The coming of peace, if it sticks, gives Northern Ireland a chance to cash in on development opportunities the European Union has opened in the Irish Republic. There has been heavy investment in Dublin and the southern coast, from U.S. and Japanese firms attracted by a well-educated, low-paid, work force inside the giant European market.
A quarter-century of communal strife has largely denied such investment to the six counties of Northern Ireland, but also to the border counties of the Republic. Yet foreign firms already there have prospered, largely untouched by the violence.
The Carter administration introduced the idea of U.S. aid as a reward for peace between the communities. The Reagan administration was prevailed upon to contribute to the International Fund for Ireland starting in 1986 as a reward for the Anglo-Irish agreement of the previous year, which did not end strife. The Clinton administration was allowed to give itself credit for the cease-fire and re-start of political initiatives, in hopes of more.
The catch is that the Clinton administration is in no position to increase foreign aid. It announced token contribution increases to the International Fund for Ireland and, with great panache, dispatched Commerce Secretary Ron Brown to a British-sponsored investment conference in Belfast, and scheduled another for Philadelphia in April.
None of this obscures the reality that the only massive public investment in Northern Ireland has been and will be British; that Britain's steady repair of bomb damage has been a major prop to the economy; that the only drawback of peace is disemployment of repair workers; that the International Fund for Ireland not only helps projects in Northern Ireland but also infrastructure in the Republic, and that the investment that matters is going to be made in the private sector for economic and not political motive.
British Prime Minister John Major greeted the Belfast conference with announcement of $97 million investments in five projects. These were expansions by firms already present, and were in the works before peace broke out, but they encourage potential newcomers.
Two investments do stand out as politically attractive for blurring borders between Catholics and Protestants and between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. One is a newly announced expansion by Fujitsu of Japan near the peace line in West Belfast, to take workers from both sides. The other, made by Fruit of the Loom of Chicago before peace broke out, integrates production on both sides of the border in the West.
What the Irish always needed from their American friends was jobs, not guns. Now it makes more sense for firms to provide jobs for willing workers. No government aid can match that.