Bezhuashvili started his career at the Georgian Foreign Ministry in the early 1990s, including being the Envoy Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary to Kazakhstan between 1993 and 1996. Throughout the 1990s, he was also actively involved in cooperation with the Council of Europe (CoE) and served as a chief negotiator at the accession of Georgia to the CoE in 1999. He then served as deputy Defense Minister from 2000 to 2004, and Defense Minister from February 2004 to June 2004, being the first civilian to be appointed to this post in post-Soviet Georgia. From June 2004 to October 2005, he was the Secretary of the National Security Council of Georgia, and replaced Salome Zourabichvili as Minister of Foreign Affairs on October 19, 2005.