Developing a Teaching Case Study on Regional Security under Great-Power Competition: The Impact of China–US Rivalry on the Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Abstract

One of the pedagogical problems in teaching great-power competition in courses of international relations and area studies is the lack of teaching resources that focus on sub-state and semi-autonomous actors as they engage in such competition. Teaching case studies about great-power competition tend to emphasise state-level cases and a limited geographic focus, leaving the instructor little material with which to explore how sub-state and semi-autonomous actors perceive and adapt to such competition. This article seeks to solve this problem by constructing a full teaching case study, suitable for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses, built around the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) as a sub-state actor caught between forms of US and Chinese competition. The case is based on original research by the author conducted from 2014 to 2024, including a structured survey of 43 expert respondents and elite interviews, and is here reframed as a teaching tool, rather than a policy report. The article offers a four-part teaching syllabus, with learning objectives, multi-tiered discussion questions, a role-play game ("The KRG Strategic Council") and a combined assessment rubric. It teaches the concept of asymmetric hedging not as an iron-clad conclusion but rather as a teaching tool with which students can play and experiment. The article provides a contribution to the creation of teaching case libraries (jiaoxue anli ku) in international and area studies teaching and provides a lesson for how research can be repackaged for the classroom.