The Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS) represents a clear repudiation of decades of failed post–Cold War orthodoxy. These policies advanced globalization at any cost, tolerated one-sided trade, fueled endless wars, promoted unchecked NATO enlargement, and elevated democracy promotion into a rigid doctrine guiding U.S. foreign policy. In his seminal book Where the Right Went Wrong, Pat Buchanan once described the pinnacle of this liberal internationalist project, most clearly expressed in the Bush Doctrine, as “democratic imperialism”: an Americanized version of the Brezhnev Doctrine, in which Washington asserted the right to intervene anywhere to impose democracy, just as the Soviet Union claimed the right to intervene to preserve communism.
As misguided as George W. Bush’s effort to remake the world in America’s image ultimately proved, it at least occurred during a genuine unipolar moment following the September 11 terrorist attacks. That historical context makes the Biden Administration’s framing of geopolitics as a simplistic, Manichean struggle between “democracy and autocracy” all the more incoherent, given that the international system had already begun its irreversible shift toward multipolarity.
While the NSS will serve as a lodestar for the Trump administration as it develops policies in pursuit of U.S. national interests in a multipolar world, it is also unmistakably a civilizational statement. It calls on the United States to deepen ties with nations that share America’s core values, among them Christianity, freedom of speech, national sovereignty, and the preservation of the West’s cultural and historical traditions.
In doing so, the NSS marks a decisive pivot away from the progressivism and technocratic bureaucratism that have hollowed out the governing institutions of the European Union and the United Kingdom, eroding democratic accountability and weakening national cohesion. As Vice President J.D. Vance observed at the 2025 Munich Security Conference,
The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within—the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.
The principles articulated in the NSS are not just theoretical, however, as they are already shaping how Washington evaluates partners in strategically contested regions, including Central Asia and the South Caucasus. The Trump administration’s successful effort to broker a political settlement between Baku and Yerevan, alongside the formation of the Trump Road for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) initiative, reflects the White House’s preference for stability, sovereignty, and economic connectivity over an ideological, zero-sum mentality.
Beyond Azerbaijan and Armenia in the Trans-Caspian region, Georgia stands out as a nation that not only shares core Western civilizational values (faith, free expression, and national sovereignty) but also occupies a pivotal geopolitical position. As the U.S. advances a Trans-Caspian strategy to diversify supply chains away from strategic chokepoints, Georgia represents a critical transit state linking China and Central Asia across the Caspian Sea, through the South Caucasus, and onward across the Black Sea to Romania and Hungary.
Georgia is indispensable to regional connectivity and U.S. supply-chain strategy. It provides the location and physical infrastructure necessary to transit energy resources, rare earth elements, and critical minerals from Central Asia and the Caspian basin to Western markets without transiting adversarial territory. As Washington seeks resilient supply chains for advanced manufacturing, defense technologies, and next-generation energy systems, Georgia’s ports and rail corridors can enable reliable east-west flows across the South Caucasus and Black Sea, reinforcing American efforts to secure critical materials while reducing exposure to not only chokepoints, but strategic leverage from competitors as well.
Yet despite this clear strategic alignment between the Trump administration and Tbilisi, activists and external advocacy NGOs, often created and sustained by resources of the now-defunct USAID, continue to call for the ouster of the Georgian Dream government. These demands, framed in familiar moralistic language, ignore the strategic costs such destabilization would impose on the United States. At a moment when Washington requires reliable partners to anchor the Trans-Caspian corridor, enable east-west transit, and insulate critical supply chains from adversarial pressure, efforts to weaken Georgia’s governing institutions risk undermining U.S. influence and presence in a strategically indispensable region.
Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R-SC) MEGOBARI Act represents this misreading of strategic reality, by reviving a Bush-era impulse to treat sanctions as a U.S. policy of first resort rather than a last. The legislation seeks punitive measures against Georgian Dream officials and individuals linked to the government, including executives in the media sector. Wilson mistakenly believes external pressure can still manufacture political outcomes without consequence, when the reality is such policies will only serve to tighten Tbilisi’s relations with Moscow and Beijing, while isolating Washington from this strategic transit hub. Wilson’s assumption is not only outdated, but counterproductive. In a multipolar world, indiscriminate sanctions and coercive pressure encourage hedging behavior, weakening U.S. influence precisely where it is most needed.
Quite simply, sanctions do not work. They failed to deter Russia from invading Ukraine and did nothing to prevent Iran from continuing to fund and arm militant groups that have attacked Israel. Over time, states targeted by U.S. sanctions have adapted, developing countersanctions policies that blunt the intended economic and political impact. As multipolarity has strengthened, the effectiveness of sanctions has eroded further. Countries can increasingly trade outside the U.S. dollar, have established alternative clearing mechanisms beyond SWIFT, and will deepen economic ties with non-Western partners. The result of such U.S. policies is the steady degradation of U.S. dollar, Washington’s most powerful economic leverage.
Most troubling with this pressure on Tbilisi are the growing calls in Congress, London, and Brussels to use sanctions to curb media freedom in Georgia, specifically targeting Imedi TV, Georgia’s most-viewed television station, and its majority shareholder, Irakli Rukhadze, who has voiced public support for Georgia’s Western future. With Imedi’s ratings exceeding the next four Georgian television station combined, attempts by the West to silence its editorial views would undermine Georgia’s media pluralism and the freedom of stations to broadcast differing points of view. Sanctioning a media outlet to silence views not in alignment with the transatlantic blob is a direct assault on the very principles of free speech and pluralism that President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have consistently championed. Such policies would have an immediate chilling effect, emboldening efforts to de-platform national conservative voices that fall outside progressive consensus, both in Georgia and across the West.
Ironically, following the Trump administration’s decision to sanction European officials accused of engaging in what Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers called the “extraterritorial censorship of Americans,” European governments denounced the move as “coercion and intimidation.” Yet that same logic is now reflected in emerging threats against Imedi TV, exposing a clear double standard in how media freedom and political pressure are interpreted.
Even more dangerous are proposals that would extend sanctions to Rukhadze personally. As a U.S. citizen who does not hold Georgian citizenship, sanctioning him would set an alarming precedent, signaling that American citizenship offers little protection when one’s views conflict with the diktats of EU bureaucrats or UK progressives. Washington should be strengthening safeguards for its citizens, not supporting punitive economic measures that undermine those protections. Normalizing sanctions against media owners and U.S. nationals alike would erode free expression, weaken U.S. credibility, and hand America’s strategic competitors a powerful narrative weapon.
There is, however, a clear path forward. The MEGOBARI Act was notably excluded from the National Defense Authorization Act, and Congress should ensure it remains dead. Lawmakers must resist any effort to resurrect it through future funding bills or legislative platforms that would pressure the White House into sanctioning Georgian officials or businessmen at the expense of U.S. strategic interests.
More importantly, the Trump administration should make unmistakably clear to Brussels and London that sanctioning governments or individuals linked to strategically critical countries in Central Asia or the South Caucasus will not be tolerated. Such actions do not advance Western cohesion and would further deepen transatlantic friction.
At the same time, as Washington’s ties with Tbilisi has reached a nadir following allegations by Georgian government officials that USAID funded multiple regime change operations, the State Department should convene high-level talks with Georgian Dream officials to build confidence and strengthen bilateral ties. Washington should make clear that it will not impose “us-versus-them” ultimatums on Tbilisi regarding its relations with China or Russia. In a post-globalization era, multi-vector foreign and commercial policies are rational. What the United States seeks is not ideological conformity, but a sovereign, reliable, civilizational partner.
At a moment when U.S. foreign policy is being redefined around shared civilizational principles and hard geopolitical interests, Washington cannot afford a Georgia policy driven by outdated liberal internationalist impulses. A realist, values-based approach would strengthen America’s position across Eurasia, protect critical supply chains, and anchor a key partner at a time when multipolar competition demands clarity, not ideological quixotism.
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