities and the political cost of opening a new overt front, making sustained combined-arms operations in Georgia a non-modal choice absent a major trigger. International attention, economic interdependence with multiple partners, and ongoing state capacity in border management and internal security also reduce the probability that incidents become prolonged war.

Net assessment Relative to the baseline, new evidence points to higher internal governance stress and more contentious state–society relations, which modestly increases escalation risk via miscalculation and reduced external confidence. However, the structural balance still favors continued coercion, episodic incidents, and hybrid pressure over major war. The three key escalation triggers are: a sharp Russia-West crisis that incentivizes opportunistic escalation; a serious boundary-line incident with fatalities and rapid mobilization; or a domestic political crisis that degrades command-and-control and invites external testing.