The Irish Will Miss This President

President Bill Clinton’s unprecedented third visit to Northern Ireland last week was supposed to be a victory lap. Since the Irish Republican Army declared a cease-fire six years ago, and Sinn Fein, its political arm, signed on to a political process designed to “remove the gun” from northern Irish life, the new political institutions remain precarious. In the days leading up to the president’s arrival, there was widespread speculation--and hope--that Clinton could again provide the impetus to move the political parties beyond their current impasse over arms decommissioning, police reform, British demilitarization and implementation of the 1998 Good Friday peace pact.

Last Tuesday in Dundalk, a border community in the Irish Republic known as a base of operations for the dissident “Real IRA,” Clinton told a large crowd that they could “prove to people all over the world that peace can prevail, that the past is history, not destiny.”

No previous U.S. president has spent as much time and political energy on helping to resolve the seemingly intractable conflict in Northern Ireland. The U.S. foreign policy establishment has viewed Northern Ireland as a political tar baby, more complicated than strategically important. But a primary reason for minimal presidential involvement has been America’s “special relationship” with Great Britain.

A consistent goal of Irish American nationalists since the 19th century has been to garner support for Irish independence from Great Britain. President William Howard Taft supported the Irish Home Rule movement led by John Redmond when that cause coincided with British policy. After World War I, even though the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to support Ireland’s claims of independence at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson refused to challenge Britain. By 1921, through force of arms, 26 counties in Ireland established a “Free State” government, while six northeastern counties were “partitioned” and remained part of the United Kingdom. The stage was set for 80 years of conflict over the status of Northern Ireland.

Irish neutrality during World War II set back the Irish cause. While U.S. soldiers were dying to liberate Europe from Nazism, the Irish taoiseach, Eamon de Valera, was protesting their presence in Northern Ireland.

At the time President John F. Kennedy visited Ireland in 1963, the first president to do so while in office, the Cold War framed U.S. policy in Europe. Kennedy arrived in Ireland eight months after the Cuban Missile Crisis and on his way back from West Berlin, where he had given his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech. In different cities throughout Ireland, he warned of the dangers of communism, and his discussions with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan focused on the communist threat in Vietnam and Laos and the need to strengthen the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Kennedy was never tested by a Northern Ireland crisis. Lack of support had forced the IRA to end their “border campaign” in 1962, and the Republic of Ireland, under Taoiseach Sean Lemass, was focused on economic development and opening up its economy to Europe.

When the Northern Irish civil rights campaign exploded into the violent “Troubles” of the late 1960s, U.S. presidential politics were preoccupied with Vietnam. To President Richard M. Nixon, the Northern Irish conflict was an “internal problem” for the British government.

Despite an extended IRA cease-fire in 1975, the ‘70s were characterized by loyalist and IRA atrocities, unionist intransigence, military oppression and incoherent British policy. Pressure from House Speaker Tip O’Neill and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy produced some progress during Jimmy Carter’s presidency: Carter issued a statement in 1977 promising financial investment in Northern Ireland in the event of political progress. But the elections of Conservative Margaret Thatcher as British prime minister and Ronald Reagan as president guaranteed the traditional U.S. policy of non-intervention would prevail.

Reagan visited Ireland in 1984. Like Kennedy, his focus was on broader European questions and relations with the Soviet Union. In his address to Ireland’s Parliament, he condemned “misguided Americans” who supported terrorists in Northern Ireland and stated that “we [United States] must not and will not interfere in Irish matters nor prescribe to you solutions or formulas.” The majority of Reagan’s speech was devoted to explaining U.S. policy in Central America and in defending U.S. nuclear-arms policy.

Reagan was supportive of Thatcher during discussions that led to the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, which formalized a consultative role for the Irish Republic in the internal affairs of Northern Ireland. The primary goal was to stop the political advances made by Sinn Fein in the aftermath of the IRA prisoner hunger strikes, which generated worldwide sympathy. But it took dramatic changes in Northern Irish republicanism and the willingness of Clinton to make Northern Ireland a top foreign-policy priority to galvanize the peace process.

During his 1992 primary campaign, Clinton promised a group of prominent Irish Americans that he would support sending a special envoy to Northern Ireland and would grant Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams a visa to visit the United States. “I think we sometimes are too reluctant to engage ourselves in a positive way because of our long-standing special relationship with Great Britain and also because it seemed such a thorny problem,” he told the crowd. “But I have a very strong feeling that, in the aftermath of the Cold War, we need a governing rationale for our engagement in the whole world, not just in Northern Ireland.”

In the late 1980s, Adams began preparing the intellectual and political foundations for moving the IRA toward a political alternative. Encouraged by Jean Kennedy Smith, the new ambassador to Ireland, and Sen. Kennedy, who was influenced by moderate nationalist John Hume, Clinton ignored objections from British Prime Minister John Major and his own State Department and took a “risk for peace” by granting Adams a visa early in 1994. The move helped set the stage for the IRA cease-fire in August of that year. The era of allowing Britain a “free hand” in Northern Ireland was over.

Clinton visited Northern Ireland in 1995 and again in 1998 and was received by wildly enthusiastic crowds. His first trip helped break an impasse over arms decommissioning and created the framework for all-party political talks. His latest and last visit as president was designed to move the process along and to solidify his role in history as the indispensable agent for peace in Northern Ireland.

President-elect George W. Bush will have to deal with the unfinished peace process. There have been more than 60 “political” and sectarian killings since the Good Friday agreement. But if a lasting peace finally blesses Northern Ireland, Bush will have Clinton to thank for doing the heavy lifting. *