Of all the countries that announced their
position toward the independence of Iraqi Kurdistan, America has
probably have taken the most ambiguous stance. Officially, the U.S.
opposes Kurdish independence and supports the “unity of Iraq”.
Non-officially, Washington does not care about Iraqi unity.
In
a session held under Chatham House rules at one of Washington’s
prestigious think-tanks, a participant asked a top administration
official about how the U.S. is allied with pro-Iranian militias on the
Iraqi side of the Iraq-Syria border, but engages in clashes with other
pro-Iranian militias on the Syrian side of the border.
The
Trump administration official responded by saying that the U.S.
government does not look at the Middle East as a set of nations, but
rather “on a village-by-village” basis, with one defining principle,
that any U.S. ally should participate in eradicating terrorism, which is
believed to be America’s top strategic interest.
Yet
such a policy might work only in the very short term. Once all of U.S.
allies are assembled in its war on terrorism, the U.S. would have to pay
its allies back by standing with them in defense of their national
interests, and here lies the problem.
The
U.S. has a dozen Middle Eastern allies, almost all of whom are locked
up in competition in defense of their interests, especially after the
Iraq war shook up the region in a way not seen since World War I.
This means that when U.S. allies ask for
payback for their participation in the war on terror, Washington will
have to walk a very tightrope in an attempt to balance its act.
America’s failure to come up with a coherent foreign policy, for itself
and for its allies, has been evident in Syria, a country that has been
blown up into tiny pieces since the outbreak of the anti-Assad
revolution in 2011.
Washington’s
strategy in Iraq has been evolving since the Iraq war in 2003. At first,
the U.S. wanted Iraq as an ally and a beacon of democracy, with which
it could set an example for neighboring countries, and provoke people to
overthrow their dictators once they see Iraq’s prosperous democracy at
work.
But America’s original blueprint for Iraq proved to be too rosy. Reality
was very different, and Washington had to learn, the hard way, how to
strike a balance between its friends and enemies, be they local Iraqis
or regional powers.
In the middle of the bloody Iraqi civil
war, many U.S. officials believed that putting Iraq back together was
impossible, and that dividing it into three states -- a Shia, a Sunni,
and a Kurdish state -- was the only solution. One of the biggest
advocates of dividing Iraq was then-Senator Joe Biden, also chairman of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Ironically, when he decided to
run for president,
Barack Obama recruited Biden as his running mate
especially for the purpose of supervising foreign policy, given Biden’s
long experience on the committee. When the duo of Obama and Biden were
elected president and vice president, Obama put Biden in charge of Iraq.
The VP’s National Security Advisor Anthony Blinken thus became the
highest U.S. official handling American policy in Iraq.
Despite
Biden’s support for dividing Iraq, Obama’s vision prevailed: Replacing
America’s traditional allies with Iran, and restoring the pre-1979
American alliance with Iran became a top priority, even if that meant
sacrificing Washington’s success in stabilizing Iraq by 2010 and handing
it over to Iran.
Obama’s Iraq policy
effectively meant making nice with Tehran, and hence undermining any
Kurdish ambition for independence in northern Iraq. Even when Daesh took
over Mosul in 2014 and started pushing toward Kirkuk and Baghdad, the
U.S. abandoned its plans of arming the Iraqi Kurdish militia, under
pressure from Baghdad, and ultimately from Iran. Germany repeatedly
tried to ship arms to the Iraqi Kurds, but Obama thwarted this effort.
Obama eventually emerged as the enemy of
the Kurds. Another Obama enemy was Israel. Hence, the Israelis and Iraqi
Kurds believed that the end of Obama’s presidency, and the election of
Trump, would be the ideal time for both of them: Iraqi Kurds could
declare independence and Israel could expand its settlements in the West
Bank, while at the same time seeking peace with Arab Gulf countries.
Trump
is undisputedly the closest American friend of Israel in the history of
the U.S. presidency. Trump became the only president to visit the
Western Wall in Jerusalem during his presidency.
Trump’s interest in Israel has nothing to
do with his view of Middle Eastern politics and everything to do with
his perception that befriending Israel might secure the Jewish-American
vote and financial support for his 2020 reelection.
Despite
the closeness between Trump and Israel, Washington still had to take
the interests of its other Middle Eastern allies into consideration. Of
the U.S. allies, Turkey, Iraq and Qatar stood against Kurdish
independence in Iraq. Of its enemies, Russia, Iran and Syria also
opposed Kurdish independence. Of all the friends and enemies of the
U.S., only Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) supported an
independent Iraqi Kurdistan, with Saudi Arabia only nominally opposing
Kurdish independence, not minding it behind closed doors.
In
light of this complicated strategic alignment, and with all the U.S.
allies -- except for two -- pushing against Kurdish independence, and
with Trump’s favorite ally, Israel, rooting for Kurdish independence,
the U.S. position toward the Kurds looked contradictory and confused,
just like Trump’s foreign policy in general.
Trump and Israel aside, when the U.S. establishment weighs an
independent Kurdistan against the position of its allies, it finds that
no matter how important the Kurds are to Washington, their importance
cannot outweigh the strategic importance of America’s relations with
Turkey, its NATO ally, and Iraq, the country where the U.S. has poured
in trillions of dollars and lost thousands of lives.
Iraqi Kurds seem to have overestimated
their strategic importance in American eyes, an error commonly made by
local Middle Eastern powers. Perhaps the Kurds thought that Israel and
the UAE could secure them American approval.
In
their collective memory, the Kurds tell the story of how Mullah Mustafa
Barzani, the father of Masoud, was let down by both the U.S. and the
Soviet Union, as Iran thwarted Kurdish independence. The great powers
might have loved the Kurds and their leader, but love was not enough to
outweigh the weight of the other regional powers.
Perhaps
the next time Iraqi Kurds try to become independent, they should count
more on securing the support of at least one of their territorial
neighbors, rather than bet on superpowers and regional powers that do
not share borders with them.
The game
of nations is a complicated one, and the Kurds seem unaware that they
still need more cards that they can play if they ever seek independence,
cards that they did not seem to have by the time they held their first
independence referendum. The White House might send its love to Iraqi
Kurds, but love is never enough to create states.
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