This week, U.S. President Joe Biden and other world leaders will travel to Belfast, Northern Ireland’s capital, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, which brought an end to decades of violent conflict in the region. Although the peace still holds, sectarian tensions endure—and Brexit has revived questions about Northern Ireland’s status and its future as part of the United Kingdom.
The United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union threatened the country’s already weakening foundations, Fintan O’Toole writes. For Northern Ireland, Brexit had the potential to reinstate a hard border with the Republic of Ireland, which remains an EU member—a move that would have undermined key pillars of the 1998 peace accord. With reunification of the island on the table as a key provision of the Good Friday Agreement, O’Toole observed on The Foreign Affairs Interview, Northern Ireland has “already been psychologically semi-detached—and Brexit has added to that.”
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