Georgian Dream Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has called the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's (NATO) open door policy a “farce,” saying it has had severe consequences for Georgia and Ukraine.
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“Ultimately, it turned out that there was no open door policy. It was a “farce”. In practice, it was a double-edged sword policy, with Georgia the first victim in 2008 and Ukraine twice, in 2014 and from 2022. These approaches are changing,” Irakli Kobakhidze told journalists.
Georgian Dream Prime Minister stated that the United States is attempting to reconsider this policy.
“We must observe the policies of major players and their decisions, and develop our own strategies based on them. These strategies must, above all, be formulated in accordance with our national interests,” Kobakhidze noted.
On December 5 2025, the White House published the National Security Strategy of the United States of America. Concerning Europe, the strategy emphasises the U.S. security goals of ending the perception of NATO as “a perpetually expanding alliance”, “reestablishing strategic stability with Russia” and “enabling Europe to stand on its own feet and operate as a group of aligned sovereign nations, including by taking primary responsibility for its own defence, without being dominated by any adversarial power.”
The Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy states that, over the long term, it is highly probable that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European - “it is an open question whether they will view their place in the world, or their alliance with the United States, in the same way as those who signed the NATO charter.”
Moscow considers it a positive step that the new National Security Strategy does not cast Russia as a threat to the United States.
At the 2008 Bucharest Summit, NATO leaders agreed that Georgia and Ukraine “will become members of NATO.”
NATO's open door policy is based on Article 10 of its founding treaty. According to the article, membership is open to any “European States in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic.” The North Atlantic Council decides to invite a country to join the Alliance based on consensus among all Allies.
NATO was founded in 1949 by 12 countries, and since then, 20 more have joined the alliance through 10 rounds of enlargement. The most recent enlargement was in 2024, when Sweden became NATO’s 32nd member.
