Europe’s Ireland Problem Is Here to Stay

In the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Secretary of State Colin Powell introduced President George W. Bush to the “Pottery Barn rule”: “You break it, you own it.” Powell’s point was that military victory over Saddam Hussein would not be the end of America’s involvement, but the beginning. Something similar is true for Northern Ireland today, where the fragile peace settlement that has just about held for nearly a quarter century is close to breaking. And if Powell’s logic is right, those that brought the situation to this point now own the problem: not simply British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, but the European Union too.

In polite society, it is almost uniformly accepted that Britain, and Britain alone, broke things in Northern Ireland, and at first glance, the case against Johnson and Britain seems to be watertight. By leaving the EU, and doing so in the way that it did—exiting the EU’s economic zone as well as its political structure—Britain created a problem that did not previously exist: namely, the between Britain and the EU. This border is at the heart of the crisis in Northern Ireland today.