To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement in 2018, the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute at Queen's University Belfast organised a conference, which brought together a number of high-profile speakers credited as the key players in the signing of the peace accord. These included prominent stakeholders from Northern Irish parties, former officials from the British and Irish governments, as well as their U.S. counterparts, specifically President Bill Clinton and the institute's namesake, who served as the U.S.'s special envoy to Northern Ireland between 1995 and 2001. These individuals were celebrated as the architects of peace in Northern Ireland both at the time, and evidently twenty years on. However, throughout this time, scholars have increasingly worked to show that the 1998 agreement was actually the culmination of thirty years of talks and negotiations between the predecessors of the aforementioned parties. The most recent of these studies is Andrew Sanders's The long peace process: the United States of America and Northern Ireland, 1960-2008.

Sanders argues that the interventions of President Clinton and Senator Mitchell in the 1990s ‘could not have taken place without the years of engagement between the governments and elected representatives of the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, the United States and Northern Ireland’ (pp 4–5). Over the course of eight chronological chapters, he uses archival sources, newspapers and interviews to trace these relationships. Chapter one gives a cursory overview of the relationship of the U.S. government to independent Ireland and Northern Ireland from the1920s until the emergence of the civil rights movement in the late 1960s, although the analysis becomes much stronger from the presidency of John F. Kennedy. The next chapter examines the intricate relationship between Irish politicians and their U.S. counterparts through the Nixon and Ford administrations. Sanders illustrates the moderating effect John Hume had on Senator Edward Kennedy from their meeting in 1972, as Hume persuaded Kennedy of an Irish nationalism driven by constitutional means, not by the I.R.A. This chapter is particularly enlightening in its analysis of the varied pressures on the White House at this time; as members of Congress increasingly petitioned for intervention in Northern Ireland, the British and Irish governments demanded a clampdown in American gun smuggling to the I.R.A.

Jimmy Carter's presidency, the first to make an official statement on Northern Ireland in 1977, is the subject of the third chapter. Sanders reasons that although the statement was ‘relatively benign in substance’ (p. 101), it was intended to divert Irish-American sympathies from radical groups, such as Noraid and the Irish National Caucus, towards more moderate Irish-American politicians like the ‘Four horsemen’ – Kennedy, Tip O'Neill, Daniel Moynihan and Hugh Carey. As chapter four explains, these attempts were undermined by a reinvigoration of Irish-American militant republicanism following the hunger strikes in 1981. Even as the new Thatcher and Reagan governments enjoyed a very positive relationship, Sanders shows how the situation in Northern Ireland challenged their connection in the early to mid-1980s, especially regarding the extradition of I.R.A. members from the United States and the ban on U.S. arms sales to the R.U.C.

Chapter five surveys the retraction of the Irish issue from U.S. national politics throughout the George H. W. Bush years, helped in part by the splintering of Irish-American republican groups, which mirrored the splits within Irish republicanism. By contrast, chapter six analyses the importance of Northern Ireland to the Clinton administration. Sanders highlights how Clinton's strategy sought to focus on foreign policy and bolster his credentials as a global leader. As a result, Clinton engaged with Northern Ireland, particularly with Sinn Féin, more so than any other U.S. president, evidenced by the fact that he became the first ever to visit while in office. Despite warnings from American authorities and the British government, Clinton made the monumental gesture to grant Gerry Adams a visa for the United States in 1994. Sanders argues that Adams's visa contributed to the I.R.A. ceasefire, while his deployment of Senator Mitchell as special envoy in 1995 signified a step towards ‘copper-fastening peace’ (p. 232). Chapter seven considers the George W. Bush presidency, which retracted from Northern Ireland but maintained the position of a U.S. special envoy. Sanders contends that Bush's government pushed a harder line on Irish republicans than its predecessor, but that this was necessary for the peace process and decommissioning of I.R.A. weapons. The final chapter, which serves as a conclusion as well as an epilogue, reflects on the relationship between the United States and Northern Ireland from 2008 until present day.

The long peace process succeeds in demonstrating that the U.S. government had substantial engagement with Northern Ireland from the beginning of the Troubles. Furthermore, it shows that this relationship was dynamic, complicated by contrasting personalities within the U.S. government, as well as scrutiny from the British and Irish governments. However, Sanders could expand further on how the circumstances surrounding Clinton's position differed in relation to that of his predecessors. Scholars including Joseph E. Thompson, Richard English, and James Cooper, have debated whether it was the influence of Irish-America, the end of the Cold War, or the domestic environment of U.S. politics which enabled and/or encouraged Clinton to intervene in Northern Ireland. Yet these debates are missing from Sanders's analysis. Engaging with the wider context of Clinton's presidency would thus provide a more comprehensive understanding of how Clinton was able to build on the extant diplomatic framework, and subsequently how he could ‘[push] where his predecessors had been afraid, unwilling, or unable to push’ (p. 256).