US diplomacy and the Good Friday Agreement in post-conflict Northern Ireland

Richard Hargy

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781526184627
• eBook ISBN: 9781526184610
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Richard Haass and Mitchell Reiss, as autonomous diplomats in the George W. Bush State Department, were able to alter US intervention in Northern Ireland and play critical roles in the post-1998 peace process. Their contributions have not been fully appreciated or understood. The restoration of Northern Ireland's power-sharing government in 2007 was made possible by State Department-led intervention in the peace process. There are few references to Northern Ireland in work examining the foreign policy legacy of the George W. Bush presidency. Moreover, the ability to control US foreign policy towards the region brought one of George W. Bush's Northern Ireland special envoys into direct diplomatic conflict with the most senior actors inside the British government. This book will uncover the extent of this fall-out and provide original accounts on how diplomatic relations between these old allies became so fraught.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The Bill Clinton administration and Northern Ireland, 1993–2001
• 2 The US Department of State
• 3 The anomalous nature of US diplomacy: Northern Ireland within the State Department
• 4 The Policy Planning Staff: avoiding trivia for over sixty years
• 5 The unilateralist pivot of the George W. Bush administration: 9/11, foreign wars, and Northern Ireland
• 6 The State Department’s Northern Ireland special envoys and the redemption of the Good Friday Agreement
• 7 Mitchell Reiss: the unsung hero of peace
• 8 The State Department, Northern Ireland, and the fallacy of the ‘special relationship’
• Conclusion
• Epilogue: US government intervention in Northern Ireland post-Brexit
• Appendix 1: Composition of the National Security Council under the George W. Bush administration as set out by the National Security Presidential Directive-1, February 13, 2001
• Appendix 2: Biographies of key actors
• Bibliography
• Index