The following podcast contains advertising.

To access an ad-free version of the LawFair podcast,

become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash law fair.

That's patreon.com slash law fair.

Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings,

rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath.

And therein lies the dilemma of finalizing the withdrawal agreement.

Everyone agrees that it would be absolutely tragic to reinstate some kind of hard border on the island of Ireland.

The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 was a breakthrough agreement settling many issues of difficulty in Northern Ireland,

but it was predicated on the assumption of joint membership of the European Union.

This meant that the Unionist community in Northern Ireland were given a constitutional guarantee that there would be no change in the status of Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom

without the consent of the majority of people in Northern Ireland.

And this was a very important guarantee.

I'm Benjamin Wittes and this is the LawFair podcast October 9th, 2018.

It's easy to spend all our time focusing on American domestic politics these days, but the rest of the world is not going away.

The European Union, for example, are neighbors from across the pond and one of the US's most valuable economic and security relationships.

There's a lot going on over there and some of it even involves us.

How is that relationship fairing in the age of tariffs?

Presidential bluster, Brexit intentions over Iran sanctions?

To figure that out, Shannon Tagawa-Merser and I spoke to David O'Sullivan, the EU ambassador to the United States.

We talked about the US-EU trade relationship.

We spoke about Iran and Russia sanctions.

...