Rethinking State-Non-State Alliances

Change and Continuity in the U.S.-Kurdish Relationship

Ozum Yesiltas

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2022
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781978794375
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Diplomacy & Treaties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Thriving in the context of political vacuums created by state weakness, the armed non-state actors in the Middle East, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Kurds increasingly demonstrate features of both state and non-state actors and act autonomously in their foreign policy. Rethinking State-Non-State Alliances: Change and Continuity in the U.S.-Kurdish Relationship investigates the growing influence of Middle Eastern non-state actors as agents of foreign policy through an analysis of the U.S.-Kurdish relationship. Ozum Yesiltas analyzes the underlying causes of increased U.S.-Kurdish cooperation since the early 1990s and addresses the extent to which existing approaches in international relations are adequate in explaining the changing political landscape in the Middle East that brought the U.S. and Kurds together in new ways. Yesiltas draws attention to the ways in which U.S-Kurdish interactions contributed to the escalation of Kurdish nationalism as a transnational phenomenon, and how the growing saliency of Kurdish transnational politics reshapes U.S. foreign policy and broader regional order.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Weak States and Strong Non-States
• The Kurds and the U.S. during the Cold War
• The Kurds and the U.S. in the Post–Cold War Era
• The Kurds and the U.S. in the Twenty-First Century
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author