Some of the comments from people phoning into BBC Radio Ulster and other chat shows in Northern Ireland over recent days in relation to US president Joe Biden’s visit were of Monty Pythonesque at the level of “What have the Romans (Americans) ever done for us?”
And if Biden was ladling out Irish-American charm, it wasn’t being reciprocated by some of the people who matter at the moment in the political scheme – that is, those elements in the DUP who are preventing the Stormont show getting back up and functioning.
Former DUP leader Arlene Foster wasn’t impressed by Potus. “He hates the United Kingdom,” she told GB News ahead of his keynote speech at Ulster University’s new glass-fronted high-rise building in central Belfast.
“I don’t think there is any doubt about that. I just think that the fact that he is coming here won’t put any pressure on the Democratic Unionist Party, quite the reverse actually because he is seen by so many people as pro-republican and pro-nationalist.”
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Former DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds posted a picture on Twitter of Biden standing alongside Gerry Adams and the late Rita O’Hare, who was wanted in Northern Ireland on an attempted murder charge; a woman, Dodds wrote, who “was notorious in the UK for IRA terrorist crimes”.
“Biden is no impartial holder of either justice or the political process in Northern Ireland,” he averred, straight from the DUP playbook on how not to impress people and influence them.
Still, the current DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson did turn up for the speech and to meet the president, and sat alongside Michelle O’Neill and the three other main northern leaders – Naomi Long, Doug Beattie and Colm Eastwood – which was a helpful image in this time of renewed political stalemate.
Biden, in his speech, noted the progress from 25 years ago, making the connection about how Belfast could have such a state-of-the-art glass structure at Ulster University, now that after 25 years of mostly peace there aren’t huge glass-shattering bombs wrecking the city every second week.
He urged a return to powersharing at Stormont. He recommended the Brexit deal struck between the British government and the EU. But he didn’t overegg it, he was careful. It was a decision for the politicians to make, he stressed. And he even laid emphasis on his English connections and the role of Ulster-Scots people in building up the United States. He said nothing that should further aggrieve Foster or Dodds.
Donaldson reacted well to the speech, liking the English and Ulster-Scots references; and also how he didn’t try to browbeat his party into going back into Stormont, and also his emphasis on further US investment in Northern Ireland.
And that investment isn’t just some abstract notion. Currently there are 230 US-owned businesses operating in Northern Ireland, employing 30,000 people. These include major investors operating in advanced manufacturing, technology and global services employing 20,000 people. Some of the big names include Microsoft, Allstate; Citi, Baker McKenzie, Terex, Seagate, Hyster-Yale, Spirit Aerospace, Collins Aerospace, Concentrix, Wolfspeed and Liberty Mutual.
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Biden said that investment could be “tripled” with Joe Kennedy, his special economic envoy to Northern Ireland, standing close by to demonstrate bona fides. And again Biden avoided any loaded caveats such as saying those new jobs would only come on stream if powersharing was back in operation.
Unionists such as Foster and Dodds might not like the greenish cut of Biden’s jib – as noted above very much balanced by his reference to his English heritage – but anything he has said or done so far on his visit to the island has been benign. And that can generally be said of US presidential involvement in Northern Ireland and the peace and political processes.
Of course neither the British government nor unionists saw as in any way benign the decision of then president Bill Clinton to grant Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams a visa to visit the US in January 1994.
But it was a key moment in the peace process. It proved to many of the doubters in the IRA and Sinn Féin that perhaps abandoning the Armalite and Kalashnikov might be the way forward. It contributed to the IRA ceasefire of August 1994, and all that was to follow up to Good Friday 1998 and beyond – despite the various hitches along the way.
That gamble by Clinton was many years in the taking, stemming from the work of the Irish government and of John Hume enlisting the support of the likes of the “four horsemen” – US speaker Tip O’Neill, New York governor Hugh Carey and Senators Ted Kennedy and Daniel Moynihan.
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Those diplomatic efforts – and maybe there is a lesson here about the DUP perhaps changing its playbook – worked their magic all the way to the White House to bring Clinton into the loop. People have different views on the Clintons but nobody can gainsay that they stuck with the project. Clinton paid two visits to Northern Ireland as president, the first in 1995 to encourage a political deal and the second, post the Belfast Agreement and the Real IRA Omagh bombing in September 1998, to buoy up the politicians not to lose heart.
They are still generously engaged in trying to get politics back on track, with both Bill and Hillary Clinton returning to Northern Ireland next week to further mark the 25th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement and to keep using whatever influence they have for good purposes.
And people too have different views on former president George W Bush, Clinton’s successor who took over in January 2001 for an eight-year term. Again, however, he took an interest in Northern Ireland, paying two visits as president, in 2003 and 2008, although the first visit had a little more to do with the Iraq War than restoring devolution, which was down then as it is now.
He also was encouraging of a special US investment conference held in Belfast in 2008.
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During his attendance at the G8 summit near Enniskillen in 2013, then president Barack Obama took time to deliver an address at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast, again pledging his support for the political process.
It all illustrates how Ireland, through hard work, diplomacy and good manners, built up soft power with the United States that other countries could only dream of.
Biden in his easy down-home way encapsulated what that influence means. He told the audience that the “American people are with you, every step of the way, it’s real.” Some people, including those moaning on radio phone-in talk shows, might be cynical and blase about such comments and these visits and about US involvement generally, but that engagement has helped both politically and economically and could do so again. It is real.
