كردستان العراق في السياسة الخارجية الأمريكية : 2003-2017

Abstract EN

This study aims to understand the Kurdish problem in Iraq and its historical development, and the U.S.

position on the Kurds' claim to their right to self-determination.

The study adopts the historical approach in monitoring the historical development of the Kurdish issue in Iraq, and the systems analysis approach to analyze local, regional, and international factors and influences on the Kurdish issue; and the decision-making approach to illustrate the strategies used by decision makers in the United States towards the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

The study hypothesized that there is a correlation between United States' foreign policy and Kurdish separatist demands.

The study concludes that the United States policy towards the Kurdistan region of Iraq has always been uncertain and changed with the fluctuations of local, regional, and international upheavals and interactions.

This has been especially more obvious during the Cold War era, during the period of the Iraq-Iran War (1980-1989), in the aftermath of the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in (1990), and during the period of the emergence of Dae'sh and beyond.

These American policies towards the Kurdistan region of Iraq come to reflect political realism or pragmatism and the minute calculations of American interests according to the different aspects of the geopolitical map of the region, not the reality of the interests of the region's people.