Lessons from the Northern Ireland Peace Process

10. Sources of Peace: The Decline of Revolutionary Nationalism and the Beginning of the Peace Processes in Northern Ireland and the Middle East

268 10 Sources of Peace The De­ cline of Rev­ o­ lu­ tion­ ary Na­ tion­ al­ ism and the Be­ gin­ ning of the Peace Pro­ cesses in North­ ern Ire­ land and the Mid­ dle East R ob­ ert S. ­ Snyder Until the nego­ ti­ a­ tions that led to the Agree­ ment in 1998, the con­ flict in North­ ern Ire­ land ­ seemed intract­ able. It ap­ peared as if it would con­ tinue well into the fu­ ture, per­ pet­ u­ at­ ing the­ centuries-old vi­ o­ lent strug­ gles ­ between the Prot­ es­ tants and Cath­ o­ lics. Like the dra­ matic turns in the con­ flicts ­ between the Pal­ es­ tin­ ians and Is­ rae­ lis and the ­ blacks and ­ whites in South Af­ rica in the early 1990s, how­ ever, the nego­ ti­ a­ tions that ­ brought to­ gether Sinn Féin, the Prot­ es­ tants in North­ ern Ire­ land, the Brit­ ish govern­ ment, and the Irish govern­ ment of­ fered sur­ pris­ ing hope to re­ solve the con­ flict. What ex­ plains this shift from such ­ longstanding hos­ til­ ity to pur­ su­ ing a path of coop­ er­ a­ tion and rec­ on­ cil­ i­ a­ tion? A major ex­ pla­ na­ tion for the pro­ cess that led to the Agree­ ment is based on the ­ changes that oc­ curred in inter­ na­ tional pol­ i­ tics with the end of the Cold War. Mi­ chael Cox main­ tains that the Agree­ ment needs to be under­ stood ­ within the con­ text of the end of the Cold War, and that the de­ cline of rad­ i­ cal­ ism world­ wide, the new coop­ er­ a­ tion that ­ brought Ire­ land and Great Brit­ ain to­ gether in the Eu­ ro­ pean Union (EU), and the con­ tri­ bu­ tions of the ­ United ­ States in the 1990s—now the lone super­ power—sig­ nif­i­ cantly con­ trib­ uted to this new path of coop­ er­ a­ tion in North­ ern Ire­ land.1 Nev­ er­ the­ less, crit­ ics con­ test Cox’s the­ sis that inter­ na­ tional fac­ tors ­ played a sig­ nif­i­ cant role in bring­ ing about the peace pro­ cess.2 How im­ por­ tant a role did the ­ changes as­ so­ ciated with the end of the Cold War play in lead­ ing to the Agree­ ment? 269 Sources of Peace In at­ tempt­ ing to ad­ dress these ques­ tions, this chap­ ter ­ argues that the Irish Re­ pub­ li­ can ­ Army’s (IRA’s) grad­ ual re­ nun­ ci­ a­ tion of rev­ o­ lu­ tion­ ary na­ tion­ al­ ism was a pri­ mary fac­ tor that con­ trib­ uted to this dra­ matic shift in North­ ern Ire­ land, and the col­ lapse of this ideol­ ogy at the glo­ bal level was a major fac­ tor in get­ ting the IRA to shed its own ideo­ log­ i­ cal iden­ tity. In re­ pu­ di­ at­ ing rev­ o­ lu­ tion­ ary na­ tion­ al­ ism, Sinn Féin and the IRA came to re­ nounce vi­ o­ lence, to em­ bark on nego­ ti­ a­ tions with the Brit­ ish govern­ ment, to em­ brace the idea of a plu­ ra­ lis­ tic com­ mu­ nity with the Prot­ es­ tants in North­ ern Ire­ land, and to re­ nounce the goal of a rad­ i­ cal trans­ for­ ma­ tion of a uni­ fied Ire­ land it­ self. More­ over, it led the Brit­ ish govern­ ment to nego­ tiate with Sinn Féin. In high­ light­ ing how the de­ cline of rev­ o­ lu­ tion­ ary na­ tion­ al­ ism ­ largely re­ lated to glo­ bal ­ events has fa­ cil­ i­ tated a peace pro­ cess, this chap­ ter com­ pares the case of North­ ern Ire­ land to ones in the Mid­ dle East. These semi­ nal cases, along with the South ­ African one, il­ lus­ trate the im­ por­ tance of ideol­ ogy and how ideo­ log­ i­ cal ­ change at the glo­ bal level had pow­ er­ ful dem­ on­ stra­ tion ef­ fects in mak­ ing the ideas of rev­ o­ lu­ tion­ ary na­ tion­ al­ ism ob­ so­ lete.3 The chap­ ter ex­ pands and de­ fends Cox’s the­ sis about the im­ por­ tance of the inter­ na­ tional di...