A former US National Security Advisor has claimed that President Joe Biden's "clueless" support for Ireland during negotiations over the Northern Ireland Protocol has weakened the West during the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.
John Bolton, who served as President Donald Trump's National Security Advisor between April 2018 and September 2019, slammed Biden over his support for Ireland in an op-ed in the Telegraph yesterday, June 16.
Bolton, who also previously served as the US Ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 - 2006, said it was in the US's interests for a "strong UK" to lead the NATO alliance during the ongoing crisis in Ukraine and the longer term.
"With all due respect, Ireland is not a Nato member. Even as Finland and Sweden apply for Nato membership, Ireland remains mute. That is certainly Ireland’s choice; so are the consequences," Bolton wrote in the Telegraph.
Bolton questioned why the Protocol was so important to Biden, describing it as a pragmatically resolvable trade issue.
He also accused the EU of attempting to use Northern Ireland to relitigate the Brexit decision and said the EU is "determined to punish" the UK for voting to leave.
Bolton contends that the US and the UK both have the right to modify treaties with subsequent legislation, adding that "no legislature can control the acts of its successors".
Trump's former National Security Advisor said the UK is entitled to modify the Northern Ireland Protocol if its expectations about the agreement were based on "erroneous understanding" and said Constitutional laws are not subordinate to international law.
"Ultimately, the only legitimacy for governmental acts is the consent of the governed, which is why reversing prior legislative action is easily understood. Treaties or other international accords stand in no better place than domestic legislation," Bolton wrote.
"Many if not most international agreements have withdrawal clauses, but even without one, a state cannot be bound under a deal when the parties’ fundamental expectations were based on erroneous understandings at the time or later."
He also claimed that repudiating the Northern Ireland Protocol would make the preservation of the Good Friday Agreement more likely, claiming that it would remove the "harmful tensions" that the EU had helped stoke in the region.
"Dublin may prefer benefiting from EU leverage, but it is delusional to think that striving to weaken British internal unity is productive. The real question is whether the UK favors preserving its own cohesion or the EU’s," Bolton wrote.
He dismissed White House claims that the ongoing dispute between the EU and the UK risked Western unity during the Russian invasion of Ukraine as "absurd".
"The truth is that Biden-Pelosi Democrats never liked Brexit. In their world, the EU is still the wave of the future."
President Biden has been unwavering in his support for the Good Friday Agreement, of which the US is a guarantor, in the scope of Brexit. In September 2020, less than two months before he was elected President, Biden said: "We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit."
We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit.
Any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period. https://t.co/Ecu9jPrcHL
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 16, 2020
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