Kurdistan must turn geopolitical importance into strategic agency as the global order shifts toward multipolarity, competition and transactional power.

The international order is changing, but the most important question is not whether the existing order is “collapsing.” The more consequential question is which institutions, practices and power relationships will replace the assumptions that governed international politics after the Cold War. A recent English School analysis of the emerging world order offers an important framework for understanding this transformation by examining changes in the balance of power, diplomacy, the use of force, great-power management and the global market. 

For Kurdistan, this debate is not an abstract argument among international relations scholars. The Kurdistan Region of Iraq has spent three decades developing political autonomy within an international environment shaped by American primacy, European engagement, regional rivalry and the institutional framework created after 2003. That environment is now changing. The United States remains powerful, but its willingness to function as the unquestioned guarantor of regional order can no longer be assumed. China has expanded its economic reach, Russia continues to challenge the European security order, Turkey has become a more assertive regional power, Iran remains a major security actor, and middle powers increasingly pursue flexible rather than permanent alignments.

Kurdistan therefore faces a strategic paradox. Its geopolitical importance is increasing at precisely the moment when the external order that once protected its autonomy is becoming less predictable. The Region sits at the intersection of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria and has relationships extending toward Europe, the United States, the Gulf and increasingly Asia. Yet strategic importance does not automatically produce strategic power. The central Kurdish challenge in the emerging world order will be to convert geographic importance into institutional capability, economic leverage, diplomatic influence and security resilience.

The End of the Comfortable Order

The English School is particularly useful because it avoids reducing international politics to either raw power or idealistic institutions. Its central insight is that states operate within an international society governed by practices and institutions that have developed over time. Diplomacy, international law, the balance of power, war and great-power management are not merely organizations. They are patterns of behavior that help states coexist despite the absence of a world government.

The significance of the current transformation is therefore not simply that the distribution of power is changing. The deeper transformation is that the practices through which power has traditionally been managed are also under pressure. The recent English School analysis argues that the war in Europe, changing American policy, European rearmament, challenges to the prohibition on force and the fragmentation of global trade are altering the primary institutions of international society.

This matters enormously for Kurdistan because the Kurdish political project has always depended on institutions beyond its own control. The Region's constitutional position emerged within the Iraqi federal order. Its security environment was transformed by American intervention in 2003 and the international campaign against ISIS. Its economic model developed through international energy markets and cross-border relations with Turkey. Its political legitimacy has been reinforced by diplomatic relationships with Western governments and international organizations.

The Kurdish political system therefore cannot be separated from the international system surrounding it. The transformation of the latter inevitably changes the strategic environment of the former.

KPA's analysis of the changing global geopolitical map has already identified this wider transformation: China, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and other powers are increasingly shaping a system in which Washington is no longer the only actor capable of defining regional outcomes. The New Geopolitical Map: How China, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan Are Reshaping the World This emerging environment creates opportunities for Kurdistan, but it also removes some of the assumptions on which Kurdish strategy has traditionally rested.

The most dangerous assumption is that external powers will automatically protect Kurdish interests because Kurdistan is strategically useful to them.

That assumption is no longer sufficient.

Balance of Power and the Kurdish Problem

The English School's emphasis on the balance of power is particularly relevant to Kurdistan. A balance of power exists when no single actor becomes sufficiently dominant to dictate the terms of international political life to everyone else. In the emerging order, the United States, China, Russia, India and major regional powers are increasingly competing, cooperating and hedging simultaneously.

For Kurdistan, this creates a difficult strategic environment because the Region itself is not a great power. It cannot determine the balance of power between Washington and Beijing, or between Ankara and Tehran. It cannot prevent Baghdad from pursuing its own interests. It cannot eliminate Turkish security concerns or Iranian fears regarding Kurdish opposition groups.

But it can influence how those larger powers calculate their interests.

This distinction is fundamental.

The question should therefore no longer be whether Kurdistan can become powerful enough to compete with its neighbors. It cannot. The more realistic question is whether Kurdistan can become sufficiently useful, resilient and institutionally capable that larger powers have incentives to preserve its stability.

That is the essence of strategic agency.

KPA's recent analysis, From Autonomy to Agency: Kurdistan's Next Strategic Transformation, argued that strategic agency should not be confused with independence. A non-sovereign political entity can possess considerable agency if it has functioning institutions, economic leverage, security capacity, diplomatic networks and relationships that constrain the ability of larger powers to dictate outcomes.

This is precisely where the emerging international order could become an opportunity for Kurdistan.

A multi-aligned world rewards actors capable of maintaining relationships with several competing centers of power. A Kurdistan that is economically dependent on one partner, politically divided internally and militarily fragmented will have little room for maneuver. A Kurdistan that can maintain productive relationships with Washington, Ankara, Baghdad, Tehran, Europe, the Gulf and Asian powers while avoiding dependence on any single one will possess considerably greater bargaining power. The difference is not ideological. It is institutional.

Diplomacy Is Becoming More Transactional

The English School analysis also identifies a transformation in diplomacy. Diplomacy traditionally helps states manage estrangement, recognize one another and negotiate coexistence. Yet great powers increasingly use diplomacy alongside coercion, sanctions, tariffs, military pressure and transactional bargaining. The result is not the disappearance of diplomacy but its transformation.

This trend is especially important for Kurdistan because Kurdish diplomacy has historically benefited from a favorable international narrative. The Region presented itself as a democratic, pro-Western, stable and strategically useful actor in a difficult neighborhood.

That narrative remains valuable, but it is no longer enough.

In a more transactional international environment, partners will increasingly ask what Kurdistan can actually provide.

Can it contribute to regional security? Can it protect strategic infrastructure? Can it provide reliable energy? Can it facilitate trade and connectivity? Can it serve as a stable platform for investment? Can it prevent its territory from becoming a source of regional instability? Can it maintain credible institutions?

These questions are already visible in the changing relationship between Turkey and Iraq. KPA's analysis of the emerging Ankara-Baghdad partnership shows how security, energy, water, trade and the Development Road are becoming interconnected elements of a new regional relationship. Turkey and Iraq's Emerging Partnership: How the Regional Order Is Being Rewritten

Kurdistan cannot remain outside this process. If the Development Road, Turkish-Iraqi cooperation and changing regional trade routes become central components of the Middle Eastern order, Kurdistan must determine whether it will be a corridor through which other powers move or a strategic hub whose participation generates political and economic leverage.

That distinction could define the next decade.

The Use of Force and Kurdistan's Security Dilemma

Perhaps the most dangerous implication of the changing international order concerns the weakening of constraints on the use of force.

The English School perspective emphasizes that international society depends not only on power but also on rules governing how power is exercised. When major powers increasingly disregard those rules, smaller actors become more vulnerable because their security depends disproportionately on the willingness of stronger states to respect sovereignty.

Kurdistan has already experienced this problem.

The Region's territory has repeatedly been drawn into conflicts involving actors over which it has limited control. Turkey has conducted military operations against the PKK. Iran has repeatedly targeted Iranian Kurdish opposition groups inside Iraqi territory. The United States has maintained military and security relationships in the Region. Iranian-backed armed groups have also threatened American interests and Kurdish territory.

KPA's recent analysis of the Iranian campaign against Kurdish targets demonstrates how the Region can become a frontline even when Kurdish authorities do not choose to participate in the conflict. Iran's Cross-Border Campaign Escalates: What the Latest IRGC Strikes Mean for Iraqi Kurdistan The more recent analysis of the Surdash attack similarly illustrates the growing convergence between Iran's Kurdish security policy, Iraqi sovereignty and Kurdistan's air-defense vulnerabilities. The Surdash Attack: Iran's Expanding Drone War and the New Security Reality in Iraqi Kurdistan

The implication is stark.

Neutrality does not automatically produce security when a territory possesses strategic value to competing powers.

KPA's earlier analysis of why Iraqi Kurdistan has paid the price for the U.S.-Iran confrontation reached the same conclusion: strategic value and political protection are not synonymous. Why Iraqi Kurdistan Is Paying the Price for the U.S.-Iran Confrontation

This should fundamentally change Kurdish thinking about security.

Kurdistan cannot build its security strategy around the assumption that another power will always provide the final layer of protection. The Region needs its own integrated security architecture, professionalized Peshmerga forces, credible intelligence capabilities, stronger air-defense arrangements and institutional mechanisms capable of coordinating with Baghdad and international partners.

The coming transition after the international coalition therefore represents more than a military adjustment. It is a test of whether Kurdistan can transform external security dependence into institutional security capacity. Kurdistan After the Coalition

Baghdad and the Question of Sovereignty

The emerging world order also makes the relationship between Baghdad and Erbil more important, not less.

In an international environment increasingly focused on sovereignty, territorial control and centralized security authority, Baghdad has stronger incentives to consolidate federal institutions. This does not necessarily mean the abolition of Kurdish autonomy. But it does mean that the constitutional balance between Baghdad and Erbil will increasingly be determined by actual institutional capabilities rather than political declarations.

KPA's analysis of Baghdad's quiet centralization campaign demonstrates how oil, salaries, customs, banking and legal mechanisms can become instruments of political power. Baghdad's Quiet Centralization Campaign Is Reshaping Iraqi Kurdistan

This is the economic dimension of the balance of power.

The traditional Kurdish understanding of autonomy focused heavily on territory, political institutions and security forces. But autonomy without economic capacity becomes increasingly fragile. If Baghdad controls the mechanisms through which salaries, customs, energy revenues and fiscal transfers reach Kurdistan, the formal existence of autonomy may survive while its practical substance declines.

The continuing oil dispute illustrates this problem. Kurdistan's Oil Dispute Explained: Why Baghdad and Erbil Continue to Battle Over Iraq's Most Valuable Resource The pipeline issue is similarly not simply an energy dispute. It is a struggle over who possesses effective authority over resources, infrastructure and external economic relations. The Pipeline Cliff: How Turkey's Expiring Oil Deal Could Trigger Iraq's Next Economic and Political Crisis

The lesson from the emerging international order is therefore straightforward: sovereignty is increasingly inseparable from economic resilience.

Kurdistan cannot defend political autonomy indefinitely through political rhetoric while its fiscal foundations remain vulnerable.

Internal Division Is Now a Geopolitical Liability

This brings the external transformation back to Kurdistan's internal politics.

The emerging international order will reward states and sub-state actors capable of making strategic decisions quickly and coherently. Fragmented political systems will struggle because external powers can exploit internal divisions to advance their own interests.

The KDP-PUK deadlock is therefore no longer simply an internal Kurdish political dispute. It is becoming a geopolitical problem. KPA's analysis of the prolonged government-formation crisis argues that the dispute increasingly concerns the architecture of governance, security institutions, relations with Baghdad and the future structure of Kurdish autonomy. KRG Internal Governance: The KDP-PUK Deadlock and the Future of Kurdistan

Another analysis of the KDP-PUK impasse warned that prolonged institutional fragmentation could accelerate federal re-centralization and reduce Kurdish strategic leverage. KDP-PUK Impasse: Kurdistan Governance Evolution 2026-2031

This is precisely what the English School's emphasis on institutions helps explain.

International order is not sustained only by military capabilities. It is sustained by institutions and practices. The same principle applies inside Kurdistan. A region cannot exercise strategic agency externally while remaining institutionally paralyzed internally.

A functioning cabinet, unified security institutions, credible parliament, predictable economic governance and professional diplomacy are therefore not merely domestic governance objectives. They are instruments of foreign policy. The failure to form an effective government is consequently becoming a strategic liability.

The Market Is Becoming a Battlefield of Power

The transformation of the global market is another dimension of the new order with profound implications for Kurdistan.

The international economy is becoming more fragmented. Economic nationalism, supply-chain diversification, sanctions, alternative payment systems and competing trade corridors are weakening the assumption that globalization will automatically produce deeper economic integration.

For Kurdistan, this creates both risk and opportunity.

The risk is obvious. A region excessively dependent on hydrocarbons and vulnerable to external energy routes will struggle when markets become politicized. The opportunity is that geography becomes more valuable when trade routes are being reorganized.

Kurdistan sits between major markets and competing geopolitical systems. Its location could make it relevant to energy, transportation, logistics, agriculture, digital infrastructure and regional trade. But geography alone does not create economic power.

Institutions do. This is why Kurdistan must move beyond the idea of itself as an oil-producing territory. It needs to become an economic platform. The difference is enormous. A corridor generates transit revenue. A platform generates political leverage.

This requires infrastructure, customs modernization, banking reform, investment protection, reliable electricity, digital connectivity, skilled labor and transparent regulation. It also requires resolving the political disputes that make long-term investment difficult.

The current fuel crisis provides a warning. KPA's analysis of the worsening fuel shortages demonstrated how quickly energy dependence can become a political and institutional problem between Erbil and Baghdad. KRG Blames Baghdad as Fuel Crisis Deepens Across Kurdistan Region

Economic resilience must therefore become part of Kurdistan's national-security strategy.

Turkey, Iran, China and the Multi-Aligned Kurdistan

The emerging order also requires a different conception of Kurdish external relations.

Kurdistan cannot choose its geography. It will always live beside Turkey and Iran and within Iraq. But it can diversify its relationships beyond them.

The PUK's engagement with China illustrates the beginnings of this wider diversification. Why the PUK Is Looking East: What Its High-Level Visit to China Reveals About Kurdistan's Changing Foreign Policy The objective should not be to replace the United States with China, or Turkey with another external power. That would simply reproduce dependency under a different name.

The objective should be multi-vector interdependence.

Kurdistan should be useful to Washington without becoming dependent on Washington. It should be economically connected to Turkey without becoming economically captive to Turkey. It should maintain a functioning relationship with Baghdad without surrendering its constitutional interests. It should manage its security relationship with Iran while firmly defending Iraqi sovereignty. It should attract Chinese, European and Gulf investment without allowing any external actor to dominate its strategic infrastructure.

This is the logic of a multi-aligned world. KPA's analysis of the new Middle Eastern geopolitics argued that Kurdistan's strategic importance will increasingly depend on whether it can convert geography, energy, security and connectivity into durable influence. Kurdistan in the New Middle Eastern Geopolitics

The same conclusion emerges from the wider international debate. Chatham House has similarly identified the growing importance of emerging powers and Europe's effort to acquire greater strategic autonomy as the distribution of power changes. Competing Visions of International Order Kurdistan should therefore not wait for the international order to become stable. It should prepare for instability to become the normal condition.

From Autonomy to Agency

The central lesson of the English School approach for Kurdistan is that international order is neither permanent nor completely predetermined. Institutions change because political actors reproduce them, challenge them or reinterpret them. The same logic applies to Kurdistan's own strategic position.

Kurdistan has already achieved a historically significant degree of autonomy. But autonomy was the achievement of an earlier strategic environment. The next challenge is agency.

That means asking a harder question than whether Kurdistan's constitutional status can be preserved. It means asking whether Kurdistan can influence the regional environment in which that status exists. Can it influence the future relationship with Baghdad? Can it shape emerging energy and transportation networks? Can it provide credible regional security capabilities? Can it maintain relationships with competing global and regional powers? Can it protect itself when great-power guarantees become uncertain? Can it prevent internal political division from becoming an instrument of external influence? Can it build an economy that gives it bargaining power rather than merely revenue? These are the questions that should define Kurdish strategic thinking for the next decade.

KPA's Kurdistan Strategic Outlook 2027 reached a similar conclusion: the Region is entering an environment in which Baghdad is accumulating leverage, Turkey is redefining its regional position, Iran is recalibrating after war, energy geography is changing and Kurdish political fragmentation is becoming a strategic liability. Kurdistan Strategic Outlook 2027: Between Autonomy, Centralization and a New Regional Order

The strategic answer cannot be isolation. Nor can it be permanent dependence on an external protector. It must be institutional capability.

The Kurdish Strategic Choice

The emerging world order will probably not be bipolar in the Cold War sense. Nor is it likely to reproduce the relatively uncontested American primacy of the post-Cold War period. The more plausible future is a multi-aligned system in which great powers compete, regional powers expand their autonomy and smaller actors attempt to maximize their room for maneuver.

For Kurdistan, that environment is dangerous because the Region is too strategically important to be ignored but too small to control the forces surrounding it.

Yet that same condition creates an opportunity.

Kurdistan's geography can become leverage. Its energy resources can become bargaining power. Its security capabilities can become a source of regional influence. Its diaspora can become diplomatic capital. Its universities and research institutions can become sources of strategic knowledge. Its international relationships can become a network of diversified partnerships rather than a collection of dependencies.

The question is whether Kurdish politics can build the institutions necessary to convert those assets into power. That requires ending institutional paralysis. It requires a functioning government. It requires greater economic diversification. It requires security-sector unification. It requires a coherent external strategy. It requires a new relationship with Baghdad based neither on permanent confrontation nor passive submission, but on negotiated interdependence.

It also requires recognizing that the old strategic environment is gone.

Kurdistan cannot continue behaving as though the United States will indefinitely provide the same security umbrella, oil markets will remain politically neutral, globalization will continue expanding without fragmentation, or regional powers will always be constrained by the rules of the post-2003 order. The international system is changing. Kurdistan must change with it.

The greatest danger is not that the new world order will exclude Kurdistan. The greater danger is that Kurdistan will enter it without the institutional strength necessary to exploit its opportunities. In a world increasingly organized around balance of power, transactional diplomacy, economic statecraft and strategic competition, political weakness becomes geopolitical weakness.

Kurdistan therefore needs to move from the politics of protection to the politics of capability. It must move from autonomy to agency. It must move from being strategically located to being strategically consequential.

And it must understand that its future will not be secured by the goodwill of great powers alone. It will be secured when Baghdad, Ankara, Tehran, Washington, Europe and emerging Asian powers all calculate that a stable, capable and strategically autonomous Kurdistan serves their interests better than a weak, divided and dependent one.

That is the real implication of the emerging world order for Kurdistan: the age of guaranteed protection is ending, and the age of strategic agency is beginning.

Dr. Pshtiwan Faraj is the founder and editor of Kurdish Policy Analysis, an independent publication focused on Kurdistan, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, regional security, energy geopolitics and the changing Middle Eastern order.

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