Biden’s Trip: All Irish Song and Dance, No Irish Substance
U.S. President Joe Biden galivanted around Ireland over the past few days to push forward diplomatic objectives and embrace his ancestral roots. On its surface, Biden tried to encourage peaceful settlement of Brexit’s consequences on Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement status quo, as well as affirm the Republic of Ireland as a close U.S. ally. While much of these events are boiler-plate political rhetoric, the implicit meaning behind them suggest conclusions more intriguing. One, Northern Ireland as a special economic zone loophole providing cheaper trade for U.S. companies. Two, the demand for the Republic of Ireland, as inseparable from U.S. led world order, to conform to NATO and enhanced military agenda. Three, the disregard of the U.K.’s special relationship with the U.S. eclipsed by one with the Republic of Ireland. Four, Biden’s Irish identitarianism fueling it all and its reflection on both the Irish American diaspora and the Irish in Ireland.
The Currency’s Thomas Hubert postulated that Biden’s home state of Delaware’s reputation as a corporate loophole jurisdiction held significance in Biden’s diplomacy with Northern Ireland. In the shadow of the Republic of Ireland losing its low corporation tax advantage, Northern Ireland’s unique position could replicate certain benefits. The Good Friday Agreement (GFA) signed 25 years ago has nothing remotely to do with Brexit yet it has created an impasse that both the U.K. and E.U. can’t cross. Northern Ireland’s trade must be open to both Britain across the sea border and the Republic of Ireland across the land border. If not, it risks soiling one of the greatest peace achievements of the western world order and re-opening violent conflict in the region. This means Northern Ireland as a quirk of history gets to have unfettered access to both the U.K. and E.U. markets.
This isn’t all that undesirable or surprising for some. In 2018, the Federation of Small Businesses in Northern Ireland (FSB NI) published a report where it advocated “Making Northern Ireland an Enhanced Economic Zone.” It discussed “zero tariffs on goods which come through Northern Ireland’s ports and airports” and “unfettered access to the UK market for Ireland and the rest of the EU, and vice versa.” Recently, even U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak commented that Northern Ireland was the world’s “most exciting economic zone.” Biden also appointed Irish American political royalty, Joe Kennedy III, as the U.S. economic envoy to Northern Ireland which highlighted the special interest in the economic fate of Northern Ireland. Kennedy III retweeted the FSB NI’s 4 April 2023 tweet which cited the special economic zone report. Overall, the U.S. Biden administration would like to take advantage of Northern Ireland’s impregnable international legal status afforded by the GFA to provide cheap trade to U.S. multinational corporations by first going through Northern Ireland to access both U.K. and E.U. markets at zero tariffs. Glimmers of this agenda can be seen in Biden’s general references to the Northern Irish economy doubling in GDP since the GFA and how much U.S. investment will come in the future.
The Republic of Ireland was given a more demanding tone whereas Northern Ireland was in the spirit of deal making. While Biden was getting up to all manner of Irishisms, his speech in Leinster House honed in on the Republic’s stance of neutrality. Biden glowingly praised Irish soldiers in American wars before shifting to criticize present-day Russia and support Ukraine. The sub-text was clear to anyone with a keen ear. Biden essentially criticized Irish neutrality. The logical conclusion of this section of his speech is for Ireland to wake up to its connection to the U.S. and its hegemonic pursuits. Those pursuits include military campaigns of which Ireland already has a demonstrated history of fighting with the U.S.
The campaign in the spotlight is the Ukrainian war which Ireland has been rhetorically on the same side as the U.S. led world order but has also been absolving itself of directly supporting the military-oriented aspects. The Biden administration wants the Republic to stop being a stick in the mud distracting from uniform policy agendas. Indeed, if multipolar conflict expands Ireland’s derelict military and defense infrastructure will need to be augmented by the U.S. to protect U.S. business interests and regional security. There is no significant dissent in Ireland against the U.S. led world’s agenda, so Biden is merely calling out institutional Ireland for its embarrassing lack of tact. Ireland can be a U.S. vassal or it can be an independent nation-state. It can’t be both. Irish politicians already salivate at being told what to do by the U.S. so they might as well go full bore.
Speaking of U.S. vassals, the U.K. has its tea cozies in a twist over perceived hostility from Biden. The alleged gripes stem from Biden’s short duration in Northern Ireland compared to the longer trip in the Republic, the diminishment of interactions with Sunak, and the absence from Charles III’s coronation. The long history of Biden’s employment of Irish tropes and sympathies towards Irish nationalism was also cited as evidence of how he obviously “hates the UK” as stated by former First Minister of the DUP Arlene Foster. Much of this anxiety induced paranoia, on the part of those in the U.K, is because of a changing of the guard.
The Republic of Ireland makes much more sense as a prioritized special relationship than the U.K. The U.S. has grown its economic presence in the Republic substantially over the past 60 years. The Republic acts as its doorway to the E.U. as well as the wider North African and Middle East regions in commercial terms. Additionally, with the U.K. out of the E.U., the Republic offers the closest aligned state to U.S. agenda inside the E.U. With France’s President Emmanuel Macron recently intensifying separateness with the U.S., the U.S. has a huge asset in Ireland as a Washington D.C. mouth-piece in the E.U. Previously, that designation might have been preferable for the U.K. but with Brexit, Ireland makes more sense to have stronger engagements with. Plus, many politicians in Ireland are happy to take orders from the U.S. while some in the U.K. might occasionally revert back to independent thinking from a previous era. The U.K. is not being insulted, it is being replaced and that is what is at the root of British blubbering their jowls over Biden’s trip.
With that being said, Biden’s Irish identity no doubt played a role in these three prior observations. Biden has some Irish heritage but was brought up culturally Irish American. Perhaps even more important, he came of age in the wake of Kennedys and like other Irish American politicians found success in molding himself into a cardboard cutout of the Kennedys. His politicking embraced Irish American pandering in the Democratic Party which was once the haven for Irish Americans in contrast to the Republican Party which patronized White Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPs). While Biden’s Irish identity fostered from an authentic familial upbringing is speculative, it was certainly reinforced and expanded due to the late 20th century U.S.’ political incentive structure.
Naturally, Biden has a different perspective on the U.S., its history, and its relationships with other countries. In his Leinster House speech, Biden said “the United States was shaped by Ireland, and that’s not hyperbole, that’s a fact.” Now this might be a flourish but it certainly pokes American anglophiles in the eye who view the U.S. as a singular product of the U.K. Lee Cohen in The Spectator wrote, and rather grossly for that matter, about how Biden is subverting the true legacy of England shaping the U.S. for an false anachronism of Ireland.
The objective answer to this question might be best left to academic historians but the subjective answer is that it depends on who you are. Biden represents the ascendancy of Irish Americans whose historical myths are defined by 800 years of English oppression in Ireland which culminated in the 1840s famine and forced emigration to the U.S. On top of this, the Irish in America were a lower class at odds with the WASP middle and upper classes. The Irish Americans whether they explicitly say it or not are profoundly informed by anglophobia. Thus, in the rise of Irish Americans into the ranks of the ruling class of the U.S. and the self-implosion of England’s empire, power, and status it is not at all confusing to understand that this special relationship is no longer desired or necessary.
Biden might have other motives such as U.S. multinational corporate economic gain in a Northern Irish special economic zone, alignment of the Republic in N.A.T.O., and a loyal U.S. influencer in the E.U. However, no doubt Biden takes a special interest in these matters because he is Irish individually and collectively. He is part of a particular institutional Irish American community whose generation was shaped by the Troubles, the GFA, and securing lasting peace in the region. Rather than the days of WASP President Woodrow Wilson that shunned Irish revolutionaries and offered no U.S. support to the Irish War of Independence, Irish American Biden was a sympathizer with Sinn Féin and even took a selfie with Gerry Adams this week.
Biden’s Irishness certainly might tilt the scales in Ireland’s direction, but Biden is first and foremost a functionary of U.S. led world order. The song and dance was nice but at the end of the day that’s all it is. Biden tried to connect his speech to JFK’s 1963 Leinster House speech where he praised Irish neutrality and opposition to tyranny. However, JFK said this after winning an unbelievably peaceful settlement of the Cuban Missile Crisis, establishing closer ties with Russia, supporting anti-colonial independence movements around the world, and was setting up the process to end the Vietnam War (which LBJ reembraced after JFK’s death). Biden in contrast has been part of the U.S. faction which has escalated Russian-Ukrainian tensions for the past 25 years. Biden is egging on conflict with Russia and potential nuclear weapon utilization. JFK found a surprising friendship with Russia’s leader Nikita Khrushchev and sought peace with him. Biden demonizes Russia’s current leader Vladimir Putin and seeks to unseat him from power.
In ideological substance, Biden is not very Irish at all. JFK ironically tried to live action role play (LARP) as a WASP his whole life, no doubt due to his family’s insecurity among the elites of an earlier WASP-dominated U.S. However, JFK’s Irishness would burst out showcasing an ideological Irish perspective which included tenets like anti-imperialism. Biden is the opposite. Whereas JFK used WASP LARPing to get ahead, Biden used Irish LARPing. Biden’s real perspective is not so much Irish anti-imperialism but U.S. neoliberal imperialism.
Biden also holds up a mirror to the Irish elites in Ireland. Institutional Ireland has largely given up the legacy of the ideological Irish nationalism that founded its state. Instead, they hope to further ingratiate Ireland into global institutions to be seen as “good boys” at the expense of national sovereignty and cohesion. However, to not upset the plebians these Irish elites still put up with Irish tropes to pander to the authentic Irish nationalism of Ireland’s general population. The reason Biden received such hand-shattering applause, which would probably never be seen from any other European country, as he entered the main chamber of Leinster House is because Irish elites identify with his brand of cartoonish Irish veneer over U.S. led neoliberal imperialism so much. All Irish song and dance, no Irish substance.