(2009) Iraqi Kurdistan has turned out to be “one of the most successful nation-building projects in American history.”
Fortunately, oil prices may take a dip soon if the constitutional crisis in Iraq gets resolved quickly short of John Boehner managing al-Maliki's lawsuit. Kurdish Iraqi oil fortunately functions as an oligopolistic player in the Iraqi national petroleum industry as long as the
Kurdish peshmerga gets CIA weapons support as well as US or Iraqi tactical air missions. The question remains as to whether the US gets to finally claim success in
nation-building in whole or part in Iraq and in spite of or because of decades of meddling in
resource hegemony over
rentier states in West Asia.
The danger is that arming the peshmerga will facilitate a permanent fragmentation of Iraq, something the Kurds consider a national aspiration. Several disputed and multi-ethnic cities in northern Iraq complicate any peaceful cleavage, as do major oil holdings in both Kurdish and contested territory. The Peshmerga used the June disintegration of Iraqi Army forces running from Isis as an opportunity to seize disputed areas like oil-rich Kirkuk.
After a decade of elevated oil prices due to lost production in Iraq, Venezuela, Nigeria, Libya and Iran, the past few months have seen a fairly moderate response to the advances of ISIS in Iraq, the Israeli-Hamas fighting, and the rebellion in eastern Ukraine. Prices rose as much as $10 at the worst point, and have largely declined since then, with WTI under $100 a barrel and Brent threatening to break that level....
Even better, the growing possibility that Maliki will accept a pension (gold or lead) could mean a unity government in Baghdad which would turn less militant Sunni’s against their current allies in ISIS, plus probably lead to some resolution of the Kurdish oil export constraints. ISIS might remain a factor in parts of the northwest (and Syria), but the threat will be perceived to have peaked, and oil prices should slump as a result.
I bow of course to
InAntalya's far more extensive knowledge in this area.
I'm only posting the below as a means to remind myself of the background material for future research.
Shining a light on how Iraqi Kurds used the opportunity created by the aftermath of the 1991 Kurdish uprising to hold elections and form a parliament, and on how Kurdish officials later consolidated their regional government following the 2003 Iraq War, Iraqi Kurds and Nation-Building considers the political and economic shortfalls of the government and the obstacles facing Iraqi Kurds in a country still struggling to emerge from eight years of internal conflict and foreign occupation. Iraqi Kurds and Nation-Building (2012) by Mohammed M. A. Ahmed
Uğur Ümit Üngör, The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1950, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, 352 pp. (ISBN: 9780199603602).
Mohammed M. A. Ahmed, Iraqi Kurds and Nation-Building. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 294 pp., (ISBN: 978-1-137-03407-6), (paper).
Ofra Bengio, The Kurds of Iraq: Building a State within a State. Boulder, CO and London, UK: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012, xiv + 346 pp., (ISBN 978-1-58826-836-5), (hardcover).
Cengiz Gunes, The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey, from Protest to Resistance, London: Routledge, 2012, 256 pp., (ISBN: 978-0-415—68047-9).
Hamit BozarslanThe Kurds and Middle Eastern “State of Violence”: the 1980s and 2010s PDF
Derya Bayir Turkey, the Kurds, and the legal contours of the right to self-determination PDF
Rolf Schwarz (2004) State Formation Processes in Rentier States: The Middle Eastern Case http://www.columbia.edu/...