An emerging aspect of the peace process is the aptness of its title, the most important word in which is not "peace", but "process". If, at some future point, we look back in the knowledge that the conflict has ended, it will be because the process will have taken us away from the territory and context of violence. This means dismantling unionism as much as silencing guns. The evidence of this lies in the fact that the strategy was the brainchild of Sinn Fein. Having come to the conclusion that no further gains could be made through the pursuit of armed struggle, the republican movement tumbled to the idea that, by engaging its opponents on the issue of peace, it could create an unassailable moral climate in which those who refused to move forward would be marginalised and immobilised.
From the perspective of an organisation for which any movement was likely to be progress, this tactic had obvious attractions. If widely adopted, it would begin either unionism's dismantlement or its identification as the true obstacle to peace.
This is why unionists and their chorus lines in the Republic at first objected so strongly to the bona fides of the process. They were seeking to prevent unionism and anti-republicanism being squeezed in the moral vice which emerged with the ending of the IRA campaign.
Thus the focus on decommissioning, punishment beatings, and anything else that might prevent the process taking hold.
The tactic involved in the notion of "process" is to create a thoroughfare which will allow for the semblance of forward movement over the maximum time. As many as possible of the relevant parties are engaged in a process which by inference embraces the totality of the dispute.
Whatever one might believe about the origins of the conflict, it would be foolish to argue that in recent years anything other than IRA violence was prolonging the conflict in its violent manifestation. Once the Provos' armed struggle was ended, it was likely that violence would die out.
To help sell the process idea, therefore, republicans had access to something no one else could offer, and which could be traded for the ending of unionist supremacy. The tactic was firstly adopted by the so-called pan-nationalist front, most importantly by the SDLP and the Albert Reynolds government. The Major government was persuaded initially on the basis that the purpose was to bring the two communities together in the interests of peace.
But when it became clear from the protestations of unionism that something else was going on, John Major backtracked, not least because he depended on unionist support in parliament.
It was not until the election of the Labour government that the final obstacle was removed. It was inevitable that the "process" idea would appeal to Tony Blair, since the Clause 4 debate he initiated within his own party had likewise involved engaging his opponents in a process which could go only his way.
One of the most constant refrains from commentators at the time was how "unnecessary" and "irrelevant" that debate was, but Blair's focus was not on the argument as much as on the winning of it. Like republicanism, he had required a process to dramatise his advance. An interesting aspect of this peace process is the way nothing concrete is ever agreed except that the process will continue. Obstacles are always postponed to the next stage. The hope is that, when the hard core of irreconcilability is finally encountered, it will have melted somewhat in the heat of the movement. Meanwhile, the rust will have started work on the guns. The slowness of the early stages of the talks seemed worrying until you considered that the hold-ups were conveniently postponing the arrival at the hard centre. The objective was to create a dynamic to move everyone along a road with little room for turning.
The ultimate destination was unclear but, on the way, two irreversible processes were being set in train: the dismantling of unionist supremacy and the ending of violent resistance to it. The Good Friday Agreement is just the latest staging post. That it has been welcomed at both ends of the spectrum might be taken as evidence that it both copper-fastens the union with Britain and begins the process of uniting Ireland. But since these objectives are mutually incompatible, it should be obvious that something quite different is going on. A remarkable aspect of the negotiations was the extreme mood swings which overcome many participants in the talks in the final countdown to Good Friday. Unionists were cock-a-hoop one minute and in deep depression an hour later. Similarly, republicans.
It seemed a little odd that such margins of difference might still be possible at such a late stage, and then miraculously overcome. What we were observing was an alternating war dance which allowed all sides to acknowledge difference while continuing to smoke their peace pipes.
The Devil is not in the detail of the agreement, but in the dynamic of the process. Nothing so graphically illustrates the relative unimportance of its content as the euphoric and uncritical reception accorded the agreement in the media.
The tenor of the response was that what mattered was the fact rather than the detail of the agreement, the main focus being on the responses and on whether the various parties would sign up.
There was almost no discussion of what the agreement actually meant or contained, never mind any critical comment on its contents. It was as if none of this mattered, as long as everyone agreed to go on with the process. This is because the media are no longer an objective conduit of information and comment, but an integral part of the process.
A factor that greatly influenced the republican peace initiative in the first place was the idea that the media-driven climate of moral condemnation about paramilitary violence could be turned to advantage. It was clear that those who loudly - if selectively - condemned such violence would, sooner or later, be forced by their own logic to support any chance of bringing it to an end.
The genius of the tactic can be observed in the fact that some of the most diehard opponents of the process have been lining up to confess their former error. In truth, they were no more wrong than usual, but had been snookered by their own logic and the machinations of republicanism.
As this process continues, its rotars will shift from softening up the union with Britain to laying the groundwork for Irish unity. In view of this, the question arises as to why we in the Republic are proposing to remove from our Constitution the very mechanism which, sooner or later, we will need to operate to bring matters to a conclusion. Either we misunderstand the process or we are utterly determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.