Georgia failed to see any progress on its membership bid at NATO's Vilnius Summit,
Eurasianet reports.
That was unlike fellow applicant Ukraine, which managed to see some positive changes in its application while failing to get an accession timeline.
Critics blame Tbilisi's policies and the Georgian government's lack of interest for this failure. Georgian officials, on the other hand, attribute the summit outcomes to the West's lack of commitment.
"Nobody talked about Georgia" during the summit, Kornely Kakachia, a Georgian political analyst who attended summit-related public discussions in Vilnius, told Eurasianet.
According to Kakachia, Georgia showed up to the summit looking like "a neutral country" rather than the enthusiastic membership aspirant that it had once been. It's "as if Georgia switched roles with Moldova, formally a CIS member and a neutral country, and it's Moldovans who are more active now and waiting for momentum to open up regarding NATO."
On July 11-12, world leaders gathered in the Lithuanian capital for the annual summit to discuss the future of the military bloc amid Russia's continued aggression against Ukraine.
It was the first annual summit attended by new member Finland, which abandoned decades of neutrality amid a rising sense of threat from Russia. Finland's accession, and Sweden's planned accession effectively surmounted what had been viewed as a "Russian Veto" on NATO expansion near its borders.
Ukraine, meanwhile, fell short of getting a clear invitation or accession timeline from its NATO allies. But Kyiv still achieved some progress in Vilnius by having the requirement for a Membership Action Plan (MAP), a formal pathway to accession, removed from its application.
Yet there was no news for Georgia, once one of the most committed applicants and NATO partners. In the summit communique issued by NATO leaders on July 11, it was clearly written that the alliance reiterated the 2008 Bucharest Summit decision that "Georgia will become a member" but - unlike Ukraine - with MAP "as an integral part of the process". The move effectively dismantled what used to be a Tbilisi-Kyiv duo, as the two countries' applications had for years largely been discussed in tandem.
"To advance its Euro-Atlantic aspirations, Georgia must make progress on reforms, including key democratic reforms, and make best use of the ANP [Annual National Programme]," the communique said.
Georgia declared its will to join the alliance to protect itself from the Russian threat more than two decades ago. But the country has been stuck in limbo - or what many describe as NATO's "open doors" - since the 2008 Bucharest summit when the alliance said Georgia and Ukraine would become members of NATO - without providing any clarity on when or how that would happen.
