Biden has a trip to Ireland that is both home and diplomacy

A Tribute to the Son of Ireland: Sixty Years After the War of Ireland, Biden’s Visit to the Republic of Ireland

Ireland’s prime minister last month described Biden as an “unmistakably a son of Ireland.” Biden has attributed his temper, nostalgia, politics, and humor all to his Irish roots. The most famous quote from Yeats’ “Easter 1916” has appeared 12 times in Biden’s public remarks since he took office.

Sixty years later, the current Irish Catholic president (Secret Service codename: Celtic) departs Tuesday for his own visit bound to make a similar impression – first to Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, and then onto Ireland from Wednesday through Saturday.

On the policy side, Biden’s trip starts in Northern Ireland where he will deliver a message about ongoing U.S. support for the Good Friday Agreement, signed 25 years ago. That agreement, which the U.S. was pivotal in negotiating, brought an end to decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland known as The Troubles.

By coincidence, Biden was on that visit to Ireland the same day a majority of British voters elected to leave the European Union, a decision he opposed and which posed thorny questions for Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK.

But it will be his personal engagements in the Republic of Ireland later in the week, including stops in County Louth and County Mayo to explore his family roots, that will best capture what Biden himself has described as perhaps his single most defining trait.

He said at a St. Patrick’s Day luncheon that he was proud of his Irish ancestry. It has been a part of my soul as long as I can remember.

Ahead of the trip, the White House distributed an extensive family genealogy stretching as far back as 1803, to the shoemakers and civil engineers and union overseers who would eventually leave Ireland on ships bound for America. During the Irish famines of the 1840s and 1850s most of the passengers left because they couldn’t survive the passage.

Biden has a persona defined by eternal optimism despite his own experience of profound loss.

According to his memoir he once said to his colleagues in the Senate: “To fail to understand that life is going to knock you down is to fail to understand the Irishness of life.”

Biden is returning to Ireland as president and also going to meet with Irish leaders, address Parliament and deliver a nighttime speech before returning to Washington on Saturday. The White House said that Biden’s great-great-great grandpa sold 28,000 bricks to build the cathedral.

His family will be with him on the journey. He was vice president when he visited the island in 2016 and spent six days on the island with his sister and multiple grandsons.

President Biden has stated that liberal internationalism can return, he talks about democracy and autocracy, all of this kind of stuff. I think he would like to see good examples of the rule of law in US foreign policy. And this is a great example of that. This was an achievement,” said Liam Kennedy, director of the Clinton Institute for American Studies at the University College Dublin.

“The Good Friday Agreement is certainly one of those things where you can get real bipartisan buy-in in Washington,” Kennedy said. “Believe me, that’s a pretty unusual thing.”

The tragedy of the Troubles, and the legacy of his father, Joseph Biden, of the United Kingdom, whose father was murdered by British forces

The bloody tensions between Protestant Unionists, who support remaining part of the United Kingdom, and Catholic Irish Nationalists, who support reunification with the Republic, have mostly been left in another era. More than 3,500 deaths were caused by the Troubles, most of them civilians.

In 1988, he told the Irish America magazine that as president he would try to reach a peace.

“If we have a moral obligation in other parts of the world, why in God’s name don’t we have a moral obligation to Ireland? It is part of our blood. He said his bone was represented by the blood of his blood.

Yet that government has functioned only sporadically in the quarter-century since the accord was signed and has been frozen for more than a year after the Democratic Unionists withdrew because of the Brexit trade dispute.

A lawyer whose own father was murdered by Loyalist paramilitaries in collusion with UK state forces in 1989, Finucane said Biden’s visit was a reminder of the American role in brokering peace.

Still, the threat of violence has never entirely disappeared, a reality made evident when British intelligence services raised the terrorism threat level in Northern Ireland from “substantial” to “severe” in late March.

An operation called “Operation Rondoletto” taking place over Easter weekend ahead of Biden’s visit was set to cost around $8.7 million (£7 million), the police service said, and include motorcycle escort officers, firearms specialists and search specialists.

It’s not entirely clear that “malarkey” is an Irish term, but Biden attributes many of his characteristics to being Irish-American.

It’s not clear whether a stop into the pub is in the plans, but grabbing a pint of beer is not. “I’m the only Irishman, though, you’ve ever met who’s never had a drink,” said Biden, who like his predecessor doesn’t drink alcohol.

Kennedy’s election was a big deal. Biden, on the other hand, is free to wear his heritage on his sleeve, O’Leary said, since electing an Irish Catholic to the highest office in the land is no longer a taboo.

He thinks that JFK was more Anglophile than he is, since Kennedy attended an high-end boarding school and then Harvard.

What did U.S. engagement in the Good Friday Agreement teach us about what is going on in Northern Ireland, and how will it affect Northern Ireland?

Max Bergmann at the Center for Strategic and International Studies said it was a huge deal. He expects Biden to hold up the Good Friday Agreement as “an example 25 years later where active U.S. engagement really made a difference.”

It has been tested by the peace accord. The United Kingdom’s move to withdraw from the European Union created new tensions over trade and risked stoking disputes over borders. The Windsor Framework aims to ease those tensions, but it’s still hard to see how that will work in Northern Ireland.

“America is not trying to interfere in the management of the power sharing arrangements within Northern Ireland,” O’Leary said. “It is clear that the United States will encourage foreign and direct investment if those works out.”

While personally connecting to his roots is important to Biden, politically so is building strong relationships between the U.S. and its European allies.