Motivation and Intervention in the Northern Ireland Peace Process: An Interview with President Bill Clinton

In a speech that he gave in Belfast, Northern Ireland's capital city, during his first visit to Northern Ireland in November 1995, U.S. President Bill Clinton expressed hope for peace and noted the opportunity offered by an emerging peace process. Seeking to unify two competing cultures toward a common purpose, Clinton proclaimed that “In the land of the harp and the fiddle,” “the fife and the Lambeg drum, two proud traditions are coming together in the harmonies of peace” (1995). Such a peace, Clinton continued, would require the people of Northern Ireland to have “open minds” and recognize engagement in dialogue as “an act of strength and common sense” rather than an act of surrender.

Those who refused to relinquish past enmity, Clinton warned, would “Never escape the dead‐end street of violence. But you, the vast majority, Protestant and Catholic alike, must not allow the ship of peace to sink on the rocks of old habits and hard grudges” (Clinton 1995). “Your destiny is for you to determine,” he continued. “Only you can decide between division and unity, between hard lives and high hopes, only you can create a lasting peace. It takes courage to let go of familiar divisions. It takes faith to walk down a new road” and “strength to keep moving forward” (Clinton 1995). Embracing change, for Clinton, meant imagining a future unmarred by the animosities of the past, and his speech was designed to emphasize that possibility.

In contrast, in a speech he delivered in 2003 (published in 2013), Clinton identified three imperatives that were representative of his own involvement in the Northern Ireland peace process. The first is that it is necessary to work through difficulties if one is to build friendships and deepen relationships. The second is that one should not presume to know the positions and concerns of parties in conflict but should instead engage in intense listening to learn and understand those positions and concerns. And the third is that one should understand that “all politics is local,” and so remain alert to the impact of local reactions on national issues (Clinton 2013).

The two speeches above highlight two kinds of leadership: one motivational and the other educational. The first relies on emotion and the second relies on understanding. The first offers hope and vision to imagine a better future and the second is focused on the practical steps that need to be taken to reach that future. The first speech, which Clinton gave two years into his presidency, emphasized the spiritual elements of the peace process and was theatrical in presentation. The second speech, which Clinton gave two years after leaving office, offered instruction on the mechanics needed to build peace. In this article, I explore this interaction between how Clinton sought to inspire and also instruct, between his emphasis on the emotional and inspirational appeal of a peaceful future and the pragmatic political considerations necessary to bring such a future about.

Clinton's interventions in Northern Ireland suggest that he had a personal interest in ending that conflict, which was inspired by his own civil rights convictions (Dempsey 2004). But his involvement was also representative of a wider strategic shift that emerged in the new post–Cold War world, where, freed from the enduring threat of communism, and the traditional U.S. policy of containment that had been used to confront that threat, Clinton sought to extend U.S. influence through a process of democratic enlargement (Brinkley 1997) and use economic development to help create diplomatic advantage (MacLeod 2016). This new period of openness also gave Clinton the opportunity to act in ways that enabled more flexibility in international affairs (O'Grady 1996) and unsettled established relationships; for example, this was the case with the British when Clinton granted Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams a visa to enter the United States in 1994 (Renwick 2019).

Given that the post–Cold War world made it harder to sustain claims that national political interests would remain unchanged because of those groups, particularly communists, who had historically and consistently been seen as a threat (Cox 1998: 60), Clinton proposed to make foreign policymaking more proactive and less reactive (Brinkley 1997: 114) and use market expansionism as the key mechanism for achieving this.

Clinton stressed the value of relationships and “the human drama of the peace process” (MacLeod 2016: 235) and this indicated the value for him of soft power and personal diplomacy (Riley 2016). The peace process, however, clearly developed as a result of intensive political activity. Its origins emerged in the late 1980s as a series of confidential dialogues, strategic statements, and secret meetings held in Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the Republic of Ireland (Hennessey 2000; Spencer 2008, 2015a, 2015b). But the process can also be seen as a response to a centuries‐old religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics that evolved into a violent struggle between Protestant unionists seeking to remain British and Catholic nationalists seeking unification with the Irish Republic.

During the conflict's modern period known as “the Troubles,” which began as a response to civil rights discrimination against Catholics in the late 1960s, two serious attempts to build peace were undertaken that failed to bring about a substantive resolution. The first occurred when moderate unionists and nationalists agreed to form a power‐sharing Northern Ireland Executive at Sunningdale, England in 1974. That effort foundered because of wider unionist resistance to what was seen as a dilution of political and social power and the British Government's failure to adequately support it (Anderson 1994; Hennessey 2015; McDaid 2016; Dorr 2017).

The second attempt was the Anglo‐Irish Agreement of 1985, when the British and Irish governments collaborated to bring about closer ties between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom through a framework that prioritized self‐determination, consent, and democratic participation (FitzGerald 1991; Bew and Gillespie 1999; Lillis and Goodall 2010). The agreement allowed greater Irish involvement in the affairs of Northern Ireland and presented opportunities for nationalists to try and work for a united Ireland, which angered unionists and led to huge public protests in opposition. Relations between the unionists and the British government effectively froze for four years until, in 1989, British Secretary of State Peter Brooke encouraged unionists to engage in talks to try and negotiate a new power‐sharing arrangement in Northern Ireland that would address fears about Irish interference. These talks led to the more comprehensive negotiations that resulted in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 (Bloomfield 1998).

Interestingly, it was the failure of Sunningdale that prompted Irish political and diplomatic pressure on U.S. President Jimmy Carter to announce an initiative on Ireland based on human rights and economic investment in 1977 (Dumbrell 1993; FitzPatrick 2017). The Anglo‐Irish Agreement was also reached because of pressure on an American president, with President Ronald Reagan exploiting his strong personal relationship with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to get her to support the agreement. She later admitted: “It was pressure from the Americans that made me sign that agreement” (McAlpine 1997: 272).

Unlike the Sunningdale agreement, which had been devised mainly by moderate unionists and nationalists, and the Anglo‐Irish Agreement, which had been negotiated by the British and Irish governments alone, the peace process operated according to the principle that if a settlement was to be achieved then all political parties would need to be involved. The architects of the peace process recognized that for peace to hold it had to be as inclusive as possible and that even the proponents of violence needed to be brought into the democratic process and agree to non‐violent representation – and to persuade their followers to do the same. For Sinn Fein and the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), U.S. involvement would be central to facilitate this transformation, and Clinton skillfully persuaded republican leaders to appreciate the risks that they needed to take to achieve peace, acknowledging that this was more likely to happen if republicans were part of a broader nationalist front at the same time (Adams 1996).

In this article, I explore how Clinton used his motivational and political skills to persuade political players to reach a peace settlement and thus achieve a diplomatic success consistent with his foreign policy goals. First, I describe the political context that informed Clinton's actions before offering some tentative thoughts on the role of mediation in negotiations more generally. I then follow that discussion with a transcript of an interview in which Clinton describes his involvement in the Northern Ireland peace process.

President Clinton made a commitment to become involved in the Northern Ireland issue before he was even elected president, a move that put candidate Clinton's interest in the Irish peace process more firmly on the political agenda in Washington (O'Hanlon 1998; O'Dowd 2010). In April 1992, on the campaign trail, he attended an Irish‐American forum in New York where he was asked if, as president, he would grant Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein, the republican party that has been historically associated with the paramilitary PIRA, a visa to enter the United States. Such a visit, proponents hoped, would enable Sinn Fein to make a more compelling case to its own supporters that politics would better help them achieve Irish unity than violence. But the visit was controversial because of allegations that Adams was acting not just as a Sinn Fein politician but as a senior member of the PIRA, which was considered by many to be a terrorist organization and which was responsible for much of the violence during the Troubles.

Clinton later acknowledged that public pressure helped compel his involvement in the peace process (Clinton 2004) and made it difficult for him to dismiss the Adams visa request, although at the time he may not have fully grasped the significance of his decision to grant it (Mallie and McKittrick 2001). Clinton also committed to an economic envoy for Northern Ireland to investigate investment opportunities and contribute economic support as part of a broader “commercial diplomacy” initiative to build economic incentives into the political process (Soderberg 2005).

Opposition from within the U.S. Departments of State and Justice, as well as from the United Kingdom, reflected a concern that the Adams visa would harm the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom and also suggest to international audiences that the United States was softening its stance on terrorism. However, following intense behind‐the‐scenes activity, in January 1994 fifty U.S. senators and members of the House of Representatives, led by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, sent a letter of support urging Clinton to grant the visa and encouraging him to help facilitate the emerging dialogue.¹ The intense activity to secure a visa for Adams was in part designed to pressure both the PIRA and the British to engage in a serious negotiation process (Adams 1997). By enabling Adams to visit, the United States conferred some degree of legitimacy on the republican cause, but this also enabled more American influence over Sinn Fein in the process (Clinton 2004). The Adams visa was finally granted in February 1994, more than one full year into the Clinton administration.

Clinton's decision to engage more directly with the peace process did no harm to his popularity among Irish‐American voters, which may have helped motivate his engagement (Clinton 2004), but this does not appear to have been the primary impetus. Indeed, Clinton worked directly with all key participants in Northern Ireland, thereby subverting claims that he represented only the preferences of Irish‐Americans, which were largely republican‐leaning, and minimizing possible accusations that he was favoring those with most to gain from the changes that a peace process might bring (Dumbrell 1995; Guelke 1996).

Working with the political parties and the British and Irish governments in this way allowed the United States to “wield its influence more broadly” and indicated an intention to “nudge rather than instruct, to entice rather than threaten” (Hazleton 2000: 119). Clinton's Deputy National Security Advisor Nancy Soderberg (2005: 74) wrote that such an approach “became critical in building confidence among the parties” because “while neither side trusted any commitments made to each other, any commitments made to the U.S., especially the President, could be trusted”, reinforcing an image of the United States as a credible third‐party to negotiations.

Significantly, U.S. involvement brought leverage to bear on Sinn Fein and the PIRA to deliver a ceasefire in August 1994 (O'Dowd 2010). Following the advice of those such as Nancy Soderberg, Senator Kennedy, and Tony Lake, Clinton's national security advisor, Clinton chose to override the advice of the U.S. Department of State that he should not disturb the country's status quo position of support for British policy on Northern Ireland. As part of a new strategy emphasizing “non‐traditional, non‐executive sources of power” (Lynch 2004: 142), Clinton and his team persuasively represented established foreign policy positions as “tired and stale” and adopted a new “policy entrepreneurialism” to shape and inform the conduct of foreign relations (Lynch 2004).

That Clinton was able to upset the British by granting the Adams visa (Seitz 1998; Major 1999) and then quickly overcome the resulting tensions to pursue a productive relationship illustrates how he viewed political relations not just in terms of policy, but through interpersonal dynamics (Lynch 2004). Clinton made three visits visit to Northern Ireland during his two terms in office. His first one, in November 1995, was greeted with considerable public acclaim and was especially representative of his convergent political and personal diplomacy approach, and its success arguably justifies that approach (Birney and O'Neill 1997).

With his visit to Northern Ireland, Clinton also sought to eclipse the memory of recent diplomatic setbacks in the Israeli‐Palestinian conflict. In September 1993, he had welcomed Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel, and Mahmoud Abbas, the negotiator for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), to the White House for the signing of the Oslo Accords. The now iconic image of Clinton with arms outstretched embracing Rabin and PLO leader Yasir Arafat was symbolic of his peace‐making agenda. But the Oslo process came to a halt when Rabin was assassinated just a few weeks before Clinton's visit to Northern Ireland.

Furthermore, Clinton's commitment to Northern Ireland did not wane after the Canary Wharf bombing of February 1996 – which Clinton discusses in the following interview – and indeed intensified following the elections of Tony Blair as prime minister of the United Kingdom and Bertie Ahern as taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland in spring 1997. Aides working with U.S. Senator George Mitchell, who was tasked with chairing the negotiations, impressed on the political players in Northern Ireland that, if an agreement were to be reached, it would be concluded quickly: Mitchell formally announced to the political parties at the end of March a deadline for agreement of April 9, 1998 (Mitchell 1999). To protect their interests in the final outcome, the Northern Irish political parties needed to commit fully to participate in the process (Pope and Pozorski 2009).

Clinton was constantly available by phone to reassure political leaders and reminded them to consider the difficulties that each would confront when managing internal party disputes about the agreement – this was particularly true for the unionists (see Mallie and McKittrick 2001). As the process proceeded and the substantive struggle intensified, Clinton's role became more interventionist (Mallie and McKittrick 2001). And Mitchell, who had shown patience to all the parties, listening for years to endless debates about procedure, became more coercive as the deadline approached (Curran, Sebenius, and Watkins 2004).

Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's chief of staff, posited that “constructive ambiguity” kept the peace process inclusive (Spencer 2010), citing the participation of new groups, such as the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, which had formed to be part of the negotiations (Fearon 1999). Powell has called the Good Friday Agreement “an agreement to disagree” (Powell 2008: 108) because it enabled each party to claim success and gain the support of its constituencies by interpreting it differently. But once an agreement has been reached, the commitments become clearer and ambiguity can become destructive. For example, such issues as weapons decommissioning, and new policing and justice structures were not dealt with at the time the agreement was signed and created problems later (Powell 2008).

According to I. William Zartman and Sadia Touval (1985), a useful mediation skill is the ability to make unattractive propositions look attractive, particularly in situations of intransigence and stalemate. A neutral third party, who shares none of the parties’ fears and enmities, can help parties bridge positions not just because of her impartiality, but often because she can present risks as opportunities.

But the mediator's persuasiveness may also arise from the intensity of his personal engagement as well as his skills in constructing a powerful moral narrative that clearly describes the benefits of ending conflict and why and how the gains justify the inevitable costs. The mediator's ongoing commitment reinforces his trustworthiness.

The successful mediator, however, must not only advocate positive change but show that she too is prepared to take risks and that the process is not without costs for her either (i.e., the risks that Clinton took when he granted the Adams visa; Dempsey 2004). Indeed, she must make change not only desirable but necessary by impressing on the participants the need for urgency and by demonstrating a personal commitment to the process.

Of course, mediation styles vary according to the personality of the mediator, and the circumstances of the conflict and the mediations. For example, Richard Holbrooke, who negotiated the Dayton Accords that ended the civil war in Bosnia‐Herzegovina, took a much more aggressive approach than Mitchell did in Northern Ireland (Curran, Sebenius, and Watkins 2004). But making comparisons here is also problematic given that Dayton was conducted speedily in a remote location, was focused more on bringing about a ceasefire and ensuring separation of the warring factions, and was used by Western peacekeeping forces to monitor an end to hostilities by holding the factions to account if they violated the terms of the agreement. The conflict in Bosnia also had greater potential for escalation (Jackson 2007) than was the case in Northern Ireland, where tensions were more contained, the conflict had been running much longer, and the climate had been discernibly shifting toward a growing receptiveness for a peace settlement since the 1980s (Hennessey 2000).

For Clinton, emotional diplomacy and motivation were vital to his credibility as a mediator in the peace process (Hall 2015). He saw how emotion could be used to promote political transformation and, by being available at times of great inconvenience to himself, such as by staying up all night to take phone calls from the political leaders, he proved a commitment that helped build trust about his own role. (I have interviewed many of the key players in the peace process and their opinion on Clinton's role is overwhelmingly positive [Spencer 2019]).

On this, and as Zartman and Maureen R. Berman note, “Trust is enhanced if a negotiator can demonstrate a genuine interest in trying to help the other side reach its objective while retaining his own objective and making the two appear compatible” (Zartman and Berman 1982: 33). In such a situation, “interdependence is increased” (Zartman and Berman 1982: 37), making betrayal less likely.

Clinton's approach was “to infer intentions, motivations, positions and interests” in order to build more collaborative relations (Holmes and Yarhi‐Milo 2017: 107). He saw empathy as a tool for acknowledging participants’ differing perspectives and concerns but was able to incorporate those concerns into the vision he promoted of a peaceful, stable future.

Inevitably, Clinton also used his authority and status as president of the United States to “reinforce his logic and charm” (Neustadt 1990: 30) in service of a policy agenda. Like other presidents before him, he saw that “the power to persuade is the power to bargain” (Neustadt 1990: 32). In addition, Clinton's involvement in the peace process exemplified his vision of a new international diplomacy that applied persuasion and “soft power” techniques (i.e., listening, offering recognition, and demonstrating respect) rather than just coercion and the threat of hard power (Nye 2005). This more conciliatory approach (Dobson 2014), helped Clinton extract support for his own recommendations, if not always as quickly or as comprehensively as he would have liked, and demonstrated the new American diplomatic emphasis in the process – an emphasis that would give attention to trust, empathy, and supportive engagement but would not jettison the need for more assertive forms of intervention in international crises as and when required (as the Holbrooke negotiations show).

[Author's note: The interview that follows with President Clinton took place in October 2017 at the offices of the Clinton Foundation in Manhattan. I provided him with a brief overview of the topics to be discussed in advance. The interview is verbatim, with editor's notes in brackets.]

Spencer: Can you provide some background to attending the Irish forum meeting in February 1992 when you were asked about committing to a visa for Gerry Adams and [establishing] a Special Envoy for Northern Ireland?

Clinton: Keep in mind that when we did this, the talks between the Northern Ireland parties and [UK Prime Minister] John Major's government² were not yet public, but what we wanted to do was get this thing off the dime. We realized that if I came out for an envoy it would violate a long‐standing understanding between the U.S. and the UK and they [the United Kingdom] would be mad, but if we didn't, then we wouldn't be making a contribution to moving the process forward.

It was clear that something had to be done and there seemed to be some willingness in both communities to engage with this based on what all of our contacts were telling us, and they were in regular touch with people in Northern Ireland and [in] the Republic [of Ireland]. We finally decided it was worth the risk and believed that if we got lucky, we might spark some sort of process of change that would actually work. The problem with just having an envoy is that, in the end, they [the parties to the conflict] have to make the peace process work so the way it developed was George Mitchell was appointed after we had a trade and investment conference and then we appointed Mitchell as the envoy out of that. This then gave the British some space because although we weren't declaring what the peace process would be and we weren't putting ourselves in charge of the peace process, we were nevertheless putting ourselves in the middle of the economic, social, and political life of Northern Ireland more than we had before.

Spencer: Were there a number of people in the political system that were not only unhappy about this but tried to obstruct it?

Clinton: Indeed, there was, such as, for example, the whole State Department.

Spencer: How did you field that pressure or objection? Did you just ignore it?

Clinton: No, I didn't ignore it. I tried to deal with it. The person I was most worried about, for personal reasons, was Warren Christopher, my Secretary of State. He and I were close friends, but I thought I could manage that. I was also worried about Admiral [William J.] Crowe, the Ambassador to the United Kingdom who had a good military mind and was a very shrewd diplomat. I did not want to be at crosshairs with him, but I thought I knew more about this issue than he did and I thought that if I did what he and the State Department wanted, which was to walk up to the brink one more time, something America had done repeatedly, but that I did not keep pushing forward, then not much good would happen. That tension really came to a head on the Adams visa.

Spencer: How did you gauge the risks involved with the Adams visa?

Clinton: It was significant because if the PIRA were kidding and if Sinn Fein were not really speaking for them, then we had problems. You have got to understand – we thought we knew what was going on in Northern Ireland politically and what was going on within Sinn Fein/IRA because we had pretty good intelligence from Americans who had contacts.

But there was still some significant risk there. I finally decided when we got a pretty clear signal from Gerry Adams that he was serious about exploring peace because we knew that this wouldn't be an easy option for him. The easy option seemed to be to just say no. The State Department said no. Even one of the most prominent‐Irish Americans, the Speaker of the House [of Representatives] Tom Foley, said no and there were varying divisions within the Kennedy clan about whether we should say yes or no. My position was [that] if we said no, we wouldn't be criticized, but we would give the people in the republican camp an excuse not to go forward.

Spencer: So was your mind made up early on about accepting the visa request?

Clinton: I wouldn't think a president can make a decision of that magnitude alone. My mind was made up to take the risk on the special envoy way back in the [presidential] primary because I wouldn't have said it if I wasn't prepared to take that risk. Sometimes, when someone gets into office, they find they can't keep a commitment made because circumstances change but, in this case, it would have been a clear back‐off, and I wasn't about to do that unless there was a better alternative. Also, this came up pretty early in my tenure, although the conversations between the Major government and the Irish and the Northern Ireland parties had been going on, so my strong inclination was to do it even though there were significant risks.

I could have looked like I was a handmaiden to terrorists if it had gone wrong, and, don't forget, we had already had the first World Trade Center attack in 1993 shortly after I took office, but I had a feeling, having listened and listened and having thought about it, that this was a real opportunity. It's not fair to say that I went through a bunch of optics to reach the decision I had already reached. I owed it to Warren Christopher and, as it turned, out I owed it to Admiral Crowe and to Speaker Foley, too.

I had a huge agenda before the Congress where I was trying to reverse twelve years of President Ronald Reagan's trickle‐down economic policy. I was also trying to do a trade agreement with Mexico and Canada, which was controversial within my own party [and] which was very tough, but we had [National Security Advisor] Tony Lake, and [Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs] Nancy Soderberg and [Deputy National Security Advisor] Sandy Berger all working hard on this. The White House foreign policy team was all in and they believed we should grant the visa based on the aggregate of conversations with the relevant parties. The State Department was getting rained down on by the British government, as indeed was Ambassador Crowe, because of this, and so there was some pressure to face down.

Spencer: Yet Patrick Mayhew, [the UK Secretary of State for Northern Ireland] was said to admit later in conversation that you made it easier for the British to engage with the PIRA because of moving in the way you did.

Clinton: They didn't know what to do and, to be fair, there was a little political rankle here which put Major in a bad position. I always felt Major should have got more credit than he got for starting this. First, because he had a much narrower mandate in the British Parliament than Prime Minister Blair did and, second, because his governing majority required the unionists to support him. I did not take any particular pleasure in making his life more difficult, but I thought that if we were to have any chance to succeed, we had to keep moving. He needed the Irish diaspora in America, and he needed all of us working hard. In other words, he needed to have enough “street cred,” as we say in America, to push the republican side toward peace, which would eventually include decommissioning and all that stuff. And I thought we needed to move then, because it was never going to get any easier, so we should take the risks.

But the other thing you should be reminded of is that Major was taking all sorts of grief to his right in the press because he had understandably been pretty open in his support for President [George H. W.] Bush when we were running. There were all these stories that the Major Government had supported the Bush campaign by looking into my passport file to see if I tried to give up my American citizenship in opposition to the Vietnam War. So the press was killing Major with this by saying it would ruin the special relationship and I was going to screw the British by dealing with my PIRA friends and all of that. The truth is I didn't give five minutes’ worth of thought to it. I wasn't upset by it at all. I suppose I would have been if there had been any truth to it, but since I knew the whole thing was a last‐minute desperation move on the other side, I was happy for them to waste their time looking for my passport file. I thought he got an unfair press about it for a while because I would never make American policy based on personal pique like that, and I can't think why any American president would do that.

Spencer: When the visa was granted to Gerry Adams, how did you see the importance of that moment in terms of leverage toward a PIRA ceasefire?

Clinton: In the background, we got as far as we could possibly get in getting a commitment that the visa would lead to a ceasefire. We weren't just messing around or posturing with no ideas. In fairness, I never felt that we were misled by either side and that the parties were straight with us. [Ulster Unionist Party Leader David] Trimble and Adams were straight with us and Hume, who was out there like a transparent umbrella for the whole thing, obviously was. When Adams said before he was able to promise us anything there were three things he had to do within the movement, we found him to be truthful on that score. In time he did those things [ceasefire, negotiations, and an agreement] and, in the end, we got where we needed to be.

Spencer: Did you face flak from people accusing you of engaging with terrorists?

Clinton: Oh sure. Keep in mind that at the same time we were at the high‐water mark of our efforts to help the Israelis and Palestinians make peace. And in September of 1993 they had come to the White House and signed the Oslo Accords peace agreement, and when Rabin was questioned and criticized about that he reminded everybody that you do not make peace with your friends. You are already at peace with your friends, you have to take chances.

So I think we had a lot of wind behind our sails and we weren't that far away from the end of the Cold War. And I think most Americans wanted their president to pull the world together now that the Iron Curtain had dropped, the bi‐polar world had had its cover removed, and everybody could see both the enormous potential as well as the maddening dangers that that held. I had the feeling that people in our country, particularly when it came to Northern Ireland, wanted us to be a force for peace because of their affection and their support for people in both the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic. Although many didn't understand the nuances, they knew this had been going on for a long time and was a big problem and because they liked both sides, they supported me in trying to help with the peace process.

Spencer: How was [the] Canary Wharf [bombing] received in 1996?

Clinton: We could certainly have done without that.

Spencer: How did you react? Did you think it was all off?

Clinton: No. First of all, I was mad about it, but I also understood the kind of pressures Adams was under. In every democratic system under stress you want to do two things at the same time, hold it together and move it forward – but in doing so you trigger all kinds of identity and interest questions.

Spencer: What do you mean?

Clinton: I mean what was the Brexit vote [Editor's note: the UK referendum to leave the European Union in 2016] about? What does it mean to be British? What does it mean to be in the European Union? What does it mean to be French? What shall we do with our immigrants? Anytime you get something like that, if you want to steer it through, the question is: when do you feed the beast? Do you let people set off the bomb at Canary Wharf and then crack the whip by making it clear to people that if they want peace, they have to do this, this, and this? There is no magic formula for dealing with such a situation. You are just sort of dealing with it as you go along.

Spencer: Did it give you more weight in a way because that act [the Canary Wharf bombing] allowed you to lean on the republican movement even harder?

Clinton: Yes, because my view was if they wanted a peace agreement, then bombing Canary Wharf had no long‐term strategic logic. If they thought that the British were dragging their feet or the British were letting the unionists drag their feet and they did it because they wanted to get everybody's attention, it was very high risk and, thank God, it was not a situation where twenty people were killed [Editor's note: two people were killed and more than one hundred were injured].³ It would seem as though they tried to make it a noisy but low‐human impact event, although it was clearly a deliberate provocation too. On that basis, I thought that it probably meant they still wanted to make peace and either had a renegade, or they were giving in, or they were feeding the beast.

Spencer: Were you close to walking away after Canary Wharf?

Clinton: No. I think I figured it right, that both sides still wanted it and that even if they concluded, for whatever reason, that this was needed or that somebody beyond the organization had done it and the people in charge did not want to face the embarrassment of acknowledging that, the underlying fundamentals had still not changed, so we decided to stay the course. Now if it had happened two or three more times, it might have been a different story.

Spencer: Was it important for you not to get bogged down in the details of this process because people could then have tried to tie you to intricate questions about policing, decommissioning, prisoners, marches, victims, etc.?

Clinton: It was easier for us than it was for [Prime Minister] Blair because, in law, Northern Ireland was still a part of the United Kingdom and if this was going to get the British Parliament to give their blessing to this peace agreement – which included special relationships with the Republic of Ireland, shared decision‐making, majority rule, minority rights, all of that – they were necessarily going to have to be involved more in the detail on areas like policing because that was where British government concessions had to be made. It was more important for us to basically create the conditions that would maximize the chances of making peace and then set up a process that would make sure that a sensible decision would be made.

Remember, the United States did not have to live under or live with any of the detail and in some ways if we had tried to over‐involve ourselves with the detail it would have undermined our influence. On the other hand, once George Mitchell morphed his role from the Special Envoy for Trade and Investment into the Special Envoy for the peace process, he had to know as much about that as anybody else, and he had to be able to push people to specify how they were for what they were for or against what they were against, and then consider how he could bridge gaps.

If we had waded in too hard on one side or the other on some of these issues a) we would have looked tone deaf and arrogant since we did not have to live with the consequences and b) we would have undermined Mitchell's ability to drive people to their own decisions. It's hard enough to sell one of these things under any circumstances but knowing that your own representatives made the deal makes it easier, and once you get close – we found this with the Middle East, too – you may have to weigh in because there may be no way to bridge the divide. However, that is an argument for waiting as long as is possible to say you need A, B or C. You have to keep in mind that other people are living with the consequences.

Spencer: The Irish often talked about the power of informal negotiation. Is a lunch, a drink, or a relaxed one‐to‐one situation a better way of doing business, and, indeed, is it closer to the American way of doing business?

Clinton: I would say yes, although there aren't many people in Northern Ireland, and many seem to know each other. But the isolation had been so steep for so long that maybe we did have some effect on changing the culture, and I believe that. I tried to use St Patrick's Day at the White House for this, and we always did the formal thing, where the Irish taoiseach would show up and give me the shamrock in the Irish crystal during the daytime, and then I would try to have an evening event every year and to invite a fair number of people from the parties and not just the biggest ones and then use those opportunities for me and others to have one‐on‐one totally off‐the‐record conversations.

Even if we didn't do anything but drink Irish whiskey and talk about our families, it was really important because if you look at all this trouble with nationalism raging in the world today, the success of that strategy requires the objectifying of people. It requires you to become an object defined by your [demographic] characteristics rather than being seen as a human being. If you want to make a peace, you have to melt the iceberg, you have to become a precedent because, in the end, when you put your name on that document it is not worth a nickel if you are not a person of your word.

Spencer: And so therefore trust is central?

Clinton: Yes, and trust is the democratic element in shortest supply today. Then I watched them build it up and I am telling you it is worth more than anything.

Spencer: What about the symbolism of things like the handshake? Of being seen on the Falls Road [Editor's note: this is the main road through West Belfast's republican neighborhood] shaking the hand of Gerry Adams? How much attention and consideration goes into a gesture like that and how much of it is spontaneous?

Clinton: In my initial forays it was all thought through. When I visited the Shankill [Editor's note: the main road through West Belfast's unionist neighborhood] and the Falls, I wanted the people to see me and that I wasn't running away from Sinn Fein or pretending that they were something they weren't.

But I was also saying we have to build a different tomorrow, which was important. It was important to say I was not dumping on, or looking down on, or de‐legitimizing the unionists but that they had to find a way to share the future, and so I gave an enormous amount of thought about how to do that and what to say where. We wanted to do a big event in Derry [Editor's note: known formally as Londonderry, this is Northern Ireland's second largest city and is predominantly Catholic.] for obvious reasons, and we wanted to do the Christmas tree lighting in Belfast for obvious reasons.

I wanted to spend the night as American president at the Europa for obvious reasons and I thought about that. [Editor's note: The Europa is a hotel in Belfast that has reportedly been bombed more frequently than any other hotel in Europe.] I am big on spontaneity when it comes to human contact, but on the first trip we could not afford a wrong step and we couldn't afford to have one side or the other think that we weren't an honest broker, so a lot of it was thought through.

Spencer: In terms of whose hand you shake first, surely that could be interpreted in various ways. So, how did you try and guarantee, as best you could, balance in that situation?

Clinton: My recollection is we got lucky in that the decision we made was based on how to fit the best traffic flow. You could say I just drove into town and I stopped here and then I went there. And that was factually true, given where the airport was. Maybe we would have had to have thought of something else if the airport had been in a different direction from town. I don't remember all the conversation that went into it, but we thought that since the United States had long been an ally of the UK and since I came from Northern Irish Protestant stock, that we ought to give a go at Sinn Fein first and reach out to the Catholics.

Spencer: So that was factored into the decision?

Clinton: I just thought it was the easiest thing to do. It was going to be the most newsworthy thing to do. Nobody would have been surprised if an American president shook hands with a unionist, so when I was thinking about this and we were having conversations we came to the decision that people would take our meetings with the unionists more seriously because they would see that we were determined to be fair and we are not just here for a quick trip.

My main concern, once you got the first [photographic] shots right, was that the people would then believe that this is a very serious engagement from us and that we had no intention of pushing anything down anybody else's throat. We knew perfectly well that anything agreed would have to be adopted by people in both communities and that once we had done the “peace is here” stuff, movement in this direction had to be real. But what was most important was that they trusted me and trusted us and believed whatever we said was what we believed, too. If we made a commitment, then we had to keep it.

Spencer: What was the significance of the late‐night phone calls on Good Friday? What were you saying in those calls and what were you trying to do? [Editor's note: Clinton made himself available all night to address concerns, questions, and requests for help from all the parties.]

Clinton: I was trying to pull the ball over the goal line.

Spencer: How?

Clinton: Well, I was very familiar with the issues. I knew where they were. George Mitchell had briefed me up and I trusted him. His patience is unbelievable. In a deal like this, if you ever show impatience – and there is a time for impatience, but not when you are hearing the stories for the first time, because then, if you show impatience – it's like saying I am more important than you, which pisses people off. It's like saying: your losses and your family's losses, your side's losses, aren't all that important to me and your aspirations and your dreams, your children's dreams are simply factors in an equation I am trying to work. You can't do that. You have got to be a good listener. Listening is a dignifying, empowering, trust‐building experience.

Spencer: But then at what point do you start to press?

Clinton: First of all, there is no hard and fast rule, but when the people you are listening to start to repeat themselves and no new issue is raised, that is worthy of consideration. Then you have to say to people: you can kill this at any time, but if everybody has been heard on everything that matters, we are now going to start making progress or we are not, and, if so, how do you suggest we do that?

That's the way you do it. You don't have to insult anybody. I was guided by Mitchell, Tony Blair, and Bertie Ahern as to what they thought I ought to do. I couldn't sleep anyway, and by then I had spent enough time with all the major players that, if I were to call them at three o'clock in the morning my time, it was a way of saying “America really cares about this and we are with you.” Maybe it had the dramatic effect. I also knew them all by then because we had been at this for years, so it wasn't like I was some stranger talking. In a way, it was no big deal for David Trimble if I called him because he talked to me all the time.

But, on the other hand, if he knew it was 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, he knew I really did care and I wouldn't leave him in the lurch if he made a certain compromise. Similarly, Gerry [Adams] knew I wouldn't leave him in the lurch if he made a compromise and that was about all I did. The lion's share of the credit goes to the parties and to the people that were on the ground with them working through all the details.

Spencer: An Irish official said to me, the longer you are involved in a process like this the less chance you are going to walk away. Did you see it like that or for you was it based more on the symbolism of events, personal obligation, and responsibility?

Clinton: All of the above but there is something else, and I think secretly all political participants in a peace process hope they may escape this phenomenon, which is that the people who are most likely to get hurt in terms of their long‐term political aspirations are those who have worked the hardest to bring about the peace deal. So, for example, John Hume spends his life working on this, but once the peace deal is made people think maybe we had better vote Sinn Fein because they are tougher.

David Trimble is in a totally different culture full of old‐fashioned rigidity and reluctance, but he sticks his neck out and the biggest beneficiary is the guy who comes down on him hardest, Ian Paisley. [Editor's note: In the elections following the agreement, the Social Democratic and Labor Party and the Ulster Unionist Party both lost power respectively to Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party. At the time of writing there has been no functioning government in Northern Ireland for more than two years.]

The issue of trust in Northern Ireland continues to be a problem. After Paisley gets into power he turns out to be pretty responsible and works with [Sinn Fein leader] Martin McGuinness and others, but it is likely that if you do something like this, which so fundamentally changes the established order of things, you have to be prepared for the fact that as the forward‐leaner you may be the first one decapitated. Even if people vote for what you ask them to vote for, they can then say, “OK, we are now in this boat so we had better get the toughest person we can to steer our side of it.”

Spencer: Did you think that in getting the extremes into the middle the moderates would get pushed out in the process?

Clinton: I did, and I worried about it. As it turned out, there were times when the government was down [in the polls] and I thought we were going to lose Stormont. [Editor's note: Stormont Castle is where the Parliament of Northern Ireland meets.] And much of that was unavoidable psychologically because when you vote for a new order, as in the case of unionists, by a quite thin majority, you are precarious because a bunch of people who didn't vote for it are going to want to be represented by the most ardent unionists they can find. Those who voted for it wanted the most trenchant representatives to achieve the best deal possible and it's the same on the other side. It's just basic human psychology.

Spencer: If you have two sides in a peace process you have incumbents and challengers where one side wants change and the other resists it, so you have an imbalance to the negotiation system. How do you try and calibrate that?

Clinton: What I tried to do was, first of all, you have to try to get them to tilt it. It's their lives, not ours. What I and our people argued was that if you are a unionist the reason you should use for changing is that there are certain things that others are going to take away from you, and you know it anyway. All this trouble is bad for you and it's bad for Northern Ireland to be less well off than Ireland. It's bad for you not to have functioning and flowing economics and immigration between the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, and the Irish Republic.

And the demographics are not working for you because the republican community is having a larger average family size and because in order for you to modernize your economy you have to take in immigrants. Nobody knows if it's going to change the demographics in eight years or twelve, but, at some point, the old order is going to be swept away, so it's better for you to get in now and fashion it so it's fair for you whether you are in the majority or the minority and I really pushed that hard.

Spencer: Did you assist Trimble's negotiation position? How did you try and influence him and push this?

Clinton: When I was trying to influence someone, whoever it was, I tried never to tell them why they should do what I wanted them to do. I spent an enormous amount of time thinking about what I believed their interest was and the people they represented, and I tried to spend whatever time I could to understand how they saw the world, what their responsibility was to their own people and what their long‐term goals were. And then I always made an argument [to] whoever I was talking to – whether it was [Russian president] Boris Yeltsin or the parties in the Irish process or [in] South Africa – where I would say, “It seems to me this is what your interest is.”] If you are going to help other people make peace you have to empower them to do it. Unless you are prepared essentially to take their country over and assume responsibility for its defense and social‐economic welfare, you have to empower people.

Spencer: But you also have to get them to face up to their own fear, don't you?

Clinton: Yes, you do, and you have to simplify it. You have to say the role of the United States in the Irish peace process is to maximize the benefits of peace and minimize its perils. This was the case when we made the Wye River accord in the Middle East peace process,⁴ which was the last major handover of land, when I said to the guys if they made a final peace deal they were going to kill each other for at least three years and then there would be later attempts to kill both of them. I said my job is to do everything I could to keep them alive and also benefit people.

You can't lie to people because if you pretend there are no downsides to making peace, you look like a fool and people know better if you are in any kind of combustible circumstance. So, my view was that the best thing the United States could do, aside from listen and build trust and make arguments from other people's points of view, was to say, “I may be wrong, but as I see it, it's in your best interests to do X because…” That is at least what I tried to do and say, “If you do this, I am well aware you are taking a risk and I am not.” The big risk is that it could cost you your life. [Yitzhak] Rabin was killed because he took a chance on peace, so you have to say the job of the United States and any personal commitment is to maximize the benefits of an agreement and minimize its perils.

Spencer: A lot of this is empathy and putting yourself in people's shoes, but is empathy dangerous in that it can allow people to prevaricate and avoid doing things?

Clinton: Well you know you also have to be brutally frank about what they have to do, which is not pleasant. Any kind of a deal that has got any chance of succeeding in a complex environment will require people to make decisions they would otherwise just as soon not make. You can't avoid that, and you shouldn't be “yes people,” but be level about that.

The point I am trying to make is that it is important not to promise people things you can't provide. I could promise, in the Irish case, to accelerate trade and investment, create opportunities, etc. But I couldn't promise, for example, that there would never be a renegade faction of the IRA. All you can do is make it clear that whatever the heck happens, I will not be a sunshine friend here and that if you sign up to this deal, I will ride with you right until the end. So, you try to get as much upside and as little downside as is humanly possible.

Spencer: What did you learn from this about negotiation and the art of leadership?

Clinton: I was discovering, first of all, that the more these people really get to know each other the more likely they were to make a deal even though the issues didn't get any easier. I was stunned when I got into the Middle East peace process how much a lot of those people knew each other and what they knew about each other's families, how they tell jokes to each other, and still they couldn't get there. When you think you know a lot of rules about negotiations and you know this, that, and the other, something will come up and show you that you were wrong and underestimating. Some absolutely bone‐headed move will come up and show you that a deal you thought was easy actually won't happen.

Spencer: Is that why, in your view, the Northern Ireland process stuck and the Middle East process did not stick?

Clinton: It began, in my opinion, with [PLO leader Yassir] Arafat turning down the deal that I got the Israelis to accept at the end of my tenure, and it led to the defeat of the peace forces in Israel, and then he died and the critical powers bifurcated [Editor's note: as the PLO split into Fatah and Hamas], so they lost the historic chance. He knew it and that was what was so crazy, so maddening. I said, “Do you want to do this before I leave office?” and he said, “Yes, because it will be another five or ten years before we get another chance.” And it's now been seventeen.

Spencer: Do you think there are ripe moments for a process?

Clinton: Absolutely. If you are the outsider, you can't do for somebody something they don't want to do for themselves. All you can do is make it easier for them to deal with what they are otherwise inclined to do. If you know deep inside that you ought to do this, and you want to do it, and you want to do it for your kids and grandkids, then the United States is in a fairly solid position to make an enormous contribution.

But if you are not ready to give up the clenched fist for the outstretched hand, there is not much the rest of us can do about it. You can give a lot of speeches and talk about United Nation resolutions, but there is only so much you can do.

Even with carrots and sticks there are limits unless, as I said, you want to take total responsibility for the country. Former President of the United States Lyndon Johnson once gave a speech when he was in his twenties and running for Congress in the presence of the Speaker of the House [of Representatives] Sam Rayburn, and Johnson called his opponent all these names and gave this hellfire and brimstone speech, and asked Sam Rayburn what he thought of the speech, And he [Rayburn] said something along the lines of “It was a good speech Lyndon, but I have found in a long life that it is best not to tell someone to go to hell unless you can make them go, and that in my experience there are damn few people you can make go to hell.” And it's worth remembering because what he is saying is this is part science and part art.

Spencer: Do you mean art in terms of performance?

Clinton: Yes. You also have to have sticks as well as carrots but even the stick should be applied while making it clear that other people have the power in decision‐making and the consequences of that will flow.

As this interview indicates, President Clinton's approach in Northern Ireland was guided by both motivation and intervention. He promoted the need for greater collaboration and compromise among the political parties and his own role was illustrative of an inclusive mediation approach. His approach was also consistent with a more general view he held that peace agreements were ultimately matters of public persuasion, which would help explain the emphasis he gave to motivational speeches and the effort he gave to prodding, cajoling, encouraging and even flattering protagonists to accept risks for peace (Harris 2006). His strategy of engaging across and with the political parties and the British and Irish governments reduced perceptions of bias and the sense that he was working to a self‐serving political agenda. This also enhanced the credibility of the United States as an honest broker in the peace process.

The interview highlights Clinton's belief in the values of listening, patience, trust‐building, and interpersonal engagement and how he was attentive to different political reactions to similar problems. But his comments also point to a strategic use of patience and how endless patience can become a problem. His argument that impatience may become necessary once the parties have made their positions known is perhaps not as straightforward as it sounds (Mitchell put up with the same positions being repeated for years), but his view that if impatience is impressed too early it can destroy respect, trust, and progress is particularly illuminating, even if perhaps instinctual as well strategic. The expression about knowing “when to hold and when to fold” comes to mind here. Clinton emphasized strongly how listening was important for gaining respect from the parties and more likely to yield positive results if it functions as part of a dialogue rather than being only a monologue – it is said that Clinton would often let other leaders speak first before he pronounced on policy moves (Harris 2006: 417); indicating the value of a soft (supportive), rather than hard (coercive), exercise of power (Nye 2005).

In describing his one‐on‐one contacts with the key players of the peace process, he points to the role of emotional impact and the power of respect that comes from such interaction. His focus on the “big picture” proved important from a motivational point of view: because he was not involved in negotiation details, he was less likely to get bogged down in the minutiae. In this, Clinton's approach differed notably from the strategy chosen by President Jimmy Carter in his leadership of the Camp David peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Egyptians in 1978. In that process, Carter engaged intensely with both details and substance (Wright 2015). The space afforded by a “big picture” approach also provided more room for maneuvering parties into more flexible positions and benefited from the ambiguity of the early stages of the process when rigidity was less prevalent as the parties tried to adapt to the movement of the process. Once the implementation of the agreement came into play and responsibilities became clearer this was far less effective.

Clinton maintained a commitment to engagement despite the challenge of the Canary Wharf bombing. His continuing support for the peace process and, more particularly, Sinn Fein's involvement, even after the bombing, enabled him to exercise greater influence over the parties. He intervened several times to help overcome obstructions (mainly of trust) that were holding the process up (Mallie and McKittrick 2001).

Significantly, much of his commentary in this interview reflects his focus on the psychological dynamics rather than specific policy goals. Perhaps this is not surprising given that Clinton's priority was to appeal to disputants’ imaginations and encourage them to focus on the possibilities for positive change. By demonstrating his own commitment to peace by making decisions that were domestically risky, such as granting the Adams visa, he was able to make reciprocal gestures more likely and so increase leverage. That said, we must also acknowledge that his efforts would have been unlikely to succeed had the conflict not been “ripe” for resolution (Haass 1990).

Economic incentives certainly played a role in ending the Northern Ireland conflict, and Clinton's appointment of George Mitchell as economic envoy to Northern Ireland before he became chairman of the negotiations highlighted the relationship between economic opportunity and political activity. But economic incentives were not new: President Carter had also offered them in his 1977 initiative on Ireland.

New presidents, especially those of another political party, often take different diplomatic approaches than their predecessors, reflecting their own policy priorities and their desire to demonstrate their leadership capabilities on their own terms. Because of this, supportive diplomacy may change to more assertive forms of engagement. This was the case during the post–Good Friday Agreement phase when Clinton's successor, President George W. Bush, took a more authoritative approach and intensified pressure on republicans to commit to decommissioning and to accept new policing and justice arrangements (Clancy 2016), both of which were obstructing progress. In that instance, Bush was less disposed than Clinton to fielding the constant concerns and contentions that arose between the parties but chose to make interventions more in moments of acute difficulty or provocation – particularly in relation to republican criminality. Strategically, Bush would have known it would be unlikely he could exceed the popularity of Clinton on Northern Ireland, but he remained wedded to the peace process and believed he could continue to contribute positively to it (Marsden 2006).

As a peace process advances and the terms become clearer, opposition often re‐emerges, and parties can return to their polarized positions. That is where Northern Ireland is today. The impending departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union (Brexit) has raised new tensions. How will Brexit affect Northern Ireland's economy? Will the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, an EU member state, close again?

Overall, the success of the peace process in Northern Ireland reflects the collective commitment of the disputants and their supporters to see the conflict resolved. Clinton's role was central. He displayed the “curiosity, ambition and determination” needed to act as a leader of influence (MacMillan 2015: 147), but he was also able to cultivate an emotional attachment to the possibilities of peace. Clinton developed trust with the political parties and was able to both motivate and encourage them to accept risks for peace as well as advise, instruct, and exert pressure, especially in the final stages leading up to the Good Friday Agreement (Campbell 2007; Campbell 2013).

Clinton was convinced that it was important to “never stop communicating” (Campbell 2013: 303). Tony Blair's strategist and “spin‐doctor,” Alistair Campbell, who saw Clinton at close quarters throughout the run‐up to the Good Friday Agreement, said of him, “how brilliant he was at connecting, not just through what he said, but how he said it, through the pictures he painted in words, and through body language, but above all through making the most of what he knew and what people told him. You always had the feeling with Clinton that he was just hoovering up other people's stories and experiences, because they interested him, but also because he could use them” (Campbell 2013: 242).

Perhaps Clinton became involved in Northern Ireland primarily because he thought he could make a difference; that he was fascinated by the challenge of trying to resolve the “longest remaining unresolved problem in Europe” (Mallie and McKittrick 1996: 286); that his own motivation was largely personal. But his inventions were also consistent with his broader policy goals of democratic enlargement (Dempsey 2004).

Although his ability to intervene effectively ended with his presidency in January 2001 it is still apparent that Clinton believes in the value of inspirational speech. Addressing a commemorative event in Washington a few weeks before the twentieth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement in 2018, he chose to ignore the problems that bedeviled the peace process at that time by focusing on how the anniversary “gives us all an opportunity to recommit to the spirit of courage and co‐operation that made the Good Friday Agreement possible in the first place.” He advised his audience to “seize the moment” and “move into the future together” (Austin 2018). One could be forgiven for thinking it was 1995 again.