Functional Recognition and Its Limits: US Security Cooperation with Kurdish Actors in Iraq

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines how the United States frames its security cooperation with Kurdish actors in Iraq across four crisis episodes the 1991 humanitarian intervention, the 2014–2016 anti-ISIS campaign, the 2017 independence referendum, and the 2025–2026 US–Iran confrontation and through what discursive mechanisms it simultaneously supports and limits Kurdish political standing. Using qualitative content analysis with elements of frame analysis, the study codes seventeen official documents from US and Kurdish sources using a seven-category framework capturing partnership, security necessity, legitimacy-by-performance, territorial integrity, non-recognition, conditionality, and dialogue language. The findings reveal a structurally recurring pattern: crisis conditions generate partnership and legitimacy-by-performance framing that constitutes functional recognition, while sovereignty risks trigger territorial integrity, non-recognition, and conditionality language that bounds it. This pattern is not contingent on a single crisis but is embedded in the US–Kurdish relationship across thirty-five years, confirming that recognition in international politics operates as an ongoing discursive practice rather than a binary legal act.