|
\u003cp\u003eIn May 2017, \u003cem\u003eSurvival\u003c/em\u003e published my article \u0026lsquo;Does Brexit Threaten Peace in Northern Ireland?\u0026rsquo; I argued that it did. \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSome 56% of Northern Irish voters favoured the United Kingdom\u0026rsquo;s remaining in the European Union. I noted that the UK and the Republic of Ireland\u0026rsquo;s common membership in the EU had relaxed sovereign tensions through shared social values, economic benefits and permeable borders, and had thus helped condition and sustain the Good Friday Agreement, which brought substantial peace to Northern Ireland in the wake of 25 years of \u0026lsquo;the Troubles\u0026rsquo;. \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the United Kingdom\u0026rsquo;s actual exit almost two years away, the issue was then less urgent. Hope remained that some form of accommodation \u0026ndash; part of a \u0027soft\u0027 Brexit \u0026ndash; would arise to mollify republicans and unionists alike. No such solution has thus far materialised. The prospect of a no-deal Brexit, and with it severe economic costs to Northern Ireland due to its loss of trade advantages and the EU subsidy, and the possibility of a remilitarised border, have bolstered the Irish republican case for a referendum on Irish reunification. \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShould Sinn F\u0026eacute;in \u0026ndash; now the second-strongest party in Northern Ireland \u0026ndash; demand one and get no joy, as I wrote, \u0026lsquo;\u003cspan\u003ethe Provisional IRA could decide to acquiesce to marginally greater dissident violence in order to maintain pressure on the British (and Irish) governments to support a referendum on sovereignty\u0026rsquo;. In January, a car bomb exploded in front of a courthouse in Londonderry; police suspected an IRA splinter group.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe article follows in its entirety.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr /\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe list of strategic oversights on the part of those who advocated the United Kingdom\u0026rsquo;s departure from the European Union, known as \u0026lsquo;Brexit\u0026rsquo;, is dauntingly long. One of the least-discussed challenges, but perhaps the most significant, is the loss of the EU as a conflict-resolution mechanism. Brexiteers appear to have assumed, rather complacently, that this was a question for other European countries, and not for Britain. In so doing, they overlooked a conflict not yet fully resolved \u0026ndash; and a peace not yet fully consolidated \u0026ndash; at home.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe EU was crucial to the formation of the 1998 Belfast Agreement (known as the Good Friday Agreement) formally ending the deeply rooted armed conflict that had plagued Northern Ireland for 25 years (popularly, \u0026lsquo;the Troubles\u0026rsquo;). The full implementation of that agreement was delayed until 2005 due to the restiveness of armed Irish republicans and the mistrust of the province\u0026rsquo;s pro-British majority. Scarcely a decade later, Brexit has helped propel republicans to their strongest electoral performance ever in Northern Ireland \u0026ndash; where 56% voted to remain in the EU \u0026ndash; and has perhaps placed peace itself at risk.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003eThe EU and the Belfast Agreement\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Belfast Agreement brought a formal end to the Troubles. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), which sought to expel British forces from Northern Ireland and unite it with the Irish Republic, were responsible for almost two-thirds of the 3,000-plus violent deaths from the conflict and pro-state loyalist paramilitaries for a little under one-third, with the remainder down to the security forces and republican splinter groups.\u003csup\u003e1\u003c/sup\u003e\u0026nbsp;At issue in that conflict was whether Northern Ireland should maintain its union with Great Britain, as its majority Protestant \u0026lsquo;unionist\u0026rsquo; population desired, or become one nation with the Republic of Ireland, per the wishes of its minority Catholic \u0026lsquo;nationalist\u0026rsquo; population.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cem class=\u0022italicText\u0022\u003eThe agreement avoided the instability of immediate self-determination\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnder the agreement, the question is still finessed, but in a way that both unionists and nationalists could tentatively live with. In a referendum, 71% of voters in Northern Ireland approved the agreement, as did 94% in the Irish Republic. The latter repealed its territorial claim on Northern Ireland in exchange for an institutionalised voice in governing the province through \u0026lsquo;cross-border bodies\u0026rsquo;, leaving unambiguously intact the principle of unionist \u0026lsquo;consent\u0026rsquo;, whereby a Northern Irish majority must agree to any change in sovereignty. Thus, the Belfast Agreement avoided the instability of immediate self-determination, instead calling for Irish constitutional amendments to define Ireland\u0026rsquo;s island-wide nationhood in terms of its people \u0026lsquo;in all the diversity of their identities and traditions\u0026rsquo; \u0026ndash; including, that is, those of English and Scottish Protestant lineage and identity as well as those of Celtic Catholic background \u0026ndash; rather than in terms of physical territory.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe most important factor in making this overlay of a single multicultural nation on top of separate sovereign entities a psychologically sustainable compromise was the membership of both the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland in the European Union. In 1989, leading northern nationalist John Hume, who would share a Nobel Prize with his unionist counterpart David Trimble for the Belfast Agreement, argued that a \u0026lsquo;Europe of the regions\u0026rsquo; would ensure that \u0026lsquo;the Irish border, like other European borders, will be no more in reality than a county boundary\u0026rsquo;. In turn, the end of the Cold War erased the strategic liability of a wholly neutral Ireland, and enabled the British government to take a more or less indifferent stance on the issue of Northern Irish sovereignty. London did so by way of the British and Irish prime ministers\u0026rsquo; December 1993 Downing Street Declaration, which explicitly left the sovereignty issue to the province\u0026rsquo;s electorate and led to the pivotal August 1994 Provisional IRA ceasefire.\u003csup\u003e2\u003c/sup\u003e\u0026nbsp;But even that document telegraphed the importance of European integration to ultimate peace, stating that any new government structures would \u0026lsquo;include institutional recognition of the special links that exist between the peoples of Britain and Ireland \u0026hellip; while taking account of newly forged links with the rest of Europe\u0026rsquo;.\u003csup\u003e3\u003c/sup\u003e\u0026nbsp;It was the EU\u0026rsquo;s dilution of the sovereignty of its members via the supranational authority of its Brussels-based institutions, entrenched by the Maastricht Treaty in November 1993, that brought home the Belfast Agreement more than four years later.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe post-Maastricht EU, with its single market and common policies in many areas, seemed to place national borders on a path to practical marginalisation. The Irish Republic\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;Celtic tiger\u0026rsquo; economy benefited hugely from EU subsidies and the single market, and Dublin found in Brussels a diplomatic platform for a European identity that enabled it to move past its consuming and inward-looking tradition of acrimony with the UK. While the UK\u0026rsquo;s relationship with the EU was more ambivalent \u0026ndash; it rejected the European Court of Human Rights\u0026rsquo; adverse findings as to its Troubles-related counter-terrorism practices and declined to join the monetary union \u0026ndash; in the late 1990s Tony Blair\u0026rsquo;s Labour government was clearly pro-Europe. Both northern nationalists and Ulster unionists discovered economic advantages in treating the entire island of Ireland as a single unit, which, for example, worked to exempt Northern Ireland from the EU\u0026rsquo;s 1996\u0026ndash;99 ban on British beef 18 months before it was lifted.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this political atmosphere, although most Northern Irish nationalists and unionists still cared passionately about national sovereignty, the hard border they had fought over became a less potent or relevant proxy for national and cultural identity. There was a more flexible, forgiving brand of sovereignty at stake, and IRA and loyalist violence and unionist intransigence became incommensurately costly. In sum, an increasingly integrated Europe created economic incentives and political ideas compelling enough to move the UK, the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland to moderate their national identities. An IRA prisoner mused that a united Ireland would be achieved not by force but \u0026lsquo;through Europeanization\u0026rsquo;, a loyalist that \u0026lsquo;no country was independent economically\u0026rsquo;.\u003csup\u003e4\u003c/sup\u003e\u0026nbsp;The Belfast Agreement thus contemplates a soft, permeable border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, and incorporates cross-border arrangements like those adopted by the EU, regulating areas such as agriculture, education and tourism on a bi-consensual basis. But one of the Brexiteers\u0026rsquo; primary grievances is excessive immigration, and addressing it would require a hard physical border between the UK and any EU state. The only such border is Northern Ireland\u0026rsquo;s border with the Republic.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003eLatent rebelliousness\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy creating a common identity among nations, the EU promoted conflict resolution. But the Belfast Agreement\u0026rsquo;s functionality has also turned on the recognised power of sovereign guarantors \u0026ndash; the UK and the Republic of Ireland \u0026ndash; even as it established a mechanism for attenuating that power. Without them, the contentious communities that have historically riven Northern Ireland would have no recourse should the supranational aspects of the deal prove wanting. It is an exceedingly delicate balance. The peace process was almost aborted 17 months after the IRA ceasefire, when the IRA, impatient with what it regarded as the UK government\u0026rsquo;s pandering to unionists and consequent foot-dragging, bombed London\u0026rsquo;s Canary Wharf on 9 February 1996. There was a subsequent return to violence on the part of both republicans and loyalists in Northern Ireland, though not at the same level that prevailed before the 1994 ceasefires, and forging the Belfast Agreement was an improbable, close-run eventuality. It was advanced by the ascendancy of the British Labour Party under Tony Blair \u0026ndash; which Irish republicans considered more hospitable to their interests than the Conservative Party and which induced them to reinstate the ceasefire in July 1997 after the Labour Party won the UK general election and Blair became prime minister \u0026ndash; and the skilled US-sponsored brokerage of former senator George Mitchell. If there was informed hope that the heavy investment by all parties in peace had made it irreversible, there was also solemn recognition that the deal had been cut in historically propitious and extraordinarily fastidious political circumstances that needed to be preserved for the agreement to resist durable and ominous dissident forces.\u003csup\u003e5\u003c/sup\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese forces included the Continuity IRA and Real IRA, the latter of which perpetrated Irish republicans\u0026rsquo; most lethal single attack in Omagh, County Tyrone, killing 28 people in a bombing on 15 August 1998 \u0026ndash; a mere four months after the Belfast Agreement was signed. Later, dissidents from these groups formed the Real Continuity IRA and Oglaigh na hEireann. Loyalist groups also stayed active. On account of the refusal of the Provisional IRA to disarm to unionist satisfaction, it took until 2005, when the group renounced violence and independent weapons inspectors verified that it had placed its weapons \u0026lsquo;beyond use\u0026rsquo;, for unionist parties and Sinn F\u0026eacute;in \u0026ndash; the IRA\u0026rsquo;s political alter ego \u0026ndash; to agree to govern Northern Ireland under the devolved arrangement provided for in the agreement. Since then, though the arrangement has periodically proven tenuous, Sinn F\u0026eacute;in has settled into a relatively comfortable long game of constitutional nationalism \u0026ndash; governing with its unionist counterparts, suppressing rejectionist groups seeking to revive the armed struggle and cultivating its influence in the Irish Republic.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYet the ground-level, cross-community situation in Northern Ireland remains flammable. Protests that erupted over the removal of the Union Jack from Belfast City Hall in December 2012 are still unresolved, and persistent disturbances during the April-to-August \u0026lsquo;marching season\u0026rsquo; have reinforced the Protestant siege mentality. Multiparty talks on these matters chaired by former US special envoy Richard Haass broke down on New Year\u0026rsquo;s Eve in 2013 after a six-month effort. Haass observed that Northern Ireland, however peaceful on the surface, remained a divided society \u0026ndash; for example, over 90% of students in the province still go to all-Catholic or all-Protestant schools \u0026ndash; and that political violence \u0026lsquo;could very well re-emerge as a characteristic of daily life. So it is premature to put Northern Ireland, as much as we would like to, in the \u0026ldquo;outbox\u0026rdquo; of problems solved.\u0026rsquo;\u003csup\u003e6\u003c/sup\u003e\u0026nbsp;Residual terrorist activity has occurred throughout the ostensible 19-year peace, reflecting latent rebelliousness. During the run-up to the Scottish referendum, dissident republicans increased the frequency of their attacks, several of which were lethal.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp id=\u0022x.11667\u0022\u003eFormer IRA commander Martin McGuinness, who died unexpectedly in March 2017, became deputy first minister of Northern Ireland\u0026rsquo;s devolved assembly in 2007, improbably establishing an amicable working relationship with staunch unionists. These included the late Rev. Ian Paisley, who was renowned throughout the Troubles as an anti-Catholic bigot, and whose Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) had surpassed the more measured Ulster Unionist Party as Northern Ireland\u0026rsquo;s largest. McGuinness\u0026rsquo;s 2010 statement that dissident republicans were \u0026lsquo;traitors to Ireland\u0026rsquo; has been cast as evidence that most republicans have moved on from the armed struggle. But an April 2013 poll of 50 Sinn F\u0026eacute;in members (admittedly, a small sample) conducted by the\u0026nbsp;\u003cem class=\u0022italicText\u0022\u003eBelfast Telegraph\u003c/em\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u0026ndash; Northern Ireland\u0026rsquo;s most widely read and reputable newspaper, and resolutely unionist \u0026ndash; indicated that McGuinness was attempting to lead opinion rather than stating the actual consensus. Only 12% of the Sinn F\u0026eacute;iners polled agreed with McGuinness, while 72% outright disagreed. Some 26% agreed that an armed campaign was justified as long as British rule remained. Although 66% disagreed, given prevailing attitudes about McGuinness\u0026rsquo;s statement, that majority sentiment appeared very brittle. Only a third of the Sinn F\u0026eacute;in members believed violent dissidents constituted criminals, and only a third felt bound by civic duty to report dissidents to the police. Despite extensive reform, a clear majority did not consider the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) \u0026ndash; which replaced the Royal Ulster Constabulary, generally despised by Catholics \u0026ndash; an impartial force.\u003csup\u003e7\u003c/sup\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003eScottish tease\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAmplifying these indigenous factors, the social-democratic thrust and the symbolism of the movement for Scottish independence has resonated strongly among Irish republicans.\u003csup\u003e8\u003c/sup\u003e\u0026nbsp;The heavily anticipated prospect of a \u0026lsquo;yes\u0026rsquo; or a close \u0026lsquo;no\u0026rsquo; vote on Scottish independence in the September 2014 referendum raised anxiety among northern Protestants that the United Kingdom could be further dismantled. In 2012, Tom Elliot \u0026ndash; then head of the Ulster Unionist Party \u0026ndash; said the Scottish National Party was \u0026lsquo;a greater threat to the Union than the violence of the IRA\u0026rsquo;.\u003csup\u003e9\u003c/sup\u003e\u0026nbsp;In January 2014, DUP member of parliament Ian Paisley, Jr, warned that Scottish independence could reopen the Northern Irish conflict. Trimble \u0026ndash; architect of the Belfast Agreement, Nobel laureate and still a leading unionist \u0026ndash; agreed. And indeed, the very prospect of Scottish independence had already intensified Sinn F\u0026eacute;in\u0026rsquo;s desire for a referendum on Irish unification, prompting Sinn F\u0026eacute;in President and D\u0026aacute;il (Irish parliament) member Gerry Adams to remark on BBC Radio that the United Kingdom was \u0026lsquo;hanging by a thread\u0026rsquo;.\u003csup\u003e10\u003c/sup\u003e\u0026nbsp;An energised republican push for Northern Ireland\u0026rsquo;s own referendum sooner rather than later, with a tacit but real threat of otherwise reverting to political violence, seemed possible, and that might have stimulated a cycle of loyalist attacks and republican retaliation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the event, the Scottish electorate rejected independence by a convincing margin, 55.3% to 44.7%, blunting any vicarious momentum in Northern Ireland. This relieved many if not most Northern Irish residents, who preferred the known, if imperfect, status quo. While it was mathematically clear that many unionists must have voted \u0026ndash; along with most nationalists \u0026ndash; in favour of the UK\u0026rsquo;s retaining EU membership in the June 2016 referendum, unionists took pains to note that a vote to remain in the EU was not tantamount to a vote for Irish unification should the UK leave the EU. Most unionists would have sided with the mainland majority to leave the Union, while most nationalists would have chosen to remain. According to a September 2016 BBC poll, 80% of Northern Irish voters would not change their views on the constitutional question on account of Brexit, and 63% of them would still support maintaining the union with Britain. Nevertheless, a mere 52% opposed holding a referendum on Irish unity.\u003csup\u003e11\u003c/sup\u003e\u0026nbsp;Some unionists have acknowledged that unionism has become softer and more susceptible to political defection.\u003csup\u003e12\u003c/sup\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOf course, hard and unshakeable unionists who would never vote for Irish unification have not gone away. The province\u0026rsquo;s cultural and political divide, and by extension its sovereignty, remain the primary subtexts of politics in Northern Ireland. A\u0026nbsp;\u003cem class=\u0022italicText\u0022\u003eBelfast Telegraph\u003c/em\u003e\u0026nbsp;survey taken on trends among younger members of the electorate in autumn 2014 \u0026ndash; just before the Scottish referendum \u0026ndash; revealed that, for the first time, young Protestants were more likely than young Catholics to be unemployed, by 24% to 17%, and that young Protestants were less satisfied with their politicians than their Catholic counterparts, 42.9% compared to 57.1%. The upshot was that young unionists felt that nationalists were reaping more benefits from the Belfast Agreement than were unionists.\u003csup\u003e13\u003c/sup\u003e\u0026nbsp;This could translate into an intensification of dissatisfaction among working-class loyalists who, during the Troubles, became paramilitaries and could be subject to vestigial temptations if provoked.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePretexts for political aggro abound in Northern Ireland. At street level, ongoing sectarian tensions occur, especially during the marching season, which culminates in parades and bonfires to celebrate Protestant victory in the 1690 Battle of the Boyne on 12 July.\u003csup\u003e14\u003c/sup\u003e\u0026nbsp;Although these have proven to be containable over the last decade, the spectre of the Troubles still hangs over the province. As\u0026nbsp;\u003cem class=\u0022italicText\u0022\u003eDie Zeit\u003c/em\u003eeditor Jochen Bittner observed while visiting Northern Ireland in 2016: \u0026lsquo;In West Belfast, the Peace Wall barrier continues to segregate parts of the pro-British Protestant from the pro-Irish Catholic working-class communities. If the absence of political violence is peace, then yes, there is peace. But this doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean that the society is at ease with itself. Groupthink and mistrust of the other have softened, but linger.\u0026rsquo;\u003csup\u003e15\u003c/sup\u003e\u0026nbsp;From a unionist standpoint, the deeper challenge to the stability of its straddling dispensation for British and Irish sovereignty is the fact that those opposing a referendum on the constitutional question comprise a slim and possibly dwindling majority.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003eSinn F\u0026eacute;in\u0026rsquo;s position\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGerry Adams has fastened on to this reality. His trajectory remains an important indicator of the sovereignty question\u0026rsquo;s salience and volatility in Northern Ireland. In May 2014, he was detained and questioned for four days about the murder of Jean McConville, committed by the IRA more than 40 years ago, which he was suspected of having authorised as the alleged officer commanding the Belfast Brigade at the time (he denies any active IRA affiliation, ever).\u003csup\u003e16\u003c/sup\u003e\u0026nbsp;It was telling that the PSNI did not consider his position so sensitive or crucial that his arrest might jeopardise the stability of the province. Since the Belfast Agreement had been signed, it had been not Adams but McGuinness \u0026ndash; an admitted former IRA commander \u0026ndash; who had had the highest political profile among republicans in the North. The original idea was that Adams would concentrate politically on the Irish Republic to ensure that Sinn F\u0026eacute;in was strong island-wide when the time came for a referendum on unification, and he has been a member of the Irish parliament since 2011. But that strategy rested heavily on the prospect that Catholics would outbreed Protestants in Northern Ireland, and that the overwhelming majority of Catholics would vote to leave the United Kingdom. Changing mores and improved living standards for northern Catholics made these propositions less certain than they had been 20 years earlier. But the Brexit vote has increased the economic incentives for all northerners to leave the UK, and the political incentives for northern nationalists to do so.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAdams remains the leader of Sinn F\u0026eacute;in and, especially with McGuinness\u0026rsquo;s death, the principal enunciator of pro-Belfast Agreement republicanism\u0026rsquo;s strategic positions. On 12 July 2016 \u0026ndash; less than three weeks after the Brexit vote \u0026ndash; Adams published an op-ed in the\u0026nbsp;\u003cem class=\u0022italicText\u0022\u003eNew York Times\u003c/em\u003e. His contention was essentially that Brexit had sabotaged the Belfast Agreement by, first and foremost, re-imposing a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic that would involve the re-establishment of security checkpoints, military bases and customs stations. These were the very things that symbolised the stark physical and administrative separation of Northern Ireland from the rest of Ireland, and which nationalists found so vexing. In addition, Adams noted, the evolved fluidity of goods, services and workers would end. And as EU funding for peace programmes dried up on the Northern Irish side, cross-border cooperation would atrophy further.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn Adams\u0026rsquo;s view, these consequences of Brexit are inevitable, and the Northern Irish electorate\u0026rsquo;s 56% vote in favour of remaining in the EU constitutes a sufficient basis for holding concurrent referendums on Irish unification in the North and the South.\u003csup\u003e17\u003c/sup\u003e\u0026nbsp;McGuinness backed Adams\u0026rsquo;s play, noting that the British government had \u0026lsquo;no idea what Brexit means\u0026rsquo; and that Northern Ireland\u0026rsquo;s vote to stay in the EU \u0026lsquo;must be recognised and respected in any negotiations\u0026rsquo;.\u003csup\u003e18\u003c/sup\u003e\u0026nbsp;The Scottish National Party (SNP)\u0026rsquo;s push for a second referendum on Scotland\u0026rsquo;s independence, in light of its 62% vote in favour of remaining in the EU, has lent weight to Sinn F\u0026eacute;in\u0026rsquo;s arguments, and if the SNP prevails they will be all the more difficult to reject.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003eSymbol or substance?\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBoiled down to its essentials, Sinn F\u0026eacute;in\u0026rsquo;s argument is that the overall vote in favour of leaving the EU perforce should trigger referendums because it undercuts a fundamental premise of the Belfast Agreement that the Northern Ireland vote for remaining in the Union reinforces: the shared membership of the UK and the Irish Republic in the EU. As a juridical position, it is unsteady. As political realism, it is formidable. Republicans pressing for a referendum could heap on a variety of other technocratic factoids. For instance, Northern Ireland\u0026rsquo;s EU subsidy \u0026ndash; which totals \u0026euro;3.5 billion for the 2014\u0026ndash;20 budget, or about \u0026euro;600bn a year \u0026ndash; is higher per capita than any other UK constituent, indicating that Northern Irish residents have the most to lose from Brexit.\u003csup\u003e19\u003c/sup\u003e\u0026nbsp;Furthermore, there were sharp increases in the number of British citizens applying for Irish passports, and Irish nationals resident in the UK applying for Irish citizenship, following the Brexit vote, underlining the EU\u0026rsquo;s attractiveness.\u003csup\u003e20\u003c/sup\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut Sinn F\u0026eacute;in\u0026rsquo;s deeper and more threatening agenda, if it has one, would turn on the physical accoutrements of a hard border \u0026ndash; the checkpoints and military installations that Adams mentions. These would constitute acute provocations and, more pointedly, prime targets for a revived physical-force republican movement that has neither disappeared from the Ulster landscape nor forgotten a long-practised military modus operandi. As Bittner writes: \u0026lsquo;Psychologically, this would be a throwback to an era most thought had passed. For Northern Ireland\u0026rsquo;s radical fringe, on both sides, it might even reactivate well-rehearsed stimulus\u0026ndash;response patterns of decades past \u0026ndash; of violent attacks and counterattacks. If the remnants of the Irish Republican Army needed a provocation to take up the fight again, British officials along the border might be just the ticket.\u0026rsquo;\u003csup\u003e21\u003c/sup\u003e\u0026nbsp;In implicitly raising this possibility, Adams can be read as reiterating the veiled threat that he made in 1995, when post-ceasefire negotiations of a peace agreement had stalled, regarding the IRA: \u0026lsquo;They haven\u0026rsquo;t gone away, you know.\u0026rsquo;\u003csup\u003e22\u003c/sup\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSix months later, the IRA bombed Canary Wharf to get London\u0026rsquo;s attention. After 20 years of relative peace, it would take less than that to do so now. Attacks on border outposts were a staple of the IRA\u0026rsquo;s Troubles-era tactics. While the IRA\u0026rsquo;s 1956\u0026ndash;62 \u0026lsquo;border campaign\u0026rsquo; to resuscitate the idea of Irish unification was famously anaemic and futile, the broader Catholic community had then been indifferent. By the late 1960s, greater alertness to heavy-handed unionist rule and Catholic civil rights evoked passion and protest and ushered in the Troubles. It is eminently possible that post-Provisional IRA elements could mobilise a more determined and effective effort were robust popular support \u0026ndash; which did not exist before 1969 \u0026ndash; to emerge on the basis of the tangible costs of Brexit, pecuniary and otherwise, to the nationalist community and cause. Although the Provisional IRA undertook the large-scale decommissioning of weapons in 2005, it probably would not be too hard for it to restore its arsenal. Furthermore, there is plenty of legacy militant know-how in the republican community, and dissident groups have retained a military capability. Over the past decade or so, they have launched periodic gun and bomb attacks on security forces \u0026ndash; mainly the PSNI \u0026ndash; and killed at least five people.\u003csup\u003e23\u003c/sup\u003e\u0026nbsp;Frequent armed republican aggression would almost inevitably prompt loyalist retaliation, perhaps turbocharged by insular nativist impulses similar to those that underlay the Brexit push and burgeoning movements in Europe and the United States, now reinforced by the Brexit campaign\u0026rsquo;s success and Donald Trump\u0026rsquo;s victory in the 2016 US presidential election.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\u003cem class=\u0022italicText\u0022\u003eRepublicans enjoy historic political strength\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRepublicans now enjoy historic political strength in Northern Ireland. In a snap election on 2 March of this year, Sinn F\u0026eacute;in won 27 of 90 seats against the 28 for the DUP, which lost ten seats.\u003csup\u003e24\u003c/sup\u003eAdams asserted that this unprecedented virtual tie was a \u0026lsquo;watershed\u0026rsquo; moment indicating that \u0026lsquo;the notion of a perpetual unionist majority has been demolished\u0026rsquo;; calling for \u0026lsquo;a step-change\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;an end to the status quo\u0026rsquo;; bolstering the view that Northern Ireland should have a \u0026lsquo;special designated status\u0026rsquo; with respect to Brexit; and constituting \u0026lsquo;a vote for Irish unity\u0026rsquo;.\u003csup\u003e25\u003c/sup\u003e\u0026nbsp;Technically, the election was prompted by the collapse of the devolved assembly due to McGuinness\u0026rsquo;s resignation as deputy first minister. While his stated pretext was the costly mishandling of a renewable-energy programme, and his declining health was undoubtedly a factor, under the Belfast Agreement Sinn F\u0026eacute;in could have forestalled the collapse and the election by nominating a replacement for McGuinness within seven days. McGuinness\u0026rsquo;s intransigence and his party\u0026rsquo;s failure to nominate a replacement made it quite clear that Sinn F\u0026eacute;in wanted to show its political muscle in the wake of the Brexit referendum, as it did.\u003csup\u003e26\u003c/sup\u003e\u0026nbsp;London\u0026rsquo;s inattention to, and dearth of post-Brexit planning for, Northern Ireland made republican indignation all the more credible.\u003csup\u003e27\u003c/sup\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs of late April, the power-sharing executive required under the Belfast Agreement had not been formed, and the UK government had extended the deadline for doing so to 29 June. This enabled London to defer until after the UK general election scheduled for 8 June \u0026ndash; which UK Prime Minister Theresa May called early mainly to consolidate support for Brexit \u0026ndash; a decision either to hold another election in Northern Ireland or to re-impose direct British rule for the first time in more than a decade. Direct rule is the most likely scenario, and it would inevitably exacerbate tensions between nationalists and unionists, and sectarian antagonism in Northern Ireland \u0026ndash; all the more so if, as heavily predicted, the hand of the Brexiteers in the British Parliament is substantially stren
\u003cp\u003eWith the question of the Irish border imprinted upon the current and critical round of Brexit negotiations, Jonathan Stevenson reflects on the threat to peace and security in Northern Ireland caused by the UK\u0027s decision to leave the European Union.\u003c/p\u003e
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