Elaine Loughlin: We can no longer rely on America's romanticised view of old Ireland

Taoiseach Simon Harris speaking to the media in Washington DC ahead of his meeting with US president Joe Biden, and his address at Georgetown University. Picture: Niall Carson/PA 

What will Ireland’s relationship with the US look like in 10 years’ time?

This was the final question posed to Taoiseach Simon Harris during an event to mark a century of diplomatic ties with the US held in the impressive Riggs Library at Georgetown University this week.

Ireland may have enjoyed a privileged relationship with the US over the past 100 years, but the next decade seems a lot more uncertain.

During his two-day trip to Washington, Harris spent just under an hour in the Oval Office with Joe Biden, who could be the last Irish-American president for many many years to come, perhaps ever.

Taoiseach Simon Harris with US president Joe Biden at the White House this week. In his speech at Georgetown University, Mr Harris cited Sally Rooney and Hozier as touchstones of Irish-American connections.

Speaking to students at Georgetown, Harris pointed to culture — “whether it’s Sally Rooney’s books, whether it’s Hozier’s concerts” — as perhaps a knot that, in the future, will tie both countries, and not necessarily an ancestral link to the old sod.

It was a point picked up on by moderator Cóilín Parsons, who suggested that, “in many ways, the conversation about the Irish-American diaspora has been about its age and that, while there are 31.5m Irish-Americans, or at least people who have a connection in some way to the Irish diaspora, that number is a smaller part of the US population now, and it’s a greying number as well”.

Irish-Americans are no longer second- or even third-generation Irish.

Biden himself has to go back as far as 1848, when his great-great-grandfather Patrick Blewitt crossed the Atlantic as a 20-year-old cabin boy, to find his own ties to Ireland.

But distance of time is not the only gulf opening up between ourselves and the US — outlooks have also changed.

The US, once viewed as a bastion of modernity, now feels dated on many issues, from abortion rights to gender equality and social protection.

The divergence in views has never been more acute than in the stance taken by the US in relation to Israel over the past 12 months.

While coming under pressure at home to take a firmer stance going into the White House meeting, both Harris and his predecessor, Leo Varadkar, have felt the need to tread carefully when raising Israel’s actions in Gaza, and now Lebanon, with their US counterparts.

Diplomacy, of course, can be more impactful when quietly delivered rather than with a bang.  

In the Oval Office on Wednesday, the Middle East conflict was raised, with Biden briefing the Taoiseach on a phone call he had earlier in the day with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Harris stressed to Biden that, in addition to needing to see a ceasefire and an end to the conflict, “we also have a major humanitarian crisis where countries like Ireland wants to help, and we can’t get the aid in”.  

However, the Taoiseach stopped short of calling on the US president to end the shipment of arms to Israel.

Afterwards, Harris told reporters that Biden had left the Taoiseach “in no doubt” of the seriousness of a conversation he had with the Israeli leader in a bid to bring about a ceasefire in the Middle East.

But, less than 24 hours after the Oval Office meeting, UN peacekeepers in Lebanon were fired upon by the Israeli defence forces.

At Georgetown University on Thursday, Harris told students there were “real parallels” between Ireland’s struggle for independence and the “plight of the Palestinian people”.

“When we speak up about the terrible conflict ongoing in the Middle East, we are watching our own history reflected back at us, and remembering our own story of suffering,” he said.

He went on to recognise the role that the US has played, and continues to play, in the Irish peace process.

Harris described the US’s involvement in securing the Good Friday Agreement as “one of the greatest achievements of modern American statecraft”.

But the Sally Rooney generation sitting listening in the room do not remember America’s significant and sustained role in bringing about the historic peace deal for Northern Ireland, simply because they weren’t even born at the time.

This poses a significant problem for Ireland, which up until now has been able to casually assume that we can rely on the romanticised pull of the homeland to retain a special standing in Washington.

In a cutting piece published in Politico last month, Eoin Drea, a senior research officer at the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, claimed that “Irish-America’s sepia-tinged view of the country, coupled with Dublin’s multi-generational bipartisan links on Capitol Hill, has helped turn the Emerald Isle into a little piece of Euro-Americana — and that’s not a good thing”.

Rather, it’s resulted in Dublin’s lazy and increasingly dangerous economic dependency on Washington, fundamentally weakening its role in the EU. 

Giving his own opinion on where the relationship between both states might be in 10 years, Harris placed an emphasis on “innovation and research” and the exchange of ideas.

Whatever future relations look like, they now require a step change from the Irish side before the connection is lost.