If the upcoming review of the Belfast Agreement is to successfully find a way through the decommissioning impasse it will have to complete two, somewhat conflicting, tasks.
The first of these requires a minimalist review of the workings of the Belfast Agreement. George Mitchell's review looks set to carry this out. It should focus tightly upon the complex question of sequencing the various aspects of the agreement, including decommissioning, rather than go into the substance of any of these sections. The second task will require the two governments to address the structural weaknesses of the overall peace strategy, and in particular those aspects which fall outside the area covered by the Belfast Agreement.
Much has already been written and stated regarding the need for a narrow focus for the Mitchell review and I do not intend to go into that any further here. Virtually nothing has been said in regard to the structural weaknesses of the process that led up to the agreement and continues to inform mainstream opinion in regard to the way forward. There is a sense that any critical analysis of the process amounts to an act of disloyalty to the agreement.
Whatever validity such an argument may have had in the early days following the Good Friday breakthrough, it surely lost its last semblance of credibility when the First Minister for Northern Ireland felt duty bound to boycott his own Assembly. The peace process is obviously in deep trouble. A constructive critique of its underlying assumptions and strategy is now necessary if its main achievement, the Belfast Agreement, is to survive.
The most fundamental weakness of the process over the past five years has been the strategy of fudging core issues in order to move on, in the hope that these could be dealt with at a later point. At its best, this strategy allowed negotiations to proceed which, it was felt, might otherwise never have started. At its worst, it has led to the same document meaning different things to different people, leading ultimately to the farcical scenes witnessed at the collapse of the plans to establish an executive earlier this summer.
If the governments had had the courage to face the core issues of sovereignty, legitimacy and self-determination creatively from the beginning, rather than fudging them, we might now be further down the road to full implementation.
In particular, had they been prepared to break new ground for democracy by seeking support from all parties for a declaration that the principle of consent requires a deeper level of community support than a simple majoritarian vote, they would have created conditions much more conducive to paramilitary decommissioning. By fudging the issue they have unwittingly strengthened the argument of those, particularly in the republican movement, who still believe a surrender of arms is tantamount to a military defeat.
It is certainly true that there is within the agreement an implied argument that simple majoritarian consent in the context of Northern Ireland is insufficient. If the governments had gone that little bit further and declared a general principle that simple majoritarian support is never, on its own, a sufficient proof of democratic legitimacy, this would have created a context which would have enticed more republicans into the process. Within this framework, republicans and others could conceive of decommissioning as part of a process of movement toward the democratisation of Ireland as a whole (albeit with two jurisdictions).
Had such a declaration been made it would, at one stroke, have undermined the legitimacy of the constitutional position of the old Northern Ireland while at the same time undermining the argument for a united Ireland brought about by a simple majoritarian vote of the whole island. An extension of such logic can argue that the existence of private armies in the old Northern Ireland arose, at least in part, out of the instability of a State with a flawed democratic pedigree.
This reality, while falling well short of legitimising their actions, introduces a certain retrospective ambivalence in regard to their former status. Prisoner releases and the legislation preventing forensic testing of decommissioned arms already implies this. An explicit recognition of this, and a more formal recognition of the current "transitional phase" towards full democracy, could provide the type of cover that a recent statement of the IRA seems to be looking for.
On the other hand, the possession of weapons to bring about a simple majoritarian united Ireland would not have been retrospectively legitimised. What can the governments do now to correct this weakness?
It is obvious that in the current delicate circumstances any clumsy initiative by the two governments that appeared to partially legitimise the campaigns of the various paramilitaries, quite apart from the intrinsic wrong of inflicting further pain upon victims already finding it difficult to stomach early prison releases, would bring down the whole process. A very delicate negotiating procedure now needs to take place parallel to the Mitchell review.
It could operate on a number of fronts, government to government, governments to parties, and might even require direct talks with the paramilitaries. It would be useful to call a meeting of the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation's co-ordinating committee to see if there might be a role for it in addressing aspects of the peace process that fall outside the Mitchell review.
It was never intended to review the workings of the agreement before its full implementation. It follows that the Mitchell review needs to focus only upon those aspects which are preventing its full implementation rather than the institutional arrangements of the agreement itself.
His chances for success would be greatly enhanced if the governments could negotiate in parallel amongst the parties and the paramilitaries for a more explicit recognition of the core realities as outlined above. Should he then succeed in getting a full implementation under way an appropriate time for a full review of the institutions and their various modi operandi will arise.
At that point, the Green Party will have much to say about the clumsiness and inefficiencies of many of the structures and decision-making mechanisms contained within it, but the time for such a root-and-branch review is not now. We have an agreement and we know who the signatories to it are. All George Mitchell should attempt is to facilitate a process of interpretation of the agreement, acceptable to all, as it stands.
At the same time, the two governments need to go deeper into the issues at the core of the peace process. Through a multi-faceted approach, including, if necessary, face to face meetings with paramilitaries, the re-establishment of the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation and a new joint declaration, they should seek to create theoretical space which will allow paramilitaries to begin a process of decommissioning which will be sellable to all but the most incorrigibly intransigent of their supporters.
Trevor Sargent is a Green Party TD