During the final years of the Soviet Union and in the aftermath of its dissolution, the constituent entities of the Union faced a multitude of profound challenges. Naturally, countries lacking prior experience of statehood were ill-equipped to respond to the new and complex demands placed before them. At the same time, the international community had no clear framework or vision for engagement with the countries emerging from the former Soviet space. The capitals of these newly independent states, receiving assistance from the “center” for the first time in decades, found themselves confronting the unprecedented task of making decisions autonomously and managing their consequences. In Georgia, as in other post-Soviet countries, the absence or weakness of political institutions, underdeveloped civic consciousness, economic crises, and similar structural deficiencies precipitated a crisis of statehood. These challenges were further exacerbated by nationalist sentiments among various population groups, which contributed to the emergence and escalation of ethnic conflicts within the country’s territory.

At that time, the Western world proclaimed the “end of history” and the triumph of liberal ideology over communism. Yet, their attention was largely directed toward other conflicts rather than the ethnic confrontations unfolding within the territory of the former Soviet Union. It was only after the Cold War, in 1992, that the United Nations adopted the Secretary-General’s proposed document, Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking, and Peacekeeping, which introduced the concept of post-conflict peacebuilding as a framework for addressing contemporary conflicts in the post-Cold War era. This approach emphasizes the identification and support of structures capable of consolidating peace and preventing the renewed escalation of conflict.

This concept laid the foundation for contemporary efforts in conflict transformation and resolution in the developed world. Often referred to as “liberal peacebuilding,” the concept has, over its nearly twenty-five-year history, frequently been subject to critique by analysts and academics. Critics commonly describe it as a form of “modern colonialism,” arguing that the West offers conflict parties pre-packaged solutions aligned with its own preferences and experiences, while the parties—often dependent on the financial support of the “major Western powers”—consent to these conditions. Critics attribute the relative scarcity of fully resolved contemporary conflicts to this very dynamic within current peacebuilding practices.

The existing practices of peacebuilding will remain a subject of debate among international relations specialists for the foreseeable future. Against this backdrop of ongoing theoretical discussion, the experiences of actors working directly in conflict-affected countries are particularly instructive, especially in contexts where conflicts and the search for their resolution coincided with the development and operationalization of this approach.