Biden’s clueless support for Ireland weakens the West
America’s real interests are the exact opposite of the views of EU high priests and their US acolytes
What position should America take in the Northern Ireland dispute between the UK and the EU? President Joe Biden and key Democrats such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi think the answer is easy. They unreservedly accept both the EU claim that the Northern Ireland Protocol is essentially inviolable, and Ireland’s posture that unilateral British changes to the Protocol could mortally wound the Good Friday Agreement.
Why, exactly, is the Protocol so important to Biden, and how should Boris Johnson react? Presumably, Britain and Ireland can look out for their own national interests and seek US involvement if they mutually agree. And while Northern Ireland should not be used to relitigate the Brexit decision, that is precisely what the EU overlords, through their Irish surrogate, are attempting. But aside from London and Dublin, the two parties of real interest, this issue is almost solely a matter of theological importance for the international Left in its assault on the legitimacy of even democratically based national sovereignty.
How distant this is from hard reality. The Protocol is essentially a trade issue, pragmatically resolvable as such issues normally are, but for the EU’S insistence on communitaire theology and its determination to punish the one country that has flatly told it to go pound sand. EU high priests and their US acolytes conjure visions of hell if the UK abrogates any part of the Protocol as a “violation of international law”.
This is surely the easiest argument to refute, but a very important one for America, whose real interests are completely opposite to Biden’s views. The most fundamental point is whether national law prevails over international law when the two conflict. In the United States, the number of politicians prepared to say that the Constitution and laws enacted thereunder are subordinate to international law is between few and none, for good reason.
American and British constitutional law is well-settled that treaties can be modified or vitiated by subsequent legislation; no legislature can control the acts of its successors. Ultimately, the only legitimacy for governmental acts is the consent of the governed, which is why reversing prior legislative action is easily understood. Treaties or other international accords stand in no better place than domestic legislation.
Moreover, if you want an “international law” justification, the doctrine of rebus sic stantibus (roughly, “as things now stand”) permits a sovereign state to reject prior commitments on the basis of changed circumstances. Many if not most international agreements have withdrawal clauses, but even without one, a state cannot be bound under a deal when the parties’ fundamental expectations were based on erroneous understandings at the time or later.
This logic is crucial to democratic, constitutional sovereignty. Consider merely one aspect of a Bill introduced in Parliament on Monday, eliminating the role of EU judges in disputes involving the Protocol. Since the central issue is trade between parts of the UK, allowing external judges any say whatever is astonishing and illegitimate, like allowing Canada to dictate terms of trade between Alaska and the Lower Forty-eight. In all post-brexit matters, people should get used to the idea that London owes Brussels no subservience. Manumission has been achieved.
Unfortunately, for some US political leaders, the Good Friday Agreement involves not international theology but theological theology. Ironically, however, repudiating the Protocol makes preserving the Agreement more likely; quashing the EU’S harmful meddling will reduce the tensions it has improvidently raised. Dublin may prefer benefiting from EU leverage but it is delusional to think that striving to weaken British internal unity is productive. The real question is whether the UK favours preserving its own cohesion or the EU’S.
Where are the true US national interests here, especially considering the ongoing and increasingly difficult Ukraine war? What Washington really needs, strategically and politically, is a strong UK, helping to lead the Nato alliance both in the immediate crisis and longer term, and in reinvigorating the special relationship on a global basis after years of tensions. With all due respect, Ireland is not a Nato member. Even as Finland and Sweden apply for Nato membership, Ireland remains mute. That is certainly Ireland’s choice; so are the consequences.
Instead, the White House recently lectured Downing Street that a dispute between London and Brussels risked upsetting Western unity over Ukraine, a claim as absurd as its predicate that the West today is really unified on Ukraine policy. The truth is that Biden-pelosi Democrats never liked Brexit. In their world, the EU is still the wave of the future, stemming from Woodrow Wilson’s post-isolationist vision that “we are in the great drift of humanity which is to determine the politics of every country in the world”.
America isn’t drifting anywhere, and neither should Britain. And just to make the politics clear, Biden’s administration is coming ever-more unstuck. With November’s congressional elections looming, Pelosi’s tenure as Speaker is dwindling rapidly, and with it her influence. By contrast, London has both the momentum and the right, which is why Brussels is increasingly frantic.