ABSTRACT
The states of the South Caucasus played an outsized role in United States (US) policy toward post-Soviet Eurasia. US development assistance per capita to Georgia and Armenia dwarfed that of all other post-Soviet states. The diversity of US policy toward the South Caucasus has been especially evident with regard to the region's prospective integration with Euro-Atlantic institutions. Georgia was the US' closest security partner in the region, with the exception of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The place of the South Caucasus into an 'arc of instability' was already identified by US policy in the late 1990s. US policy moved toward a vision of 'Wider Europe' rather than 'Greater Europe' as an instrument of stability and integration for the South Caucasus and other post-Soviet states in Europe. Foreign policy development made it easier over time to decouple questions of Georgia's governance from its relationship to NATO.
