Conclusion

Summary

The very fact that someone internationally as powerful as the President of the United States was supporting our peace process obviously strengthened our process enormously. We've a great debt of gratitude to him.

John Hume on Bill Clinton, 29 September 2005.

This monograph has examined the extent and nature of interventions by successive US presidents in the Northern Ireland conflict. In doing so, it has sought to identify the reasons for, and consequences of, American involvement in both Anglo-Irish relations and the peace process in Northern Ireland. This concluding chapter contends that this involvement was shaped by three differing components of the presidency: electioneering, domestic politics and foreign policy. Yet these components are all influenced by a single factor: the power of the US presidency. A president's interest in an issue inevitably legitimises its being worthy of wider attention and endorses any position or policy advocated by a party that gains the support of the US government. Thus, the role of the individual in history, particularly when that individual is the American president, is significant in the saga that ended the ‘Troubles’. Indeed, the interest and action of individual presidents must be examined in the context of wider political and social structures and interests.

Regardless of their motivations, that US presidents became increasingly interested in Northern Ireland underlines the importance of those individuals in taking advantage of the broader political changes and evolution of protagonists’ objectives in Northern Ireland. Although historians can never know for certain, it is unlikely that President George W. Bush (2001–9) would have had the same level of interest in the nuances of Northern Ireland required to engage actively with the peace process. Dumbrell surmises that, while the Bush administration readily identified itself with the peace process, given its success, American interest in Northern Ireland's affairs was downgraded due to the Bush administration's worldview, concern about terrorism after 9/11, belief that any need for serious American intervention had eased, and, again after 9/11, an unwillingness to intervene without the full approval of the British government. Bertie Ahern recalled that the Bush administration lacked its predecessor's faith in the peace process. He believed that Bush's ‘natural instinct was to say that the Sinners [Sinn Féin] were terrorists who could never be changed. That was his view and we permanently were convincing him’.