Strategies of Insurgent Diplomacy

Abstract: From the Trent Affair of 1861, to Yasser Arafat’s speech at the United Nations in 1974, to Syrian opposition lobbying today, acts of insurgent diplomacy have defined some of the most memorable and important events in international politics. International diplomacy is a ubiquitous feature of insurgent politics because it is intrinsically linked to how groups pursue third-party political and military support. However, although war-time diplomacy is central to insurgent politics, scholars still cannot explain the substantial and puzzling variation in insurgent diplomatic strategies over time. The fact is that rebel groups can choose to engage with different types of actors, solicit different types of assistance, and have a diverse set of political-military objectives motivating their diplomatic strategies abroad. This article examines the varying grand strategies of insurgent diplomacy, and more specifically, when and why rebel groups focus their diplomatic attention on certain international actors over others. This framework is then applied to the international diplomacy of the Iraqi Kurdish liberation movement from 1958 to 1990.

About the Speaker: Morgan L. Kaplan is a CISAC Predoctoral Fellow for 2015-2016. He is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago.

Kaplan’s dissertation examines the strategic use of international diplomacy by insurgent groups to solicit help from third-party actors. The primary empirical focus of his research is on the Iraqi Kurdish and Palestinian national movements from the 1960s to 1990s. In addition to his work on insurgent diplomacy, he also studies the politics of intra-insurgent competition and cooperation in multi-party civil wars.

His research has been supported by the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Project on Middle East Political Science, and the Nicholson Center for British Studies, among others. He has conducted field work in Iraqi Kurdistan, Israel/Palestine, Jordan, and the United Kingdom. He holds a B.A. in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Chicago.