Christopher Reiter, Juleanna Glover and Sally Quinn. Photo courtesy Haddad Media.
Notable corporate public affairs consultant and former VP Cheney adviser Juleanna Glover writes in Politico Magazine that even as the Trump administration focuses attention on several international threats, “it is poised to blow a rare opportunity in the Middle East.”
“With some smart statecraft over the next month, the United States could at once isolate an adversary, solidify a long-standing alliance and begin to usher a new, friendly democracy into a historically fractious region. Instead, Washington is stubbornly sticking to a years-old policy, even though it has already been made obsolete by events on the ground,” Glover warns.
The regional government of Kurdistan (KRG) will hold a referendum on independence from Iraq September 25th. While the Kurds are noted as strong U.S. allies — including supporting American efforts in Iraq even back in 1990 — the United States government has been unenthusiastic regarding this current bid for independence.
The reasoning by to the State Department, Glover points out, is “a worn-out phrase: ‘support [for] a unified, stable, democratic, and a federal Iraq.’” Put another way, the U.S. position is that the Kurdish referendum is an internal Iraqi situation, not one needing to be addressed by the Trump administration.
Glover concludes that now is the time for the United States to support an emerging and unshakably U.S.-allied nation in the Middle East. “The question is whether it will act to support the KRG—or watch as the Revolutionary Guards subsume the Kurds along with the rest of Iraq.”
You can read Glover’s entire column at Politico Magazine here: http://politi.co/2wULv9H
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