A Kurdish State Won’t Destabilize the Middle East

On Monday, the people of Iraqi Kurdistan voted overwhelmingly for independence, despite pressure from friend and foe alike—with the exception of Israel—to refrain from holding the referendum at all. Dominic Green, rejecting the U.S. foreign-policy and military establishment’s position that Kurdish independence would fuel the region’s chaos, argues that support for the Kurds “is not just the right thing to do, it is also the sensible thing to do.”

Today, Iraqi Kurdistan is . . . a proven bulwark against Islamic State, and an obvious bulwark against the imperial ambitions of Iran. The rest of Iraq is a disaster. The failed state-building that followed the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 has bequeathed a corrupt Iranian satrapy and a leaking ulcer of Sunni fanaticism.

In a region defined by Islamism and repression, the Kurds of Iraq are moderate in religion and democratic in politics. In a region awash with anti-American and anti-Western loathing, the Kurds of Iraq are our loyal allies, and a strategic asset. . . .

The Kurds have already created their facts on the ground. Tellingly, the only endorsement of Kurdish independence came from the leader of another non-Arab [people] whose women are also more likely to be seen wearing camouflage pants than burkas: Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Jews and the Kurds have a long history of friendship: another reason why a Kurdish state aligns with American interests. Of course, Arab and Turkish leaders succumbed immediately to public paranoia about a “second Israel.” As if the development of a liberal, high-tech, egalitarian powerhouse capable of defending itself would be yet another disaster for the region.

Read more at Weekly Standard

More about: Iraq, Israel, Kurds, Middle East, Politics & Current Affairs

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF