In International Politics and the Northern Ireland Conflict: The USA, Diplomacy and the Troubles, Alan MacLeod provides a compelling narrative of the early era of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, highlighting the role of the United States. He begins his analysis with the acceleration of conflict associated with the British policy of internment (beginning in August 1971) and ends with the collapse of the Sunningdale Agreement (May 1974). After a careful and insightful reading of a wide array of government documents and the extant scholarly literature on the US policy toward Northern Ireland, MacLeod makes a convincing case that American policy was not driven by blind loyalty and deference to an important Cold War ally but “the result of the [American] Administration's internal policy-making process” (22). Rather than seeing American policy makers and members of Congress as relying on official British policy and diplomatic exchanges, he shows that the Nixon administration developed American policy based on the influence of important Irish-American lobby groups as well as on diplomatic and other political exchanges with Irish, British, and Northern Irish politicians.
MacLeod contends that internment forced the American government to consider abandoning its previous policy of avoiding intervention in the conflict in Northern Ireland. The Nixon administration resisted efforts to become involved in the conflict—both domestic political pressures and the active diplomatic measures taken by the Irish government encouraged the US government to challenge the British internment of Irish Republican Army suspects. According to then secretary of state William Rogers, the conflict in Northern Ireland did not directly impinge on American national security interests. While the United States was therefore not interested in directly intervening in Northern Ireland, it was concerned that the resources the United Kingdom devoted to Northern Ireland undermined its contribution to NATO, which was of utmost concern to the United States in the context of the Cold War.
MacLeod's reading of US government documents provides a contrasting analysis to that of Joseph Thompson, who has stressed that US officials slavishly deferred to the British government and Unionists in Northern Ireland. Statements coming from the US ambassador in Dublin and the Consul General in Belfast indicated that the military policies of the British government (especially internment) were not bringing peace in Northern Ireland and suggested that the United States should encourage a political initiative. While the American government representatives recognized that no outside power, including the United States, could impose a solution, it did support political negotiations among the parties in Northern Ireland. This position coincided with the position of successive Irish governments during the early to mid-1970s.
One of the strengths of MacLeod's analysis of US policy making toward Northern Ireland is his recognition of the role Congress played in this context. While senators and members of the House can attempt to influence foreign policy in numerous ways, some foreign-policy entrepreneurs attempt to influence a policy based on a specific interest. Outraged by the violence used against Northern Irish Catholics, Irish American lobby groups pressured politicians from states and districts with large Irish American populations to express their anger at British policy. As a result, members of the Irish Caucus in the Congress, especially Senator Ted Kennedy, clearly put pressure on the Nixon administration to respond to the growing crisis of the Troubles. For example, in October of 1971, Senators Kennedy and Ribicoff and Congressman Hugh Carey introduced a resolution calling for the withdrawal of British troops from Northern Ireland as well as for a conference intended to reunify Ireland.
After Bloody Sunday, the Nixon administration came under increasing domestic political pressure in an election year not to cede the Irish American Catholic vote. Not wanting to alter its non-intervention policy, the administration suggested that perhaps American religious leaders like Billy Graham could act as mediators in the conflict. MacLeod insists that the British were cognizant of domestic pressures for President Nixon and his administration to intervene more directly in the conflict in Northern Ireland and were keen to keep Nixon up to date so as to prevent him from caving to those pressures. While congressional hearings allowed politicians with significant Irish American populations in their states and districts to critique British policy, they did not threaten the policy of nonintervention taken by the Nixon administration. In 1974, after the collapse of Sunningdale, the Irish National Caucus was formed, seeking to elicit Congressional support for the Irish cause. Congressional resolutions may have satiated Irish American groups who sought declarations of support for the Irish republican cause but did little to alter US or British policy in Northern Ireland.
By this time, some Irish American leaders in Congress had begun to follow Senator Kennedy's lead and moderate their views, recognizing the difficulties in Northern Ireland and adopting a more nuanced understanding of the conflict. MacLeod's analysis supports the work of Peter McLoughlin and Alison Meagher, who have stressed the critical role that John Hume played in informing key Irish American politicians, especially Senator Kennedy, of the necessity to eschew simplistic republican solutions like an immediate and complete British withdrawal from Northern Ireland. MacLeod's analysis also conforms to the recent work of Devashree Gupta, who has highlighted how during the period of the Troubles “illicit” networks that linked Irish republicans with the Irish-American diaspora gradually gave way to “semi-licit” and “licit” networks. By 1973, the British government was placing increasing pressure on the Nixon administration to end American funding and support of republican activity. While the Nixon administration did not seek to antagonize the Irish Caucus and Irish American republican groups, gradually the US government began to curtail American financial support for the republican cause.
MacLeod stresses that the fundamental conflict between the British and Irish governments was that the British saw the Troubles from a security perspective and sought security cooperation as a means of reducing the violence. The Irish government consistently saw Northern Ireland as a political, not a security, problem, and insisted that only negotiations and political compromise could be a means of resolving the conflict. While the US government remained on the sidelines for much of the period under review, especially in the negotiations of the Sunningdale Agreement, once this agreement collapsed the Irish government sought and gained US diplomatic support to maintain the British military presence in Northern Ireland to prevent a full-scale civil war from developing.
MacLeod's research reveals that each party's inability to recognize the limitations faced by other actors prevented breakthroughs in ending the conflict. Looking back on the failures of negotiations in the 1970s, scholars have increasingly recognized that later successes were derived from actors appreciating the policy dilemmas confronting other actors in the conflict. Ultimately, this policy learning was an important part of what eventually led to later breakthroughs in the Northern Ireland peace process, especially the Good Friday Agreement. MacLeod's book is an important contribution to our understanding of the complexity of diplomatic initiatives and activities in the early years of the Troubles.
