Joe Kennedy Treads Careful Path as U.S. Special Envoy to Northern Ireland

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — Joe Kennedy III had the kind of arrival in Northern Ireland that any American diplomat would envy: disembarking Air Force One steps behind President Biden, his shock of red hair tousled by the breeze as Mr. Biden introduced him to a waiting Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain.

The rest of his assignment is not likely to be as glamorous.

Mr. Kennedy, a 42-year-old former Democratic congressman from Massachusetts and a scion of the nation’s most famous Irish American political clan, is taking up the post of special envoy to Northern Ireland for economic affairs at a time when its politics are paralyzed by deeply rooted sectarian divides.

The dysfunction could complicate Mr. Kennedy’s mission to drum up American investment in the North. And his circumscribed job title will make it difficult for him even to weigh in on the impasse, which began last year when the territory’s power-sharing government collapsed in a dispute over post-Brexit trade rules.

“The observation was made to me: ‘Focusing on prosperity is the wise thing to do so you don’t get sucked into the politics,’” Mr. Kennedy said in an interview Tuesday. “That’ll last one conversation,” he added with a laugh.

“The politics are for the parties to work out,” Mr. Kennedy said, quickly reverting to his State Department script. “The implications of those choices, though, will have impacts with regard to some of the economic outcomes.”

Translation: Northern Ireland needs to settle this dispute and restore the government if it wants to attract more American money.

That will be the subtext, if not the headline, of Mr. Kennedy’s first speech as envoy, which will take place on Wednesday at a conference in Belfast to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.

For Mr. Kennedy, success could pave a path back from the political wilderness. He was once a rising star in the Democratic Party, but his trajectory was interrupted when he gave up his House seat to mount a failed primary challenge against Senator Edward J. Markey in 2020. He became the first Kennedy ever to lose an election in Massachusetts.

While his famous name and splashy arrival generated plenty of attention, Mr. Kennedy’s job speaks to the more modest role the United States now plays in Northern Ireland. In 1998, President Bill Clinton’s envoy, George J. Mitchell, brokered the agreement that ended decades of violence known as the Troubles. Mr. Kennedy, by his own description, will function more as a cheerleader.

The United States is the largest foreign investor in Northern Ireland, with Allstate, Seagate and other companies investing 1.5 billion pounds ($1.86 billion) over the last decade. That is a fraction of the American presence in the Republic of Ireland, where low taxes and stable politics have attracted more than $350 billion.

Mr. Biden, who traveled to Belfast to mark the anniversary, left Mr. Kennedy behind in the city when he went to the south to explore his ancestral roots. Since then, Mr. Kennedy has filled his days meeting with businesspeople, entrepreneurs and the local heads of every American company with operations in Northern Ireland. He has also met with the leaders of all the major political parties.

“I am here to advocate for the people of Northern Ireland,” he said. “I am here to do that whether they have tricolor out front or a Union Jack.”

Mr. Kennedy’s ecumenical tone is no accident. His appointment last December was greeted with wariness by some unionists, who favor staying in the United Kingdom and are predominantly Protestant. They muttered that Mr. Kennedy, with his Irish Catholic roots and Irish Catholic boss, Mr. Biden, would favor the nationalists, who seek a united Ireland and are mostly Catholic. (The Democratic Unionist Party precipitated the government’s collapse by withdrawing from the Northern Ireland assembly.)

Initially, Mr. Kennedy said, he, too, worried that his name might be a hindrance. But so far, he said, he has encountered little suspicion. “People are going to project on me all sorts of things; some of them are nice, some of them are not so nice,” he said. “You have to navigate through that.”

Mr. Kennedy said his eight years in Congress had prepared him for the post. He likened his old district, which spans prosperous suburbs of Boston and older industrial towns on the south coast of Massachusetts, to Northern Ireland, with its high-tech hub around Belfast and agricultural hinterland.

“He’s well-credentialed,” said Representative Richard Neal, a fellow Democrat from Massachusetts and one of the most influential lawmakers on Irish affairs. “But he’s got a hard task ahead of him. Balance is everything here.”

And the Northern Ireland envoy post does not carry the high visibility it did when Mr. Mitchell first held it in 1995. Now 89 and being treated for cancer, Mr. Mitchell was on hand this week for the unveiling of a bronze bust of him at Queen’s University in Belfast. His keynote address, in which he recounted the dramatic final days of the talks and urged a restoration of the government, drew tears from some in the audience.

In a brief interview, Mr. Mitchell said he owed his success to the leeway Mr. Clinton gave him in conducting the negotiations. Mr. Kennedy is not likely to enjoy that kind of freedom. American officials said he was rankled when the State Department refused to let him travel to Northern Ireland while Britain was negotiating with the European Union over the trade arrangements.

While Mr. Biden has shown an interest in Irish affairs — he pressed Mr. Sunak to conclude the trade deal with Brussels — the relative tranquillity in Northern Ireland guarantees it will not be the kind of priority for the White House that it was in the 1990s, especially given concerns like China and the war in Ukraine.

“The fact that Northern Ireland is no longer on the edge removes the urgency from the situation,” said Richard N. Haass, whom President George W. Bush named as special envoy in 2001 to succeed Mr. Mitchell. “The progress that has been made makes it more difficult to make more progress.”

Mr. Haass also said the nature of the problem in Northern Ireland — an insecure, recalcitrant unionist party — did not lend itself to American diplomacy the way previous issues, like disarming the Irish Republican Army or loyalist paramilitaries, did. “We’re not the best situated to reassure the unionists,” he said.

That has not stopped other American officials from pressing their case. The United States ambassador to London, Jane D. Hartley, warned that American chief executives would be discouraged from investing by the chronic instability.

“You want to say, ‘Guys, get it together,’” she said in an interview.

Political analysts in Northern Ireland said people were eager to see if Mr. Kennedy could put together an investment package. He said he was ready to take a delegation from Northern Ireland to Silicon Valley or Hollywood, once he determined what kinds of businesses people in the North wanted.

But some noted that even if Mr. Kennedy succeeded in luring investors, there was a risk it could simply trigger further discord.

“There are quite a lot of examples of them not agreeing on how to spend the money,” said Katy Hayward, a professor of politics at Queen’s University, pointing to squabbles over a previous American investment campaign after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.

As he began his assignment, Mr. Kennedy confronted one more bit of political awkwardness: news that his uncle, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is planning a primary challenge to Mr. Biden. The elder Mr. Kennedy, who is known as a leader of the anti-vaccine movement, has been criticized by members of his own family.

“I love my uncle,” Mr. Kennedy said. But he added: “I am honored to serve President Biden in this capacity, and I look forward to supporting the president’s re-election.”