Invest1 publisher2 min readPublished
Trump puts the United States on the nationalist side of a 1998 accord it brokered
The Good Friday Agreement left Northern Ireland's status to the consent of its residents, and successive American presidents stayed neutral on it. In Dublin, Trump said unification could just as well happen now.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Trump told reporters after meeting Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin in Dublin on the 12th that he does not want to cause trouble but would like to see Ireland unified, Reuters and other outlets reported.
- The comment departs from the neutral stance the United States has maintained for decades on Irish unification.
- The 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which Washington helped mediate, set the principle that Northern Ireland's status is decided by the consent of its residents rather than by outside intervention.
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Why it matters
- constraint Consent by residents is the only route to a change of status the accord recognises, so a presidential preference has nothing to act through until a poll is called.
- exposure Unionists who dealt with Washington as a disinterested mediator now deal with one whose president has named the outcome he prefers.
- precedent With a sitting president on the record, campaigners on either side can cite Washington in an argument the 1998 settlement was built to keep local.
A change of sovereignty becomes something an investor can price when a referendum has a date. Trump said unification will happen eventually, and that if it is going to happen anyway it could just as well happen now [3]. Under the 1998 accord, the status of Northern Ireland is decided by the consent of its residents [8]. The British government has said a referendum on unification is not currently under consideration [10].
Partition was 1921 [5]. The Good Friday Agreement came 77 years later [17], after three decades in which thousands were killed in Northern Ireland [6], and the United States was the mediator that brought it about [7]. Its consent test has held for 28 years [18].
Two earlier interventions of this kind are on the record. Trump posted a map showing Iceland and surrounding areas covered by the US flag, and the Icelandic government summoned the American ambassador [11]. He has repeatedly said he wants to annex Canada as the "51st state", and relations between the two countries have sharply worsened [12]. In both cases the border stayed where it was [19].
The election reading is thinner than the framing suggests. The BBC noted that about one-tenth of the US population identifies as being of Irish descent, and said that because some of those voters support unification, the possibility that electoral calculations played a part cannot be ruled out [13]. That tenth is a share of population, not of the November electorate [14], and the BBC did not say how many of them favour unification [13].
If anything was devalued in Dublin, it is the standing of the United States as the party both sides accepted. Successive presidents backed the agreement and took a neutral position [9], and the accord's own principle excludes outside intervention [8]. The current president has said he wants Northern Ireland to break away from the United Kingdom and unite with the Republic of Ireland [1]. The counter-argument is that a press remark amends nothing: Trump also said he does not want to cause trouble [2], and the operative statement is the British one [10]. I lean to the second, and a British move from that position to a called poll with a date would settle it the other way.
What to watch
- Whether Micheal Martin's government asks Washington to restate the consent principle after the Dublin meeting.
- Whether unification appears in November midterm messaging aimed at the Irish-descent voters the BBC flagged.
- Whether other capitals follow Iceland in summoning the American ambassador over territorial remarks.