In his only visit to Northern Ireland – at Belfast Waterfront Hall, on June 2, 2013, and tied to his participation in the G8 Summit held in County Fermanagh – President Barack Obama pledged that the United States “will always be a wind at your back.”

In remarks that day, Obama noted the “wounds that haven’t healed, communities where tension and mistrust hangs in the air,” and “the walls that still stand.”

Given that during more than seven years plus of his presidency he has presided over an administration that has had to deal with the rise of ISIS in the Middle East and a domestic economy emerging from the global financial collapse while addressing health care reform and gun violence at home, it can be said that Barack Obama has kept his word.

While he was never going to engage directly with the political parties in Northern Ireland as Bill Clinton did, working the phones when problems arose, or as George W. Bush sometimes did, Obama has kept his eye on things in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic while generally trusting the US State Department, first under Hillary Clinton and now under John Kerry, to manage the details.

In practical terms for Northern Ireland, much of the Obama administration’s role has centered on the economic front. In a move that resonated with the approach taken by the Clinton administration in October 2010, the Obama White House hosted a major economic conference at the US Department of State with Secretary Hillary Clinton overseeing the event for the administration.

This event marked an early sign of Obama’s active support for the peace process via economic development in the north. The conference attracted top executives from the New York Stock Exchange and from major financial institutions who were looking for a European base and led to some already in Northern Ireland to expand their presence with other companies later setting up shop.

 A different level of Obama’s interest in the island of Ireland and all its communities was apparent at this year’s White House St. Patrick’s reception that he hosted as a “Celebration of Ireland.” In his twenty minutes of remarks, the president paid special attention to the 1916 Proclamation. Four times he cited its commitment to “cherishing all the children of the nation equally.”

As a speech given by a US president, it was unique for how it underscored in more than sentimental terms what has linked Ireland and the United States for so long. He noted that for many generations what drove them to America was as much about human dignity as about material gain.

In referring to the proclamation, he emphasized the journey and the promises still to be realized in fulfilling the rights of the citizens of both countries. As president of a nation with enormous influence in the world, he also spoke of the enormous footprint of those from a small island in helping to shape the US by virtue of the contribution of so many of the Irish, often driven by a thirst for liberty.
Indeed, other than President John F. Kennedy’s famous address before the Oireachtas during his historic visit to Ireland in June 1963, Obama’s remarks were the most substantive ever by a US president in underscoring what had shaped the US and Ireland, even if those ideals appear at times to be forgotten.

Kennedy’s own famine-refugee ancestors could never have imagined — given the cold welcome the Irish received in mid-19th century Boston – that one of their clan could ascend to the American presidency in a few generations. But it would have been perhaps even more unlikely that Padraig Pearse and James Connolly could have believed that on the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising a president named Barack Obama, with roots in Ireland and Africa, would be invoking in the White House the independence document while comparing their work to the same spirit of the American Declaration of Independence and its relevance also to America today.

“Cherishing all the children of the nation equally,” the American president emphasized, “means nurturing a lasting peace in Northern Ireland.”

While praising those in the room who helped negotiate the Good Friday Agreement, Obama stressed that “the fate of peace is up to our young people. “After all,” he concluded, “eighteen years of peace means that peace can vote now. We have to keep setting an example through our words and our actions, that peace is a path worth pursuing.”

Francis Costello is a Belfast-based consultant assisting US and Irish companies in building business ties.