The South Caucasus has long occupied an ambiguous place in US foreign policy, neither central to US national security nor irrelevant to it. The region has historically mattered insofar as it intersected with larger geopolitical contests: between Russia and the West, between energy producers and consumers, and between stability and fragmentation along Eurasia’s inner frontier. The 2025 US National Security Strategy codifies a shift that will sharpen this logic, moving the United States decisively away from expansive regional engagement toward selective, interest-driven involvement.
While the document does not explicitly address the South Caucasus in its regional sections, its underlying principles, such as restraint, burden-sharing, transactionalism, and rejection of transformational agendas, will fundamentally reshape Washington’s engagement with the South Caucasus states. This recalibration reflects broader strategic realities: finite American resources, diminished appetite for open-ended commitments, and recognition that regional outcomes will ultimately be determined by local power dynamics rather than external patronage.
Azerbaijan
US–Azerbaijan relations have historically been shaped less by ideological alignment than by converging strategic interests. Since independence, Baku has pursued a deliberately balanced foreign policy, often described as multi-vector, aimed at preserving sovereignty, avoiding overdependence on any single external actor, and maximizing strategic flexibility. This approach has produced a bilateral relationship that is pragmatic, stable, and functionally defined, a pattern likely to persist and potentially deepen under the 2025 framework.
At the core of this partnership lies energy security and regional connectivity. Azerbaijan’s role as a producer and transit state has long aligned with US objectives of diversifying European energy supplies. Projects such as the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline and the Southern Gas Corridor were supported by Washington not as instruments of political transformation, but as strategically sound investments in resilience and pluralism within Eurasian energy markets. Although the United States is now a net energy exporter, the 2025 Strategy underscores that diversified global energy routes remain geopolitically valuable, particularly given Europe’s ongoing vulnerability to supply disruptions. Azerbaijani natural gas therefore continues to occupy a relevant, if not decisive, place in US strategic calculations.
The resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has fundamentally reinforced the functional nature of US–Azerbaijan relations, with the August 2025 Washington Summit representing the most tangible expression of this alignment. From a realist viewpoint, ongoing de-escalation reduces regional volatility and opens avenues for Western economic engagement, though full elimination of tensions remains incomplete. The strategy’s focus on peace deals to realign regions toward US interests and access markets applies conceptually, supporting efforts to limit Russian influence and improve Central Asian connectivity. Outcomes include tentative stabilization between energy-producing states through targeted diplomacy rather than large-scale commitments.
Moreover, Azerbaijan’s strategic value lies increasingly in its role as a connector, linking the Middle Corridor transport route between Central Asia and Europe, facilitating energy diversification for European markets, and maintaining functional relationships with multiple power centers without formal alignment. This positioning aligns precisely with the 2025 Strategy’s preference for partners who contribute to regional stability without requiring extensive US security commitments or transformational political projects.
Looking ahead, US–Azerbaijan relations are poised to deepen significantly, building on a foundation of mutual respect and converging strategic interests. The United States will actively support Azerbaijan’s participation in broader Eurasian economic networks and its role as a bridge between Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia. This partnership is characterized by pragmatic cooperation on shared interests, from counterterrorism and border security to technology and trade, without the friction that comes from mismatched expectations or transformational agendas. Both nations benefit from a relationship based on clear-eyed assessment of mutual interests, respect for sovereignty, and recognition that durable partnerships are built on realistic foundations rather than aspirational frameworks. As US strategy pivots toward prioritizing functional partnerships over ideological alignment, Azerbaijan stands well-positioned to become an even more valued partner in advancing shared objectives across the wider Eurasian space.
Armenia
The 2025 US National Security Strategy promotes a pragmatic, realistic approach to foreign policy, emphasizing burden-sharing and prioritizing core US interests, which indirectly shapes engagement in the South Caucasus, including with Armenia. It advocates accepting regional realities rather than forcing transformations that diverge from local histories and traditions, though it does not explicitly renounce democratic promotion.
The practical manifestation of this realism was the August 2025 Washington Declaration (Joint Declaration), signed by Azerbaijan, Armenia, and the U.S., which advanced normalization by committing to territorial integrity, sovereignty, inviolability of borders, and unimpeded connectivity like the “Trump Route” transit corridor. In doing so, the United States acted as a pragmatic mediator, fostering regional stability through direct dialogue and commercial incentives grounded in international law, rather than ideological intervention.
For Armenia, this convergence creates tangible opportunities across several domains. In energy security, Armenia’s efforts to reduce dependence on single-source supply align directly with the NSS’s emphasis on diversified energy infrastructure and resilience against coercive leverage. In economic resilience, Washington’s focus on strengthening partner economies against external manipulation complements Yerevan’s need to diversify trade relationships and reduce structural vulnerabilities. In advanced technologies and digital infrastructure, US support can facilitate Armenia’s integration into secure technological ecosystems, particularly as global supply chains reconfigure along strategic lines.
Connectivity emerges as a particularly significant area of alignment. The NSS explicitly prioritizes protecting strategic transit routes and preventing coercive control over critical corridors, a principle with direct application to the South Caucasus. By supporting the development of reliable, secure transportation infrastructure linking Armenia to regional and global markets, the United States advances its broader objective of ensuring that Eurasian connectivity develops along principles of openness and non-coercion, rather than becoming an instrument of geopolitical leverage.
Georgia
Georgia’s relationship with the United States has been shaped by support for democratic reforms after the 2003 Rose Revolution, its strategic role as a transit corridor for energy and trade in the Caucasus, and its example as a post-Soviet democratic transition. The 2008 Russo-Georgian War revealed limits to US rhetorical backing without direct military involvement, leading to over $1 billion in reconstruction aid and a shift toward more institutional ties. US-Georgia relations then recalibrated through the 2009 US-Georgia Charter on Strategic Partnership, focusing on defense, democracy, and economic cooperation amid Georgia’s NATO aspirations.
The 2025 US National Security Strategy stresses burden-sharing among partners, such as higher NATO defense spending, and prioritizes US resources for core theaters like Asia and the Western Hemisphere over peripheral regions. It promotes conditional cooperation tied to alignment with US priorities rather than ideology alone, though it does not explicitly reference Georgia. Washington maintains political and economic engagement, backs Georgia’s territorial integrity against Russian occupation, and sustains security aid via the NATO-Georgia Commission and systems like Javelin missiles.
Strategic Clarity and Its Discontents
The 2025 National Security Strategy’s implications for the South Caucasus can be understood as a shift from aspirational engagement to functional pragmatism. This recalibration reflects broader strategic realities confronting US foreign policy: the recognition that US resources are finite, that transformational agendas have limited efficacy in regions where local power dynamics predominate, and that sustainable partnerships must be built on realistic assessments of mutual interests rather than normative alignment alone.
Ultimately, the 2025 Strategy signals that the era of expansive US engagement in post-Soviet transitions has concluded. What emerges in its place is a more selective, interest-driven model of regional involvement – one that may prove more sustainable precisely because it is more modest. The South Caucasus will continue to matter to US strategy, but primarily insofar as regional developments intersect with concrete Washington’s interests: energy security, connectivity, counterterrorism, and the management of great power competition. This represents not abandonment, but the acceptance of a fundamental truth: regional stability in the South Caucasus will ultimately be determined by the states of the region themselves, operating within constraints imposed by geography, history, and the distribution of power.
