Study On The Policy Of The United States To The Kurdish Armed Groups In The Middle East

For a long time,the Middle East region has been an extremely important geostrategic value in the international strategy of the United States,and it is also a key region that the United States must set foot in to establish and maintain its global dominance.Since the Cold War,the United States has tried to participate in the affairs of the Middle East through contacts with various types of political actors in the region,especially the relationship between the United States and Kurdish armed groups in the Middle East.Over the years,the United States has always paid close attention to Kurdish armed groups in different countries in the Middle East,and formulated different policies with these Kurdish armed groups according to its relationship or situation with these countries.From the perspective of the theory of threat perception,this paper analyzes the formation,development and change of the policy of the United States towards Kurdish armed groups in different countries in the Middle East,driven by the motivation of avoiding,containing and eliminating threats.As an objective reality,the policy of the United States towards Kurdish armed groups in different countries in the Middle East is pluralistic.There are not only the support,cooperation and contact of the positive relationship,but also the suppression and sanctions of the reverse relationship.On this basis,there are also differences in the depth and breadth of policy implementation.The formation of these policies and the emergence of differences have important internal links with the threat perception of the United States.First of all,threat perception is an important reason for the United States to support and cooperate with Kurdish armed groups in different countries,or to combat and suppress,or to explore the policy of contact.The active support and cooperation policy of the United States to Iraqi Kurdish armed groups mainly stems from a series of threat perceptions,such as the influence of Soviet Communist forces on Iraq during the Cold War,the expansion of Iraqi totalitarian regime in the Gulf region and the growth of Muslim Shi'a forces in Iraq.Similarly,the United States actively supports the policy of Syrian Kurdish armed groups,feeling the great threat posed to the United States in the Middle East by the rise of the Islamic State terrorist organization in the Syrian civil war.The Bush administration and the Trump administration regard Iran as a major security threat in the Middle East,and have contacted Iranian Kurdish armed groups and given them limited support through secret channels.During the Obama administration,due to the significant decline in Iran's threat assessment and the influence of Turkey,the United States put the Iranian Kurdish armed group Free Life Party on the terrorist list for sanctions.For the Turkish Kurdish armed organizations,the United States mainly considers the alliance with Turkey,so it supports the Turkish government to suppress the Kurdish Workers' Party,which represents the Turkish Kurdish armed organizations,and put it on the terrorist list to combat.Secondly,threat perception has a restrictive effect on the policy of Kurdish armed groups in the United States.The goal of ethnic separatism pursued by Kurdish armed groups in the Middle East,which violates the principle of national sovereignty,affects the threat perception of the United States to Kurdish armed groups,so when the United States adopts a policy of support and cooperation for Kurdish armed organizations in Iraq and Syria,it carefully grasps the limits of its support for these organizations.Efforts should be made to avoid Kurdish nationalism threatening the territorial integrity and security of regional countries.Finally,threat perceptions also affect the nature of U.S.policy toward Kurdish militant groups.As far as the cooperation between the United States and Kurdish armed groups in Iraq and Syria is concerned,due to the geopolitical importance of Iraq and the long-term existence of the Iraqi Shiite threat,the cooperation policy of the United States towards Iraqi Kurdish armed groups is more strategic;Because of the short-term and noncritical nature of the threat posed by the Islamic State,the cooperation between the United States and Syrian Kurdish armed groups based on the war on terrorism focuses on tactics.This paper makes a comparative analysis of the US policy towards the Kurdish armed groups in the Middle East through the threat perception theory,which will help us to understand the US threat perception considerations in formulating policy as a state actor towards the non-state actors represented by the Kurdish armed groups in the Middle East.The fundamental reason why there is such a huge difference in the policy of the United States towards the Kurdish armed organizations in the Middle East is that the policy of the United States towards the Kurdish armed organizations in the Middle East is not to support the autonomy and independence of the Kurdish nation,but to more effectively safeguard the hegemony of the United States itself in the Middle-East region from the perspective of threat perception.As far as the innovation of the research is concerned,the perspective and results of this research are not only an academic discussion,but also of important practical value.