Kurdistan Regional Government s Foreign Policy Post-2003: A Strategic-Relational Analysis
Khorshid, Rizhna (2014)
2014
Kansainvälinen politiikka - International Relations
Johtamiskorkeakoulu - School of Management
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2014-08-19
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:uta-201408222068
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:uta-201408222068
Tiivistelmä
This is an inquiry looking into the Kurdistan Regional Government s (KRG) foreign policy post-2003. Ever since the overthrow of the former Iraqi regime in 2003, the KRG has been locked in a series of disputes with Baghdad over the limits of its autonomy. One of the main arguments has concerned KRG s right to develop its hydrocarbon industry autonomously. This issue gained prominence particularly following the discovery of vast oil and gas resources in the Kurdistan Region. Understanding the benefits associated with these findings, the landlocked KRG approached Ankara as an alternative route to export its energy resources beyond Baghdad s control. Due to the coincidence of Turkey s and KRG s interests, the two stroke up a Baghdad-defying partnership, resulting in what can be seen a noteworthy step for the KRG towards the realization of what it has been for long aspiring: economic independency.
I have examined the unfolding of these events through a strategic-relational analysis (SRA) of KRG s foreign policy strategies interacting with the strategic selectivities of their environment. The SRA was initially developed by Bob Jessop, who viewed reality as the product of contingent necessity: particular spatio-temporal intersections of strategies and selectivities producing non-necessary outcomes. My aim was to trace this path of contingent necessity in KRG s foreign policy. The conducted conceptual analysis resulted in two findings. Firstly, the observed changes, both in the level of economic independency the KRG had achieved as well as in its relations with Baghdad and Ankara post-2003, were found to be the product of contingent, rather than deterministic path-dependency. Secondly, I found that KRG s agency itself is, also, the continuously transforming product of contingent necessity, redefined through the region s relations with other actors.
I have examined the unfolding of these events through a strategic-relational analysis (SRA) of KRG s foreign policy strategies interacting with the strategic selectivities of their environment. The SRA was initially developed by Bob Jessop, who viewed reality as the product of contingent necessity: particular spatio-temporal intersections of strategies and selectivities producing non-necessary outcomes. My aim was to trace this path of contingent necessity in KRG s foreign policy. The conducted conceptual analysis resulted in two findings. Firstly, the observed changes, both in the level of economic independency the KRG had achieved as well as in its relations with Baghdad and Ankara post-2003, were found to be the product of contingent, rather than deterministic path-dependency. Secondly, I found that KRG s agency itself is, also, the continuously transforming product of contingent necessity, redefined through the region s relations with other actors.