Two Policies: Why Washington Needs a Separate Strategy for the Kurdistan Region
By Entifadh Qanbar
For more than two decades, successive U.S. administrations have approached Iraq through essentially the same strategic framework: support Iraq’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political unity while conducting relations primarily through the federal government in Baghdad. Republican and Democratic administrations have differed on tactics, troop deployments, Iran, and other regional questions, but the basic “One Iraq” policy has remained remarkably consistent. That approach no longer adequately serves American interests.
The fundamental problem is not Iraq’s unity. The United States should continue to recognize Iraq as a sovereign federal state. The problem is the assumption that maintaining Iraqi unity requires Washington to pursue essentially the same policy toward Baghdad and Erbil simultaneously.
Political reality demonstrates otherwise. Federal Iraq and the Kurdistan Region are dramatically different strategic environments. Their political systems, security conditions, relationships with Iran, and, most importantly, public attitudes toward the United States differ sufficiently that treating them as a single policy environment actually undermines American influence.
Washington therefore needs two distinct but complementary policies: one toward federal Iraq and another toward the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
A Tale of Two Iraqs: U.S. Approval in Kurdistan and Federal Iraq
The most striking evidence for such a change comes from public opinion.
Gallup data found that by late 2022, approval of U.S. leadership in the Kurdistan Region had reached 79 percent, with nearly four out of five adults expressing approval. This made the Kurdistan Region one of the most pro-American societies in the Middle East.
Remarkably, Kurdish approval of U.S. leadership exceeded even that recorded in Israel, a longstanding U.S. ally, where approval stood at 67 percent in 2017 and 2018. In stark contrast, approval of U.S. leadership in the rest of Iraq stood at only 28 percent. This extraordinary disparity underscores the central argument for a differentiated American policy: the Kurdistan Region and federal Iraq represent fundamentally different strategic and public-diplomacy environments.
More recent unpublished polling described to me by Mr. Munqith Dagher, MENA Regional Director for Gallup International, indicates some deterioration in Kurdish attitudes following political developments that many Kurds interpreted as American abandonment.
Nevertheless, Dagher emphasized that the Kurdish population remains the most consistently pro-American demographic in Iraq. Sunni Arab attitudes toward the United States rank second, while support among Shiʿa Arabs has consistently remained significantly lower.
These differences are not accidental. They reflect fundamentally different historical experiences with the United States.
The Kurds remember American support for the great Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani, father of the Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani, during the Kurdish revolution of the 1970s. They remember the U.S.-led establishment of a safe haven following Saddam Hussein’s brutal suppression of the 1991 Kurdish uprising. Operation Provide Comfort helped prevent Iraqi forces from reentering Kurdistan and created conditions under which Kurdish self-government developed between 1991 and 2003.
During the American military presence from 2003 to 2011, the difference became even more pronounced. More than 4,400 American service members lost their lives in Iraq, yet those casualties occurred outside the Kurdistan Region. Kurdistan remained comparatively secure and cooperative with American forces, providing an environment in which investment, reconstruction, and political development could proceed.
Federal Iraq developed along a different trajectory.
Iran-backed parties and armed groups acquired substantial political influence after 2003. Since 2022, the strongly pro-Iranian Shiʿa Coordination Framework has exercised enormous influence over government formation and major state decisions. Political power consequently operates not only through constitutional institutions but through political parties, factional alliances, and armed organizations, some of which maintain close relationships with Tehran. As Mideast Journal has examined, the role of Iran-aligned militias remains a central question for Iraqi sovereignty.
The result is a strategic contradiction: the United States often conducts its Iraq policy principally through political institutions where its adversaries possess enormous influence, while subordinating its relationship with the part of Iraq where American influence and public goodwill are strongest.
The Failure of a One-Size-Fits-All Iraq Policy
Washington’s “One Iraq” policy was designed to preserve Iraqi unity. But Iraqi unity and uniform American policy are not the same thing. The United States can strongly support Iraq’s sovereignty and territorial integrity while recognizing that its interests require different relationships with different components of Iraq’s constitutional federal system.
In practice, Washington’s emphasis on Baghdad has sometimes produced precisely the opposite strategic outcome from what American policy should seek. By prioritizing the federal government as the principal channel for American engagement, the United States has on occasion strengthened institutions influenced by Iran while constraining its own Kurdish partners.
The 2017 Kirkuk crisis remains perhaps the clearest example. Although self-determination is a fundamental principle historically supported by the United States, Washington opposed the Kurdistan Region’s independence referendum of September 25, 2017. Weeks later, IRGC Quds Force Commander General Qasem Soleimani was reportedly involved in the crisis as Iraqi forces and Iran-backed militias advanced on Kirkuk.
For many Kurds, the experience was particularly painful because Kurdish officials reported that Iraqi militia forces used American-supplied equipment in the fighting. The episode reinforced a deeply rooted Kurdish fear that Washington valued its relationship with Baghdad, and its open support at the time for Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, more than its commitments to the Kurdish partners who had consistently supported the United States.
The same structural problem has affected American security assistance. Rather than always providing equipment directly to the Peshmerga, Washington has often routed assistance through Baghdad, a process Kurdish officials say has delayed or obstructed equipment intended for their forces.
This is not simply a Kurdish grievance. It is a problem of American statecraft. A successful foreign policy should strengthen reliable partners and constrain adversaries, not inadvertently give adversaries leverage over assistance intended for American partners.
Policy One: Rebuild American Influence in Federal Iraq
The first track of a new U.S. Iraq strategy should focus on federal Iraq.
Washington cannot abandon Baghdad to Tehran. Iraq remains strategically important because of its geography, energy resources, population, and position between Iran and the Arab world. But American policy should become much more realistic about the political environment in which it operates.
The central objective should be to reduce Iranian political influence while rebuilding a direct relationship between the United States and the Iraqi people.
This is particularly important because Iraq is an extraordinarily young society. Final results of the 2024 census, announced in 2025, recorded more than 46 million people, with 35.9 percent of the population under fifteen years old.
That demographic reality represents one of America’s greatest opportunities.
Rather than concentrating overwhelmingly on relationships with political elites, Washington should invest heavily in the next generation of Iraqis through scholarships, English-language education, university partnerships, entrepreneurship, professional exchanges, technology programs, and civil-society initiatives.
Digital diplomacy should become central to this effort. Ipsos found that WhatsApp is used by 74 percent of Iraqi social-media users, while Facebook and Instagram also have substantial reach. Social media increasingly provides an alternative to a traditional media environment vulnerable to political and regulatory pressure, although online expression faces its own restrictions.
The United States should therefore communicate directly with Iraqis in Arabic through credible digital platforms rather than allowing Iran-backed organizations to define America for the Iraqi public.
The message should also be carefully constructed. Washington must distinguish between Iraqi Shiʿa citizens and Iran-backed Shiʿa Islamist organizations. Opposition to Tehran’s political interference and militia networks must never be presented as opposition to Shiʿism. On the contrary, the United States should seek a much deeper relationship with Iraqi Shiʿa society independent of Tehran and its proxies.
American strategy should also address the perception that China offers Iraq more economically than the United States. Arab Barometer’s 2024 Iraq report found that many Iraqis believe Chinese assistance contributes more to education, civil society, and women’s rights than American assistance.
Whether those perceptions accurately measure the two countries’ contributions is less important than the fact that they exist. In public diplomacy, perception itself becomes strategic reality. The objective of the federal Iraq policy should therefore be clear: compete for the Iraqi population rather than compete merely for influence over the Iraqi government.
Policy Two: Make the Kurdistan Region a Strategic American Partner
The second policy should begin from an entirely different premise. In Kurdistan, Washington does not need to overcome widespread hostility toward the United States. It needs to preserve, strengthen, and strategically employ an existing pro-American constituency. The Kurdistan Region should consequently be treated as a principal American partner within a unified federal Iraq, not merely as another provincial component of Washington’s Baghdad policy.
This distinction does not require Kurdish independence, nor does it require abandoning the principle of Iraqi territorial integrity. Iraq’s Constitution establishes a federal system and recognizes the Kurdistan Region and its institutions.
The United States should therefore develop a direct strategic relationship with Erbil in security, economic development, education, energy, public diplomacy, and cultural exchange.
Security cooperation is especially important. The Peshmerga fought alongside the United States against ISIS and remain one of Washington’s most dependable security partners in Iraq. American assistance intended for the Peshmerga should reach them reliably and should not become hostage to political disputes in Baghdad.
Economic policy should follow the same principle. The United States should encourage direct American investment in Kurdistan, particularly in energy, technology, infrastructure, agriculture, and higher education.
Educational and cultural engagement offers an even greater opportunity. The Kurdistan Region provides a comparatively secure and welcoming environment for Americans and already hosts two established American universities. The American University of Iraq, Sulaimani, is based in the Kurdistan Region. The American University of Kurdistan is based there as well. This makes the region uniquely suited to become a center for U.S. educational, academic, cultural, and professional exchanges.
But such a hub should not serve Kurds alone.
Students, academics, entrepreneurs, journalists, professionals, and civil-society leaders from Baghdad, Basra, Najaf, Anbar, Mosul, and elsewhere could participate in American programs based in Kurdistan. In this way, the region can become a gateway for American engagement with all of Iraq. This turns one of America’s strongest relationships in the country into an asset for its broader Iraq strategy.
Supporting Kurdistan Without Dividing Iraq
Critics may argue that two separate policies would undermine Iraqi sovereignty or encourage Kurdish separatism. That conclusion does not necessarily follow.
The United States already maintains differentiated relationships within complex political environments around the world. A useful conceptual analogy is Washington’s approach to China and Taiwan. The United States formally maintains its “One China” policy while simultaneously sustaining an extensive and distinctive relationship with Taiwan and strengthening Taiwan’s ability to resist coercion. My assessment proposes this as a useful model for thinking about differentiated relationships inside the broader framework of a formal territorial policy.
Iraq is obviously not China, and Kurdistan is not Taiwan. The analogy should not be pushed beyond its purpose. The relevant principle is simply that formal recognition of territorial arrangements does not require identical substantive relationships with every political actor within them.
Indeed, a stronger Kurdistan can contribute to a stronger federal Iraq. Federalism was intended precisely to reconcile Iraq’s unity with its extraordinary ethnic, religious, and political diversity. Supporting the constitutional rights and institutions of the Kurdistan Region therefore need not weaken Iraq; it can reinforce the federal bargain upon which Iraq’s post-2003 constitutional order rests.
Stop Treating Friends and Adversaries the Same
Foreign policy ultimately requires distinctions. There are actors who cooperate with the United States and actors who seek to drive it from the region. There are populations that overwhelmingly welcome American engagement and others among whom decades of propaganda, war, and political conflict have produced distrust. Treating these environments as politically equivalent is not neutrality. It is a failure to translate political reality into strategy.
The United States should therefore retain its commitment to a sovereign and territorially unified Iraq while abandoning the assumption that this requires a single Iraq policy.
The distinction is not between Iraq and Kurdistan. It is between two different political realities requiring two different American policies. For decades, Washington has attempted to preserve Iraq by treating it as a single policy environment. A more sophisticated strategy would recognize that strengthening America’s friends within Iraq while competing for influence elsewhere may ultimately do more, not less, to preserve a stable, sovereign, and genuinely federal Iraqi state.
Entifadh Qanbar is the former spokesman for the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq and a doctoral candidate at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, DC.