Of immediate importance to US officials in Washington and Dublin was whether de Valera’s decisions would lead to a possible confrontation with Britain. It took the Americans some time to identify and then reconcile themselves to de Valera’s political strategy once in office; de Valera had to placate his supporters but not rebuff any potential converts to his party. The chapter argues that American diplomats viewed Ireland not just in terms of domestic events but also in the international context specifically the British Commonwealth of Nations would break up and thereby weaken America’s ally. De Valera’s intention to dilute, if not end, Ireland’s constitutional links to Britain and his constant attempts to entangle America in the Irish question posed many different challenges for Frederick Sterling, Alvin Owsley and John Cudahy in Ireland.

This concluding chapter summarizes the book arguments and reflects on the legacies of the war, the problems at restoring business as usual after a long period of state of exception, and the difficulties of squaring sovereignty, national interests, humanity and human rights. The war and its aftermath profoundly changed the population structure of vast territories and generated a proliferation of migration control policies and new citizenship claims from those who had fought on the battlefront or suffered because of the war. It reshaped economic relationships and the balance of power and had a big impact on reorienting migration flows. The First World War marked a departure from the quest for the universalism of rights and a shift from individuals to collectivities defined in terms of identity, belonging, language, ethnicity, religion or class. Establishing the equation between aliens and dangerousness, the First World War consolidated the idea that policing borders, selecting those who can live in the territory of a country, expelling the unwanted, preventing them from entering, granting and stripping people of their citizenship were (and after the war continued to be) the main prerogatives of the sovereign state, which had the power to decide whom to accept, expel, grant asylum to, include, exclude and endow with rights.