Ideological Foundations of Russian Aggression in Georgia (August 2008)

Tengiz PKHALADZE

Abstract: The August 2008 Russian military aggression against Georgia consti­tutes a landmark episode in the post-Soviet international order, marking the first open, large-scale use of the Russian Federation’s regular armed forces beyond na­tional borders for offensive military purposes and resulting in the illegal occupa­tion of parts of neighbouring country’s internationally recognised territory. Be­yond its immediate military and diplomatic consequences, this aggression illumi­nated the deeper ideological and civilizational assumptions shaping contemporary Russian foreign policy.

The article examines how Eurasianism, understood both as a long-standing intel­lectual tradition and as a modern political discourse, provided a framework through which Russian political elites interpreted Georgia, the Caucasus, and Russia’s regional role. Tracing the genealogy of Eurasianist thought from classi­cal authors to late-Soviet and post-Soviet reinterpretations, the article demon­strates how the Caucasus has been constructed as the “southern gate” of Eurasia and as a civilizational boundary zone whose loss, from a Russian perspective, would threaten the integrity of a Eurasian whole.

Within this ideological imaginary, Georgia’s post-Soviet political transformation and European orientation were not perceived merely as a foreign policy diver­gence, but as a challenge to Russia’s civilizational self-conception. The article ar­gues that the 2008 aggression translated Eurasianist narratives into concrete po­litical practice through discursive legitimation, spatial re-imagination, and sym­bolic restoration. In this sense, the Georgian case anticipated the later Russian annexation of Crimea (2014) and large-scale military intervention in Ukraine (from 2022), where civilizational geopolitics has similarly been mobilised to justify territorial domination.

Keywords: Russia; Georgia; aggression; Eurasianism; critical geopolitics.

Introduction

The August 2008 Russian aggres­sion against Georgia marked a turn­ing point in the post-Cold War Euro­pean security order. It represented the first openly acknowledged, large-scale use of Russian regular armed forces beyond national borders for offensive military purposes, rather than peacekeeping operations or indi­rect intervention through proxies. Unlike earlier post-Soviet engage­ments framed as peacekeeping mis­sions or conducted through paramili­tary and proxy actors, the August 2008 aggression involved the open and large-scale deployment of the Russian Federation’s regular armed forces in offensive military opera­tions against a neighbouring sover­eign state and resulted in the de facto occupation of Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region (South Ossetia)¹.

A significant portion of existing analyses explains Russian aggression in August 2008 through realist frameworks, interpreting it as a re­sponse to NATO enlargement, shift­ing regional balances of power, or immediate security dilemmas². While such interpretations capture im­portant strategic dimensions of the conflict, they tend to underestimate the role of ideology, identity, and civilizational narratives in shaping Russian foreign policy behaviour.

This article advances the argu­ment that the August 2008 aggression cannot be fully understood without reference to Eurasianism as an ideo­logical framework that structures Russia’s perception of space, sover­eignty, and civilizational hierarchy. Drawing on constructivist theories of ontological security³ and insights from critical geopolitics⁴, the article conceptualises Russian aggression as an act of civilizational securitization, an attempt to frame Georgia’s politi­cal transformation and European ori­entation as an existential threat to a putative Eurasian civilizational order.

From this perspective, Georgia’s western-oriented trajectory did not merely challenge Russia’s regional influence but undermined its self-image as the core of a distinct Eura­sian world. Constructivist scholarship emphasises that such challenges to identity generate ontological insecu­rity, prompting states to engage in practices aimed at restoring a stable sense of self⁵. The August 2008 ag­gression thus functioned not only as a strategic intervention, but also as an identity-restoring act through which the Russian state sought to reaffirm its geopolitical and civilizational am­bitions, and symbolic centrality in the post-Soviet space.

Georgia in Eurasianist Thought: Civilizational Hierarchy and Spatial Control

Georgia in Classical Eurasionism

The intellectual foundations of Russian aggression against Georgia can be traced to the classical Eura­sianist movement that emerged among Russian émigré intellectuals in the early 1920s. Reacting both to the collapse of the Russian Empire and to what they perceived as the cultural and political exhaustion of Western liberal modernity, Eura­sianists such as Nikolai Trubetskoy and Petr Savitsky rejected the domi­nant opposition between Westernism and Slavophilism. Instead, they ad­vanced the claim that Russia consti­tuted a distinct civilizational entity – Eurasia, whose historical develop­ment, cultural logic, and spatial or­ganisation were fundamentally dif­ferent from those of Europe⁶.

At the core of Trubetskoy’s thought lay a critique of Eurocentric universalism and linear models of historical development. In “The Leg­acy of Genghis Khan”, he argued that Western civilization had falsely ele­vated its own historical experience to a universal norm, delegitimising al­ternative civilizational trajectories⁷. Against this logic, Trubetskoy insist­ed on the plurality and incommen­surability of civilizations, each rooted in a specific territorial and cultural environment. Russia, in this frame­work, was not a peripheral or “in­complete” European society, but the historical and political heir to a Eura­sian continental synthesis shaped by Slavic, Turkic, and Mongol ele­ments⁸.

Crucially, Trubetskoy’s vision of Eurasia was not egalitarian. Although he frequently spoke of synthesis and integration, his conception of Rus­sia’s role vis-à-vis neighbouring re­gions was explicitly hierarchical. In a series of early Eurasianist texts, he emphasised that political stability and cultural integration within Eurasia required the active exercise of Rus­sian power in adjacent regions such as the Caucasus and Central Asia⁹. Unlike simplified imperialist frame­works, Trubetskoy did not frame Russian expansion as domination for its own sake. Instead, he presented it as a strategic and civilizational im­perative, linking geopolitical control to a purported mission of cultural integration and systemic stability. In doing so, he constructed an ideologi­cal justification for Russian authority over neighbouring territories ground­ed not in coercion alone, but in claims of historical responsibility and civilizational necessity.

This logic is particularly explicit in Trubetskoy’s 1925 text “About the Peoples of the Caucasus”, which offers direct recommendations to Russian authorities on how the region should be governed¹⁰. With regard to Georgia, Trubetskoy acknowledged that the autonomy acquired by Geor­gians after the 1917 Revolution could not simply be revoked without pro­voking intensified separatism. Never­theless, he argued that any form of Georgian independence posed a stra­tegic danger that Russian authorities were obliged to suppress by all avail­able means. According to Trubetskoy, Georgian sovereignty would deprive Russia of control over Baku’s oil resources and, subsequent­ly, over the entire South Caucasus, thereby under­mining Moscow’s abil­ity to retain the North Caucasus as well¹¹.

Equally significant is Trubetskoy’s assessment of Georgian nationalism. He characterised it as particularly resilient and deeply in­fused with European ideas, which rendered purely coercive solutions insufficient. As a result, he proposed that the “final solution” to the Geor­gian question could only be achieved through the creation of a specifically Georgian variant of Eurasian ideolo­gy – re-encoding nationalism within a Eurasian civilizational framework rather than eliminating it outright¹². This approach reveals a sophisticated strategy of ideological governance, combining coercion, fragmentation, and normative adaptation.

More broadly, Trubetskoy advo­cated the dismantling of large territo­rial units in the South Caucasus – Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia, and their replacement with smaller administrative districts¹³. This reor­ganisation, he argued, would prevent the consolidation of strong national identities capable of sustaining sepa­ratism. In Georgia, for example, Trubetskoy supported the promotion of Megrelian and Svan languages, provided that such cultural differenti­ation did not result in the emergence of new autonomous national entities. At the same time, he explicitly op­posed the assimilation of smaller peoples by larger ones and warned against the “Georgianisation” of Abkhazia and South Ossetia¹⁴.

This dual logic – simultaneously encouraging internal fragmentation while preventing upward national consolidation – reveals a governance strategy aimed at preserving Russian centrality by managing diversity through controlled differentiation. Far from contradicting one another, Trubetskoy’s opposition to both sep­aratism and assimilation reflected a coherent civilizational hierarchy in which Russia functioned as the indis­pensable arbiter and stabiliser of Eur­asian diversity.

Trubetskoy also rejected the no­tion that ideological cohesion alone, such as adherence to socialism, was sufficient to sustain a unified state across the post-imperial space. In his 1927 article On Eurasian National­ism, he argued that shared socio-economic ideals did not necessitate political unity¹⁵. Instead, he main­tained that the territories of the for­mer Russian Empire, now constitut­ing the Soviet Union, required a stronger unifying principle: the crea­tion of a new, multi-ethnic Eurasian nation, centred on Russia as its core and organising nucleus¹⁶.

Taken together, the works of Trubetskoy and Savitsky established a durable ideological template that linked space, culture, and political authority within a hierarchical civili­zational framework. By conceptualis­ing the Caucasus as the “southern gate” of Eurasia and by assigning Russia a protective, supervisory, and integrative role, classical Eurasianism provided a normative foundation for subordinating regional sovereignty to civilizational unity. Although these early formulations did not advocate military aggression in a modern sense, they normalised the idea that Russian intervention in the Caucasus could be framed as a defensive, re­storative, and even ethical act under­taken in the name of a higher civili­zational order. This intellectual lega­cy would later be reactivated and politicised in ways that directly in­formed justifications of Russian ag­gression against Georgia.

Georgia in Late-Soviet and Post-Soviet Eurasianism

The next stage in the evolution of Eurasianist thought unfolded in the late Soviet and early post-Soviet pe­riods, when earlier civilizational con­cepts were reintroduced, reformulat­ed, and ultimately politicised. This phase is crucial for understanding how abstract cultural hierarchies and spatial imaginaries were translated into a language capable of legitimis­ing concrete foreign policy practices, including military aggression.

A pivotal role in this transition was played by Lev Gumilev, whose theories of ethnogenesis and pas­sionarity reactivated Eurasianist as­sumptions under the guise of natural science. Although Gumilev avoided explicit ideological commitments, his work reintroduced civilizational de­terminism into Soviet academic dis­course at a moment when Marxist-Leninist explanations were losing credibility¹⁷. By conceptualising eth­nic communities as quasi-biological organisms shaped by geography, cli­mate, and energetic impulses origi­nating in the biosphere, Gumilev provided Eurasianism with a veneer of scientific objectivity¹⁸.

Central to Gumilev’s framework was the notion of passionarity, de­fined as an excess of vital energy that enabled certain ethnic collectives to expand, dominate, and organise broader political spaces¹⁹. Within this schema, Russia emerged as the core of a coherent Eurasian super-ethnos, formed through the long-term inter­action of Slavic, Turkic, and Finno-Ugric peoples within the continental steppe zone²⁰. Western Europe, by contrast, was portrayed as an aging and entropic civilization, exhausted by excessive individualism and de­tached from the ecological conditions necessary for sustained vitality²¹.

The Caucasus occupied a particu­larly significant place in Gumilev’s ethnological geography. He de­scribed the region as part of Eurasia’s “passionary belt,” where ethnogenet­ic energy manifested itself with ex­ceptional intensity and volatility²². Such regions, according to Gumilev, were inherently unstable and prone to conflict unless integrated into a larger civilizational system capable of regu­lating and harmonising their excess energy. Only the Russian super-ethnos, as the stabilising core of Eurasia, possessed the capacity to perform this function²³. Russian dominance in the Caucasus was thus reframed not as imperialism, but as an ethno-bi­ological necessity re­quired to pre­serve systemic equilibri­um.

By naturalising civilizational hi­erarchy through biology and geogra­phy, Gumilev transformed normative Eurasianist claims into descriptive “laws of nature.” Russian authority over peripheral regions appeared not as a political choice, but as an objec­tive requirement dictated by the structure of the Eurasian biosphere²⁴. This justification of domination proved highly influential. Gumilev’s ideas circulated widely among histo­rians, geographers, and military intel­lectuals in the late Soviet period, par­ticularly through his lectures at Len­ingrad State University and works such as Ethnogenesis and the Bio­sphere of the Earth²⁵. In this way, Eurasianist spatial thinking re-entered Soviet strategic culture with renewed legitimacy.

In the post-Soviet period, these quasi-scientific foundations were ex­pli­citly politicised by neo-Eur­asianist thinkers, most notably Aleksandr Panarin and Aleksandr Dugin. Panarin reframed Eurasianism as a moral and civilizational response to globalization, which he interpreted as a form of Western spiritual impe­rialism aimed at eroding cultural plu­rality²⁶. Liberal universalism, in his view, threatened the Orthodox and communitarian foundations of Eura­sian society. Russia was therefore assigned a defensive civilizational role as the guardian of cultural diver­sity and spiritual sovereignty.

Within Panarin’s framework, the Caucasus acquired a distinctly moral significance. He depicted the region as Eurasia’s “southern moral fron­tier,” where the confrontation be­tween Western liberalism and Eura­sian spiritual values was particularly acute²⁷. Georgia’s post-Soviet turn toward European integration was thus framed not merely as a geopolit­ical realignment, but as a civiliza­tional defection that endangered the ethical coherence of the Eurasian space. Preserving Russian influence in the Caucasus became synonymous with defending sobornost’ – spiritual unity – against Western atomisa­tion²⁸.

Aleksandr Dugin completed the transformation of Eurasianism into a comprehensive geopolitical doctrine. In The Foundations of Geopolitics (1997), he synthesised classical Eura­sianist thought, Gumilev’s ethnologi­cal concepts, and Western geopoliti­cal theory into a strategic blueprint for Russian power²⁹. Drawing on Halford Mackinder’s Heartland theo­ry, Dugin identified Russia as the core of a continental civilization locked in an existential struggle with Atlanticism, represented by the Unit­ed States and its European allies.

In Dugin’s geopolitical vision, the post-Soviet space constituted Russia’s natural sphere of civiliza­tional respons­i­bility. The Caucasus, and Georgia in particular, was con­ceptualised as the southern bastion of the Eurasian Heartland. Western po­litical and normative influence in Georgia was portrayed as a direct threat that would “open the gates” of Eurasia to Atlantic domination³⁰. Within this framework, Georgian sovereignty was subordin­ated to Eur­asian strategic necessity, and Western alignment was treated as an inherent­ly hostile act rather than a legitimate foreign policy choice.

Crucially, neo-Eurasianism erased the distinction between aggression and protection. Military force, territo­rial control, and political intervention were reframed as morally justified instruments for defending Eurasia’s ontological integrity and civilization­al balance³¹. By the mid-2000s, this ideological repertoire had migrated from intellectual circles into the semi-official language of Russian strategic culture. Concepts such as multipolarity, civilizational plurality, and sovereign democracy echoed core neo-Eurasianist assumptions, even when explicit references were avoided³².

This intellectual evolution provid­ed a ready-made framework for in­terpreting Georgia’s Europeanization as an existential civilizational threat and for legitimising coercive measures. The August 2008 Russian aggression against Georgia thus rep­resented the first major instance in which this worldview was translated into open military action, marking the institu­tionalisation of what has been described as “state Eurasianism” – the fusion of civilizational ideology with state power³³.

Georgia’s European Path and Russia’s Eurasianist Expansion

Georgia’s orientation toward Eu­rope and the Euro-Atlantic world represents a long-term civilizational and political choice articulated in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s col­lapse. From the moment of restored independence, Georgian statehood was defined in opposition to imperial and post-imperial structures of Rus­sian dominance and grounded in an explicit aspiration to “return to Europe.” This orientation was not merely instrumental or tactical, but existential: it concerned the founda­tional question of where Georgia be­longed politically, normatively, and civilizationally³⁴.

Throughout the 1990s, despite acute internal instability, armed con­flicts, and economic dislocation, Georgian political elites consistently articulated Western integration as the primary framework for securing sov­ereignty and state survival. Coopera­tion with European institutions, alignment with liberal conceptions of sovereignty, and engagement with Euro-Atlantic security structures were framed as mechanisms for es­caping the post-Soviet sphere of in­fluence and consolidating independ­ence³⁵. These commitments were embedded in early foreign policy doctrines, constitutional discourse, and diplomatic practice, long before Georgia possessed the institutional capacity to implement comprehen­sive reforms.

Georgia’s Europeanization should therefore be understood as a contin­uous process, rather than as the product of discrete political events. While the depth and effectiveness of institutional transformation varied over time, the underlying strategic and civilizational orientation re­mained consistent. The persistence of this orientation is analytically signifi­cant, as it underscores that Georgia’s Western path was not a reactive choice shaped by short-term political shifts, but a sustained attempt to re­define national identity and interna­tional belonging outside Eurasian frameworks.

From Moscow’s perspective, this long-term trajectory constituted a challenge that exceeded conventional geopolitical competition. Construc­tivist scholarship on ontological secu­rity emphasises that states rely on stable identity narratives to maintain a coherent sense of self, purpose, and legitimacy in international politics³⁶. When these narratives are disrupted, particularly by actors located within a state’s perceived civilizational space, ontological insecurity emerges, pro­ducing anxiety over historical mis­sion, moral authority, and status³⁷.

Georgia’s Europeanization was unacceptable precisely because it unfolded within a space that Russian Eurasianist discourse defined as in­herently belonging to a Eurasian civi­lizational order. As a former imperial periphery and a key component of the imagined “southern gate” of Eur­asia, Georgia’s refusal to conform to this spatial and cultural hierarchy undermined Russia’s self-conception as the natural centre of the post-Soviet world. The possibility that a post-Soviet state could pursue sover­eign development outside Eurasian civiliz­ational frameworks challenged the narrative that Russian leadership was historically necessary, culturally legi­timate, and normatively justi­fied³⁸.

This challenge was ontological ra­ther than merely realistic. Georgia’s Western orientation called into ques­tion the presumed naturalness of Eur­asian boundaries by exposing their contingent and constructed character. If Georgia – considered by Russia as the traditional zone of influence, pre­dominantly Orthodox, and geograph­ically embedded in the Caucasus – could define itself as European, then the Eurasian civilizational project appeared neither inevitable nor uni­versally compelling. In this sense, Georgia functioned as a symbolic counter-example that undermined Russia’s civilizational self-image³⁹.

Russian political discourse in­creasingly framed this process in se­curitized terms. Georgia’s European­ization was not acknowledged as a legitimate sovereign choice, but was instead portrayed as the product of external ideological expansion. Western political norms, democratic institutions, and liberal conceptions of sovereignty were represented as instruments of “civilizational intru­sion” designed to extract Georgia from Russia’s normative orbit and weaken Eurasian unity⁴⁰. This fram­ing transformed normative diver­gence into an existential threat.

Such representations align with what critical geopolitics describes as civilizational securitization: the construction of ideological and nor­mative difference as a danger to col­lective identity that necessitates ex­traordinary measures⁴¹. Within this logic, Russia’s policies toward Georgia, including economic pres­sure, diplo­matic isolation, and the manipulation of unresolved territorial conflicts, func­tioned not simply as tools of coercion, but as identity-restoring prac­tices aimed at reaffirm­ing Russia’s civilizational centrality.

By the mid-2000s, Georgia had become a focal point of Russia’s on­tological insecurity. Its persistent Western orientation symbolised the erosion of post-imperial hierarchy and the failure of Eurasian integra­tion to function as a natural gravita­tional force. The August 2008 Rus­sian aggression must therefore be understood as the culmination of a longer process in which Russia sought to resolve this ontological crisis through coercive action. Mili­tary aggression offered a means of reasserting civilizational boundaries, disciplining deviation, and restoring a sense of historical continuity disrupt­ed by imperial collapse and the de­fection of a former periphery.

2008 – From Civilizational Discourse to Military Aggression

The August 2008 Russian aggres­sion against Georgia constituted the moment in which Eurasianist ideolo­gy was most clearly and decisively translated into concrete foreign poli­cy practice. Rather than representing a reactive response to immediate se­curity concerns, the aggression func­tioned as an act of civilizational secu­ritization through which long-standing ideological narratives about space, identity, and historical mission were operationalised by means of military force. In this sense, the events of August 2008 marked the culmination of a process in which Eurasianist thought migrated from intellectual discourse into the domain of state action.

Civilizational securitization dif­fers from conventional security logics in that it frames normative, cultural, and ontological challenges as existen­tial threats. Georgia’s long-standing Western orientation was represented within Russian political discourse not simply as a geopolitical divergence, but as a danger to the moral and civi­lizational integrity of the Eurasian space. The aggression was thus aimed at resolving an ontological crisis by reasserting boundaries, hier­archies, and meanings that Eura­sianist ideology had long portrayed as natural and historically justified⁴².

In the discursive sphere, Russian political elites systematically framed the use of force through a vocabulary that closely mirrored Eurasianist as­sumptions. Official statements by President Dmitry Medvedev and For­eign Minister Sergei Lavrov avoided the language of war or invasion and instead portrayed Russia’s actions as the defence of compatriots, the pre­vention of humanitarian catastrophe, and the restoration of historical jus­tice⁴³. This rhetoric positioned Russia as a moral guardian acting on behalf of a broader civilizational communi­ty, while Georgia’s sovereignty was implicitly delegitimised by represent­ing the Georgian state as either inca­pable of governing responsibly or as a conduit for external civilizational intrusion. Western political and nor­mative support for Georgia was thus reframed as aggressive interference rather than assistance to a sovereign state.

Such discursive strategies corre­spond to what critical geopolitics identifies as the moralisation of space, whereby geopolitical actions are justified not through international law but through appeals to cultural authenticity and civilizational duty⁴⁴. Through this inversion, Russia ap­peared as a force of order and stabil­ity, while Georgia and its Western partners were cast as agents of dis­ruption. The legitimising function of this discourse was crucial, as it al­lowed military aggression to be pre­sented as a defensive and ethically necessary response to an existential threat.

At the same time, the aggression involved a profound re-imagination of political space. Russian political discourse and media narratives sys­tematically privileged symbolic civi­lizational borders over internationally recognised state boundaries. Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region (South Ossetia) were increasingly described as organic components of the Russian or Eurasian civilizational space, whose separation from Georgia was portrayed as both natu­ral and historically justified⁴⁵. This reflected what critical geopoliticians describe as imaginative geography—the production of spatial meanings that render certain territories inher­ently belonging to a particular civili­zational order regardless of legal sta­tus⁴⁶.

Within this spatial imaginary, Georgia’s internationally recognised borders appeared artificial and im­posed, while Russia’s military pres­ence was framed as a corrective act restoring an authentic civilizational configuration. Neo-Eurasianist com­mentators articulated this logic ex­plicitly. Aleksandr Dugin described the conflict as a test of Eurasia’s metaphysical boundaries, arguing that failure to intervene would result in the opening of Eurasia’s “southern gate” to Atlantic domination⁴⁷. Public demonstrations organised by Eura­sianist movements reinforced this imagery by framing South Ossetia as a civilizational outpost, further en­trenching the idea that the conflict concerned civilizational space rather than sovereign territory.

Beyond discourse and spatial re­definition, the 2008 aggression per­formed a deeper symbolic function. From a constructivist perspective, the collapse of the Soviet Union pro­duced a rupture in Russia’s national narrative, generating what ontologi­cal security theorists describe as a crisis of continuity and purpose⁴⁸. The loss of empire undermined Rus­sia’s self-understanding as a great power and civilizational centre, creat­ing a persistent sense of historical dislocation. Georgia’s sustained Western orientation intensified this rupture by demonstrating that former imperial peripheries could reject Eur­asian integration and define them­selves outside Russia’s normative orbit.

The aggression against Georgia functioned as an empire’s identity-restoring act through which the Rus­sian state sought to repair this narra­tive rupture. By intervening militarily and imposing control over contested territories, Russia reaffirmed its ca­pacity to act decisively, enforce hier­archy, and shape regional outcomes. As ontological security scholarship suggests, such practices serve as identity performances through which states reaffirm who they believe themselves to be⁴⁹. In this sense, the occupation of Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region was less about ter­ritorial expansion than about symbol­ic confirmation of Russia’s historical mission as the organiser and protec­tor of a Eurasian civilizational order.

This moment marked the institu­tionalisation of what has been de­scribed as state Eurasianism – the fusion of civilizational ideology with state power⁵⁰. Eurasianism ceased to function merely as a discursive re­source and became embedded in stra­tegic practice, providing a template for future interventions. The Geor­gian case thus served as a laboratory in which civilizational narratives were translated into military and dip­lomatic action, establishing a prece­dent later replicated in Crimea in 2014 and in the large-scale aggres­sion against Ukraine from 2022.

Taken together, the discursive, spatial, and symbolic dimensions of the August 2008 aggression reveal it as more than a regional conflict. It constituted a transformative moment in which Eurasianist ideology achieved operational coherence, ena­bling Russia to convert civilizational claims into practices of territorial domination. Through this act of civi­lizational securitization, the Russian state temporarily resolved its onto­logical insecurity by reaffirming its self-image as a distinct civilizational pole capable of resisting Western normative expansion. In this sense, August 2008 represents not only a turning point in Russian–Georgian relations, but a foundational episode in the emergence of civilizational geopolitics as a guiding logic of Rus­sian foreign policy in the twenty-first century.

Conclusions

The August 2008 Russian aggres­sion against Georgia illustrates how ideological frameworks can shape, enable, and legitimise the use of mili­tary force in contemporary interna­tional politics. Strategic and material factors formed part of the broader context, but they are insufficient to explain the symbolic intensity and normative framing of Russia’s ac­tions. The aggression unfolded within an ideological environment in which Eurasianist narratives structured per­ceptions of space, sovereignty, and civilizational hierarchy.

The long-standing construction of the Caucasus, and Georgia in particu­lar, as a civilizational boundary zone rendered Georgian sovereignty con­ditional within Eurasianist thought. Georgia’s persistent Western orienta­tion questioned this hierarchy by challenging Russia’s self-conception as the natural centre of the post-Soviet space. From an ontological security perspective, this challenge generated anxiety over historical mis­sion, moral authority, and imperial – civilisational ambitions, creating in­centives for revanchist, identity-restoring practices.

The events of August 2008 reveal how Eurasianist discourse was con­verted into political practice through civilizational securitization. Discur­sive strategies reframed aggression as moral obligation; spatial imaginaries privileged symbolic civilizational borders over internationally recog­nised state boundaries; and military intervention functioned as a ritual of symbolic restoration following the disruption caused by imperial col­lapse. Together, these processes transformed ideological claims into concrete acts of territorial domina­tion.

Importantly, identifying the ideo­logical foundations of Russian ag­gression does not confer legitimacy upon it. On the contrary, the analysis highlights how civilizational narra­tives served to mask violations of international law, the erosion of Georgian sovereignty, and the use of force against a neighbouring state. Appeals to historical destiny and cul­tural responsibility functioned as mechanisms of justification that ob­scured coercion and normalised vio­lence. Such narratives may explain behaviour, but they cannot excuse it.

The Georgian case underscores the dangers inherent in civilizational geopolitics when claims of cultural authenticity are elevated above the principles of sovereign equality and territorial integrity. By recasting normative divergence as an existen­tial threat, civilizational securitization transforms political disagreement into grounds for military action. The August 2008 aggression therefore stands as a clear breach of the foun­dational norms of the international order.

Finally, the patterns observed in Georgia foreshadowed subsequent Russian interventions in Crimea in 2014 and in Ukraine from 2022 on­ward, where similar civilizational framings were mobilised to justify territorial seizure and prolonged war­fare. Recognising the ideological mechanisms at work in the Georgian precedent is essential for understand­ing how civilizational narratives con­tinue to pose risks to regional stabil­ity and international peace. Sovereign choices made by independent states cannot be subordinated to civiliza­tional claims without undermining the international legal order itself.

Notes

• Roy Allison, “Russia resurgent? Moscow’s campaign to ‘coerce Georgia to peace’”, International Affairs, vol. 84, no. 6, 2008, pp. 1145-1171.
• Cory Welt, “Georgia and the Limits of Containment,” Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 62, no. 3, 2010, pp. 503-523.
• Marlène Laruelle,Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2008, pp. 23-31.
• Jennifer Mitzen, “Ontological Security in World Politics”,European Journal of International Relations, vol. 12, no. 3, 2006, pp. 341-347.
• Brent J. Steele,Ontological Security in International Relations, Routledge, London, 2008, pp. 12-16.
• Marlène Laruelle,Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2008,  1-11.
• Nikolai Trubetskoy,Наследие Чингисхана, Paris, 1925, pp. 41-49.
• Ibidem, pp. 52-57.
• Nikolai Trubetskoy, “О народах Кавказа,” inНаследие Чингисхана, Agraf, Moscow, 2000, pp. 472-476.
• Ibidem, p. 475.
• Ibidem, pp. 475-476.
• Ibidem, p. 478.
• Ibidem, pp. 477-479.
• Ibidem, pp. 479-480.
• Nikolai Trubetskoy, “О евразийском национализме,” inИстория. Культура. Язык, Progress, Moscow, 1995, pp. 417-420.
• Ibidem, pp. 420-423.
• Lev Gumilev,Этногенез и биосфера Земли, Mysl’, Moscow, 1990, pp. 1-10.
• Ibidem, pp. 200-206.
• Ibidem, pp. 312-318.
• Ibidem, pp. 316-318.
• Mark Bassin, “Lev Gumilev and the European New Right,”Nationalities Papers, vol. 40, no. 1, 2012, pp. 69-72.
• Lev Gumilev,Этногенез и биосфера Земли, Mysl’, Moscow, 1990, pp. 8-15.
• Ibidem, pp. 308–315.
• Lev Gumilev,Конец и вновь начало, Mysl’, Moscow, 1992, pp. 45-49.
• Marlène Laruelle,Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2008, pp. 42-44.
• Aleksandr Panarin,Россия в цивилизационных циклах, Respublika, Moscow, 1999, pp. 33-36.
• Idem,Искушение глобализмом, Respublika, Moscow, 1995, pp. 214-216.
• Ibidem, pp. 210-214.
• Aleksandr Dugin,Основы геополитики, Arktogeia, Moscow, 1997, pp. 221-223.
• Ibidem, pp. 218-220.
• Aleksandr Panarin,Россия в цивилизационных циклах, Respublika, Moscow, 1999, pp. 251-256.
• Vladislav Surkov, “Суверенитет – это политический синоним конкурентоспособности,”Эксперт, no. 43, 2006. Richard Sakwa, The Crisis of Russian Democracy: The Dual State, Factionalism and the Medvedev Succession, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011, pp. 73-78.
• Aleksandr Dugin, “Южная Осетия – форпост Евразии,”Евразийское движение, August 2008; see also Idem, “Война в Грузии как метафи-зическое испытание”, Русский журнал, 2008.
• Jennifer Mitzen, “Ontological Security in World Politics”,European Journal of International Relations, vol. 12, no. 3, 2006, pp. 347-350.
• Jennifer Mitzen, “Ontological Security in World Politics”,European Journal of International Relations, vol. 12, no. 3, 2006, pp. 347-350.
• Andrey Makarychev, “In Quest of ‘True Sovereignty’: The Discursive Foundations of Russia’s Policy toward Georgia”,Problems of Post-Communism, vol. 55, no. 6, 2008, pp. 3-15.
• Andrei Tsygankov,Russia and the West from Alexander to Putin: Honor in International Relations, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2012, pp. 259-263.
• Vladimir Putin, “Address to the Nation Following the Terrorist Act in Beslan”, September 4, 2004. Vladislav Surkov, “Суверенитет — это поли-тический синоним конкурентоспо-собности,”Эксперт, no. 43, 2006.
• Richard Sakwa,Russia Against the Rest: The Post-Cold War Crisis of World Order, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017, pp. 102–108. Andrei Tsygankov, Russia’s Foreign Policy: Change and Continuity in National Identity, 4th ed., Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, 2019, pp. 157-164.
• Andrei Tsygankov,Russia and the West from Alexander to Putin: Honor in International Relations, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2012, pp. 259-266. Roy Allison, “The Russian Case for Military Intervention in Georgia: International Law, Norms and Political Calculation”, European Security, vol. 18, no. 2, 2009, pp. 173-200.
• Pål Kolstø and Helge Blakkisrud, “Living with Non-recognition: State- and Nation-Building in South Caucasian Quasi-States”,Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 60, no. 3, 2008, pp. 483–509.
• Gerard Toal (Gearóid Ó Tuathail), John O’Loughlin, and Vladimir Kolossov, “The Georgia–South Ossetia Conflict: A Case of Contested Sovereignty”,Eurasian Geography and Economics, vol. 52, no. 1, 2011, pp. 1-24.
• Gearóid Ó Tuathail,Critical Geopolitics, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1996, pp. 29-33. Klaus Dodds, Geopolitics: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007, pp. 18-21.
• Jennifer Mitzen, “Ontological Security in World Politics”,European Journal of International Relations, vol. 12, no. 3, 2006, pp. 347-350. Brent J. Steele, Ontological Security in International Relations, Routledge, London, 2008, pp. 13-15. Vera Tolz, Russia’s Own Orient: The Politics of Identity and Oriental Studies in the Late Imperial and Early Soviet Period, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014, pp. 143-147.
• Dmitry Trofimov, “Eurasian Metaphors in Post-Soviet Discourse,” Moscow, 2003, pp. 33-36. Marlène Laruelle,Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2008, pp. 101-105. Gerard Toal, Near Abroad: Putin, the West, and the Contest over Ukraine and the Caucasus, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017, pp. 44-47.
• Brent J. Steele, cit., pp. 13-15. Roy Allison, “The Russian Case for Military Intervention in Georgia: International Law, Norms and Political Calculation”,European Security, vol. 18, no. 2, 2009, pp. 173-200.
• Marlène Laruelle, “The Ideological Shift on the Russian Radical Right: From Demonizing the West to Fear of Migrants”,Problems of Post-Communism, vol. 57, no. 6, 2010, pp. 19-31.
• Gerard Toal,Near Abroad, cit., pp. 46-47.
• Andrei Tsygankov,Russia and the West from Alexander to Putin, cit., pp. 210-212.
• Marlène Laruelle, cit., pp. 101-105. Gearóid Ó Tuathail and John O’Loughlin, “Russian Geopolitical Culture and Public Opinion: The Masks of Proteus Revisited”, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, vol. 34, no. 3, 2009, pp. 316-332.

Bibliography

Books

DODDS, Klaus, Geopolitics: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007.

DUGIN, Aleksandr, Основы геополитики, Arktogeia, Moscow, 1997.

GUMILEV, Lev, Этногенез и биосфера Земли, Mysl’, Moscow, 1990.

IDEM, Конец и вновь начало, Mysl’, Moscow, 1992.

LARUELLE, Marlène, Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2008.

PANARIN, Aleksandr, Искушение глобализмом, Respublika, Moscow, 1995.

IDEM, Россия в цивилизационных циклах, Respublika, Moscow, 1999.

SAKWA, Richard, The Crisis of Russian Democracy: The Dual State, Factionalism and the Medvedev Succession, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011.

IDEM, Russia Against the Rest: The Post-Cold War Crisis of World Order, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017.

STEELE, Brent J., Ontological Security in International Relations, Routledge, London, 2008.

TOLZ, Vera, Russia’s Own Orient: The Politics of Identity and Oriental Studies in the Late Imperial and Early Soviet Period, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014.

TOAL, Gerard (Ó Tuathail), Critical Geopolitics, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1996.

IDEM, Near Abroad: Putin, the West, and the Contest over Ukraine and the Caucasus, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017.

TROFIMOV, Dmitry, Eurasian Metaphors in Post-Soviet Discourse, Moscow, 2003.

TRUBETSKOY, Nikolai, Наследие Чингисхана, Paris, 1925.

IDEM, “О народах Кавказа,” in Наследие Чингисхана, Agraf, Moscow, 2000, pp. 472-480.

IDEM, “О евразийском национализме” in История, Культура, Язык, Progress, Moscow, 1995.

TSYGANKOV, Andrei P., Russia and the West from Alexander to Putin: Honor in International Relations, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2012.

TSYGANKOV, Andrei P., Russia’s Foreign Policy: Change and Continuity in National Identity, 4th ed., Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, 2019.

Articles and Studies

ROY, Allison, “Russia resurgent? Moscow’s campaign to ‘coerce Georgia to peace’”, International Affairs, vol. 84, no. 6, 2008, pp. 1145-1171.

IDEM, “The Russian Case for Military Inter-vention in Georgia: International Law, Norms and Political Calculation”,  European Security, vol. 18, no. 2, 2009, pp. 173-200.

BASSIN, Mark, “Lev Gumilev and the European New Right”, Nationalities Papers, vol. 40, no. 1, 2012, pp. 69-72.

DUGIN, Aleksandr, “Южная Осетия – форпост Евразии”, Евразийское движение, August 2008.

IDEM, “Война в Грузии как метафи-зическое испытание”, Русский журнал, 2008.

KOLSTØ, Pål, BLAKKISRUD, Helge, “Living with Non-recognition: State- and Nation-Building in South Caucasian Quasi-States”, Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 60, no. 3, 2008, pp. 483-509.

LARUELLE, Marlène, “The Ideological Shift on the Russian Radical Right: From Demonizing the West to Fear of Migrants”, Problems of Post-Communism, vol. 57, no. 6, 2010, pp. 19-31.

MAKARYCHEV, Andrey, “In Quest of ‘True Sovereignty’: The Discursive Foundations of Russia’s Policy toward Georgia”, Problems of Post-Communism, vol. 55, no. 6, 2008, pp. 3-15.

MITZEN, Jennifer, “Ontological Security in World Politics”, European Journal of International Relations, vol. 12, no. 3, 2006, pp. 341-360.

TOAL, Gerard (Ó Tuathail), O’LOUGHLIN, John, KOLOSSOV, Vladimir, “The Georgia–South Ossetia Conflict: A Case of Contested Soverei-gnty”, Eurasian Geography and Economics, vol. 52, no. 1, 2011, pp. 1-24.

TOAL, Gearóid Ó, O’LOUGHLIN, John, “Russian Geopolitical Culture and Public Opinion: The Masks of Proteus Revisited”, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, vol. 34, no. 3, 2009, pp. 316-332.

WELT, Cory, “Georgia and the Limits of Containment”, Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 62, no. 3, 2010, pp. 503-523.

Online Resources

PUTIN, Vladimir, “Address by President Vladimir Putin Following the Terrorist Act in Beslan,” September 4, 2004, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/22589

SURKOV, Vladislav, Суверенитет — это политический синоним конкурентоспособности, Эксперт, no. 43, 2006, https://expert.ru/expert/ 2006/43/surkov/