American Diplomacy and Economic Aid in the Northern Ireland Peace Process: A Neoliberal Analysis. Issue 1 (15th January 2018) - White, Timothy J.
There are no purely military solutions to the myriad of ethnic and sectarian conflicts in the world today. If this is the case, then what are the most appropriate means of intervention? This article focuses on diplomacy and economic aid as means the United States employed to facilitate the achievement and effective implementation of a peace agreement. Most analysis of the Northern Ireland peace process that resulted from the signing of the Good Friday or Belfast Agreement has stressed the political machinations among the local parties to the conflict that resulted in the negotiated settlement. Some analysis has suggested that the US was either misinformed or relatively unimportant in this peace process. Basing my research on assumptions from neoliberal international relations theory, I argue that the US role in Northern Ireland, while not definitive in terms of achieving peace, was important in the complex pattern of mutual influence that made the Good Friday Agreement possible and then assisted in its implementation. The continuing US role in the peace process is illustrative of the role the US is increasingly playing in a world that requires coordinated international action to deal with complex global and regional conflicts.