In Joe Biden’s visit to Ireland the personal and the political overlap. Biden, the eighth sitting US president to visit Ireland, spoke at Ulster University in Belfast on Wednesday of himself as much as of the American people. “Your history is our history,” he told the students. And he reminded them of his and the US’s political and economic investment in the peace process, that Ireland had been part of his own political legacy, a “key focus for me throughout my career.”
He spoke about how important the future of Northern Ireland is to the US. “There is a large population that is invested in what happens here, that cares a great deal about what happens here,” he said. It was a visit that might not have happened. Both Biden and his Democratic predecessors, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, have made clear to London that the US took seriously its part-ownership of the Belfast Agreement in its role as the treaty’s midwife and guarantor. Washington had told London that an EU-UK trade deal would not be possible if the agreement was jeopardised by Brexit and a reimposition of borders on the island of Ireland. Without the breakthrough of the Windsor Framework it was almost certain that the presidential visit would have been confined to the south.
With the DUP still boycotting the Northern Ireland Executive and the North still ruled from London, it was perhaps inevitable that the visit to the North would still be curtailed – a mere 15 hours. This was no celebration of a great advance in the peace process, no landmark aftermath of an historic agreement, but rather a modest reminder that, 25 years on, more work remains to be done to fulfil the promise of the 1998 peace deal.
Importantly, Biden reiterated the US commitment to investment in Northern Ireland, signalling that there is a dividend still to peace if the Executive can resume its role and give the sort of certainty and confidence to business that it needs. At his side was Joe Kennedy, US Special Envoy for Economic Affairs, who “would help supercharge that work” and will lead a major trade delegation here later this year.
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It was all carrot, no stick. If there was any pressure placed on the DUP, it was subtle and implicit – reflecting the approach from Dublin and London in recent weeks of giving the largest unionist party the space it needs to reconcile itself with the inevitable adoption of the Windsor framework.
“Peace was not inevitable,” Biden reminded his audience. “We can’t ever forget that. There was nothing inevitable about it.” But “Northern Ireland will not go back to violence… This place is transformed by peace, made technicolour by peace, made whole by peace.” Amid the focus on the minutiae and churn of partisan political debate, it was a useful reminder of the progress already made – and the promise that lies ahead, if only political leaders take responsibility.