The government needs to have strong universities and think thanks where thinking on national security, foreign policy and international security is done... Careers in national security for young minds should be created. Security agencies should be professionalized. The government’s interface with the public through coordinated public diplomacy must be encouraged.

It is hard to remember the time when the Georgian leader was the reform darling of the Euro-Atlantic community, blitzing corruption with one hand, building infrastructure with another and trying to use soft power to win back the loyalties of people in the breakaway territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.