In a very good article about the shortcomings of the Good Friday Agreement, Harry Browne writes: "the 'peace process' in Northern Ireland, held up repeatedly in the last decade as an example for other conflict zones to follow, has less and less to show for it--unless you quite legitimately count a bomb, bullet and body count that remains negligible as a major achievement." While I, like Browne and I imagine many families in the north of Ireland, do believe that this absence of violence is a major success of the peace process, I think this lack of violence will ultimately doom the attempts for peace.

I think the reason the peace is holding despite the inherently sectarian nature of the Good Friday Agreement (and despite the fact tht nothing has really changed in the north of Ireland in the last five years) is that the people of the province are tired of violence. It's hard to say that after ten more years of peace, the same will be true. It took fifty years after the end of the Anglo-Irish War for violence to erupt in Belfast, but erupt it did. Now, fifty years of peace is better than fifty years of violence, of course, but it's hardly a permanent solution to Ireland's problems.

The GFA will fail because the groups in it are still acting at cross-purposes. The Nationalists still want a united Ireland and the Unionists still want union with Britain and these are mutually exclusive. I don't see any way around that.