Providing comfort to Iraq's Kurds: forming a de facto relationship
Loading...
Authors
Gomes, Alapaki F.
Subjects
Iraq
Kurds
Operation Provide Comfort
realism
liberal internationalism
constructivism
U.S. foreign policy
Kurds
Operation Provide Comfort
realism
liberal internationalism
constructivism
U.S. foreign policy
Advisors
Russell, James
Date of Issue
2016-03
Date
Mar-16
Publisher
Monterey, California: Naval Postgraduate School
Language
Abstract
This thesis seeks to determine how the United States has become the de facto security guarantor to Iraq’s Kurds. The development of a formal relationship between the American government and Iraq’s Kurdish population began as a response to a humanitarian crisis after the First Gulf War. The response mission was named Operation Provide Comfort. Though not intended to take sides, Operation Provide Comfort was a direct intervention into a conflict between the Iraqi state and Iraq’s Kurds—one that provided political space for the Kurds to pursue autonomy at Baghdad’s expense. Operation Provide Comfort was a shift in American policy on Iraq, made more prominent in comparison to American policy only three years earlier that declined to respond to allegations of genocide among these same Kurds by the same Iraqi state. This thesis recounts a brief history of Iraq’s Kurds and of American policy regarding their liberation movement, and applies the framework of three prominent international relations theories—liberal internationalism, constructivism and realism—to analyze Operation Provide Comfort as a U.S. foreign policy decision. This thesis determines that all three frameworks explain aspects of the mission, though the application of each theory exposes Iraq’s Kurdish question as an ongoing shortcoming in U.S. foreign policy.
Type
Thesis
Description
Series/Report No
Department
National Security Affairs
National Security Affairs
Organization
Identifiers
NPS Report Number
Sponsors
Funder
Format
Citation
Distribution Statement
Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.