British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a compromise yesterday (Bloomberg) on trade rules that have sown tensions since the United Kingdom (UK) left the European Union (EU) in 2020. The new deal, the Windsor Framework, would reduce customs checks (NYT) imposed on goods traded between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. It will also allow the Northern Irish government an emergency veto over EU laws.
Sunak is in Belfast today seeking support for the deal. It does not technically require ratification, but Sunak said the UK House of Commons will vote on it “at the appropriate time.” Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has boycotted participation (FT) in Northern Ireland’s legislature since May 2022 over certain post-Brexit rules. The DUP’s leader said the new deal addressed some of the party’s concerns, but others remain.
“There is no doubt that Brexit soured the good relations that had existed between the UK and Ireland because of their joint interest in Northern Ireland affairs in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement. The hope now is that the Windsor Framework will allow a reset, not just between the two states but also between the UK and the wider EU,” the BBC’s Shane Harrison writes.
“Driven as it was by English politicians and English voters, Brexit could only increase disaffection from the United Kingdom in both Northern Ireland and Scotland,” Princeton University’s Fintan O’Toole writes for Foreign Affairs. “In legal fact, Brexit has set in train a process of detaching Northern Ireland from Great Britain.”
“Driven as it was by English politicians and English voters, Brexit could only increase disaffection from the United Kingdom in both Northern Ireland and Scotland,” Princeton University’s Fintan O’Toole writes for Foreign Affairs. “In legal fact, Brexit has set in train a process of detaching Northern Ireland from Great Britain.”
The Palestinians' New Terror Groups by Bassam Tawi
Annika Ganzeveld, Kitaneh Fitzpatrick, Johanna Moore, Amin Soltani, and Frederick W. Kagan write: The Iranian regime has apparently failed to take measures to protect schools following 46 separate reports of chemical poisonings targeting schoolgirls throughout the country on March 1. […] The US Naval Forces Central Command announced that US forces supported a UK-led interdiction of an illegal Iranain weapons shipment in the Gulf of Oman on February 23. – Institute for the Study of War
Jo Inge Bekkevold writes: China’s geopolitical position, including its lack of true superpower status, has two main strategic implications. First, in a short to medium-term perspective, the U.S.-China rivalry will be regional—restricted to Asia and the Indo-Pacific—and a predominantly naval contest. […] The other and more long-term strategic implication concerns any attempts by China to leapfrog the geopolitical constraints of its home region. The manner in which China sets about doing this, and United States’ efforts to prevent it, would then define their rivalry. – Foreign Policy
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