Georgian Dream Shifting from Western Partner to Provocateur

Georgian Dream Shifting from Western Partner to Provocateur

Executive Summary:

• Georgian Dream has shifted from being ostensibly pro-Western partnership to aggressive anti-Western rhetoric, weaponizing terms like “Deep State” and “Global War Party” to discredit Western institutions, diplomats, and domestic political opposition.
• The ruling party increasingly attacks European and U.S. officials—including ambassadors—using conspiratorial narratives, Nazi analogies, and accusations of foreign-orchestrated revolution, severely damaging Georgia’s diplomatic relations with the West.
• Georgian Dream reframes EU and NATO integration as a threat that could drag Georgia into war, portraying itself as the sole defender of peace while leveraging fear of renewed conflict with Russia.
• This rhetoric serves Georgian Dream’s strategic aims: consolidating domestic control, hedging geopolitically toward Russia and the People’s Republic of China, and undermining Western criticism of Georgia’s autocratic turn. 

Introduction

In September 2025, I had the privilege of testifying before the U.S. Congress at a hearing titled “From Partner to Problem: Georgia’s Anti-American Turn” (U.S. Congress, September 10). The discussion focused on how a once-reliable U.S. partner in the South Caucasus has become a case study in democratic backsliding and autocratization (see Strategic Snapshot, September 10). This article continues that story from a different angle, focusing on Tbilisi’s changing rhetoric toward the West over the past two years. Georgia’s ruling party, Georgian Dream, has moved beyond policy differences and entered the realm of parody, mocking European and U.S. leadership while mimicking their language. From accusing Western leadership of membership in a “Global War Party,” “Deep State” conspiracies, and open letters to U.S. President Donald Trump, Georgian Dream has transformed Georgia’s posture toward the West from partnership to provocation.

Georgian Dream Weaponizes Warped Imported Rhetoric

There was a time when “anti-Americanism” in Georgia was packaged in Soviet-era clichés about Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) conspiracies and capitalist decadence. Today, it comes with hashtags about the “Deep State,” “Global War Party,” “rebranding,” and “foreign agents” (Civil Georgia, January 8). This terminology has become a fixture of Georgian Dream’s political lexicon. For Georgian Dream, the villains are no longer Moscow or local oligarchs but Washington, Brussels, and their representatives in Georgia.

Georgian Dream, founded and financed by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, has spent the last two years borrowing and weaponizing vocabulary from Western domestic politics to attack U.S. institutions (European Digital Media Observatory, October 14, 2024; OC Media, January 9). The result is surreal: U.S. leadership has become a rhetorical target for Georgian Dream despite years of economic and diplomatic partnership with Washington.

Since early 2025, Georgian Dream Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze and Speaker of Parliament Shalva Papuashvili have consistently recited “Deep State” narratives (Civil Georgia, March 14). Georgian Dream recasts statements from the United States and European Union as the rhetoric of a shadowy global network seeking regime change in Georgia. The blame placed on the “Deep State” is so frequent it borders on parody. Kobakhidze’s own words illustrate how far this rhetoric has gone: “The U.S. State Department better prove that it acts not under the influence of the ‘Deep State’ but in accordance with the objective interests of the American people” (Interpressnews, October 8). According to Kobakhidze, President Trump also needs to pass his test:  

If the Deep State loses this battle, which we refer to as the conflict between the Deep State and Trump, relations will be normalized. However, if the Deep State prevails, difficulties will persist … When the attitude toward Georgia remains unchanged, it signifies that the Deep State is still strong (1tv.ge, September 25).

Kobakhidze asserts that the “Deep State” has a simple model: “either you are an agent or an enemy,” insisting that the United States wants the Georgian government to become agents serving its interests (Imedinews, October 7). He goes on to say, “[Georgians] cannot become agents, but do not look at us as enemies; look at us as partners.” This language no longer shocks Georgians; it saturates prime-time television. Georgian Dream and its supporters designate everyone who advocates for Georgia’s Western orientation, fights for Euro Atlantic integration, or cooperates with the West as a spy, recruited for a mission to destroy the “traditional way of life” in Georgia. Georgian Dream uses this rhetoric to attempt to discredit the entire Georgian political opposition, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), think tanks, and independent media. According to Georgian Dream, any current or former Georgian official not aligned with the present-day ruling party—including two presidents, two prime ministers, foreign and defense ministers, and Speakers of Parliament—is a member of the so-called “Deep State.” 

The head of the State Security Service, Mamuka Mdinaradze, followed suit, claiming that the “Deep State” had undergone “rebranding and modernization” and warning of “a global, dangerous force” (Imedinews, March 10). Mdinaradze quickly found a tangible villain in the United States and its diplomatic missions for his narrative. In February, he accused the United States of financing unrest: “It is obvious that American taxpayers’ money was used to fund a revolution in Georgia” (Formula News, October 2). In October, he repeated the claim, this time blaming the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok for funding “radicals acting against the [Georgian] government and pursuing revolutionary goals” (Formula News, October 2).

For a small democracy still nominally seeking North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and EU membership, these are extraordinary accusations. These narratives form part of a deliberate propaganda architecture designed to shift responsibility for corruption, repression, and democratic decline onto bureaucrats in Washington and Brussels. The effect is devastatingly simple: ordinary Georgians are taught to distrust Western institutions and their own pro-Western compatriots.

Although Georgian Dream imported the term “deep state” wholesale from Western domestic politics, they have twisted its meaning beyond recognition. When Georgian Dream speaks of the “Deep State,” they refer to Washington and Brussels, portraying the United States’ administration, the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Congress, Europe’s elected leaders, the European Parliament, and the diplomatic corps as a single hostile machine. 

Georgian Dream Makes Europe Its New Enemy

There is almost nothing left that Georgians have not heard from Georgian Dream—accusations, conspiracies, or insults toward the country’s Western partners. Even by those standards, Kobakhidze managed to escalate on October 8 by declaring, “Today, Europe is dominated by the same Goebbels-style propaganda that reigned eighty years ago. Europe is not a panacea. Europe also had Mr. Goebbels, who was distinguished by exactly this kind of propaganda” (Civil Georgia, October 8).

In a political environment saturated with anti-Western rhetoric, invoking Nazi Germany’s propaganda minister as a metaphor for the European Union marked a new low. The statement blurred the line between populism and outright historical revisionism. 

In the days surrounding Kobakhidze’s October comments, Georgian representatives launched a wave of abusive attacks against the German ambassador to Tbilisi, accusing him of “arrogance,” “double standards,” and “meddling in Georgia’s internal affairs.” The language was so aggressive that Berlin took the unprecedented step of recalling its ambassador (Politico Europe, October 19). For European diplomats, this episode was not simply offensive; it was alarming proof that Georgian Dream no longer even pretends to operate within the norms of Western discourse.

Georgian Dream Verbally Attacking Diplomats

German diplomats are not the only targets of this orchestrated hostility. The pattern began much earlier with the campaign against the U.S. Ambassador to Georgia. In 2022, U.S. Ambassador Kelly C. Degnan faced a barrage of personal attacks from Georgian Dream officials, including the Mayor of Tbilisi (Civil Georgia, June 13, 2022; OC Media, July 21, 2022; Transparency International, August 4, 2022). Kobakhidze accused Ambassador Degnan of “demanding that Georgia open a second front against Russia” and of interference in Georgia’s internal affairs (Front News Georgia, March 12). These accusations marked the start of a systematic effort to discredit Western diplomats and recast Georgia’s traditional partners as conspirators in a global plot against Georgian Dream.  Kobakhidze went so far as to accuse EU Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi of threatening him with physical violence in a phone conversation, alleging that Varhelyi hinted he could face the same fate as Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, who was shot four times in a May assassination attempt (JAM News, Politico Europe, May 23).

U.S. ambassadors have a special place in Georgian Dream’s verbal attacks. If the “Deep State” is the puppet master in Georgian Dream’s mythology, U.S. ambassadors are its visible villains. Since early 2022, Georgian officials have personalized their attacks, first against Ambassador Degnan and later against Ambassador Robin Dunnigan, portraying them as conspirators and meddlers. On October 7, Kobakhidze said, “The Americans, their bureaucracy, viewed us as an enemy. The ambassador on the ground did this” (Imedinews, October 7). He also stated: 

“There was the perception that if the U.S. ambassador or a State Department representative said something—even if it was a lie—you had to go along. One of our main achievements today is that people no longer think this way” (Imedinews, October 6).

In a country where pro-U.S. sentiment was once widespread, this is a marked shift. Georgian Dream thinks it has won a victory by teaching citizens to ignore Washington and Brussels, and celebrates this change as “sovereignty.” Washington, meanwhile, has responded with restraint—each mild U.S. statement is followed by another Georgian broadside. The pattern is consistent: Washington condemns, Georgian Dream ridicules, and pro-government media applauds. 

Georgian Dream Creates “Global War Party” as its Scapegoat

The summer of 2025 brought one of the strangest episodes yet: Georgian Dream sent an open letter to Trump’s campaign team congratulating them for “eradicating the Deep State.” The letter, delivered through official diplomatic channels, was so fawning that Ambassador Dunnigan described it as “insulting, unserious, and extremely poorly received in Washington” (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, July 7). Domestically, however, the letter achieved its purpose, signaling Georgian Dream’s supposed optimism that Tbilisi’s relationship with Washington might soon improve. 

In the following months, the party’s conspiratorial cosmology expanded further. The “Deep State” became just one head of a larger beast—the “Global War Party.” According to Georgian Dream, this cabal includes “the American military-industrial complex, George Soros, neoconservatives, and European bureaucrats,” all allegedly conspiring to “open a second front in Georgia” with the U.S. ambassador to Georgia leading the process (Imedinews, October 6). In October, Kobakhidze claimed that “as long as the war continues [in Ukraine], the Deep State has a vested interest in opening a second front in Georgia” (Imedinews, October 6).

This narrative painting the United States as a warmonger and Georgian Dream as the guardian of peace has become the emotional centerpiece of the ruling party’s rhetoric. It allows the government to portray every Western criticism as an existential threat to peace. The question “Do you want war?” now defines its political battlefield.

Georgian Dream has turned authoritarian control into patriotic virtue by associating the West with chaos and itself with stability. The United States, reduced to a caricature of the “Deep State,” becomes the perfect enemy: powerful, distant, and, conveniently, according to Georgian Dream’s rhetoric, dumb.

Georgian Dream Associates Western Integration with War 

The optics of Georgian Dream’s worldview are strange. A NATO aspirant lectures the United States about democratic legitimacy while borrowing parts of its lexicon. The result is a hall of mirrors—Western phrases echo back from Tbilisi, stripped of irony and used to attack U.S. diplomacy itself.

Georgian Dream tells voters: The West wants war; we protect peace. In a society traumatized by Russia’s 2008 invasion and ongoing occupation of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali, this message resonates deeply. Presenting itself as the only bulwark against another conflict, Georgian Dream has reframed Western integration as a threat, not a promise. By equating Western integration with instability, Georgian Dream reframes repression as national preservation. 

It might be funny if the geopolitical risks were not so great. When partner nations learn to insult the United States without consequence, Washington’s deterrence strategy begins to erode. Georgia’s ruling party has discovered what Moscow and Beijing learned long ago: ridicule is the cheapest form of provocation.

Anti-Western Rhetoric Serving Strategic Purpose

Georgian Dream’s anti-Western rhetoric is not an emotional outburst; it is a strategy. It serves three key purposes:

1. Domestic Consolidation—Blaming an ill-defined Western “Deep State” for Georgia’s isolation deflects responsibility for Georgia’s corruption and economic stagnation while portraying Georgian Dream as the sole defender of sovereignty.
2. Geopolitical Hedging—By antagonizing the West while cooperating economically with the People’s Republic of China and tolerating Russia, Georgian Dream signals to all sides that it is too unpredictable to punish.
3. Narrative Capture—Georgian Dream seeks to inoculate itself against Western criticism by mimicking phrases with origins in the United States. When Georgian officials use “Deep State” and “Global War Party” rhetoric, they attempt to undermine the West’s moral authority and blame it for Russia’s war against Ukraine. 

A decade ago, Georgia was hailed as the “beacon of democracy” in the post-Soviet space. Today, it is cited in U.S. Senate hearings as an “anti-American government” (U.S. Congress, September 10). Every rebuke from Washington is celebrated in Tbilisi as proof of its independence. Georgian Dream has turned resentment into political capital and parody into policy. Georgia is not unique. Across the world, illiberal leaders have learned to use language with origins in the West to delegitimize criticism while maintaining relations with Western businesses and defense partners. 

The absurdity reaches new heights in Georgia because the country’s survival depends on Western security guarantees. Insulting partners while Russian troops occupy Georgian territory is not just reckless—it is performative dependency. Georgian Dream knows Russia poses a legitimate threat, while the United States and Europe are unlikely to respond to their offensive rhetoric with anything beyond diplomatic statements. This asymmetry makes the West a convenient scapegoat for Georgia’s woes.