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The Intellectual Internment of a Conflict: the Forgotten War in Northern Ireland

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The Intellectual Internment of a Conflict: the Forgotten War in Northern Ireland The intellectual internment of a conflict: the forgotten war in Northern Ireland M. L. R. SMITH* War is a great affair of state, the realms of life and death, the road to ruin, a thing to be studied with extreme diligence. Sun Tzu Glancing backwards over Northern Ireland’s turbulent past is not perhaps the most virtuous of occupations given the political advances since the Good Friday Agreement of April . Judged from any standpoint, progress has been considerable. In May the fledgling settlement was endorsed overwhelm- ingly by the electorates of Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. Shortly afterwards, in June, elections to a new Ulster assembly were held to establish a power-sharing executive to govern the province. Such developments, unthink- able a few years ago, hold out the prospect that Northern Ireland can make the transition from its bloody past to an internal accommodation where the use of violence to pursue political goals is erased for good. Movement forward continues. Even periodic eruptions of violence have not impeded momentum but have, instead, spurred the determination to press ahead. In the wake of the bombing in Omagh by the republican splinter group, the Real IRA, in August which killed people, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair declared: ‘The aim of the bombers was not just to kill innocent people but was to strike at the heart of the peace process. The best response we can give is not therefore to abandon the Good Friday Agreement but to carry it forward vigorously, to deny them the very objective they seek, and to continue to work for a better future for Northern Ireland that puts the past behind us.’ * Generous thanks are extended to Paul Dixon, Karin von Hippel, Khong Yuen Foong, Lynda Koh and Matthew Uttley for the provision of bibliographical information. While I am responsible for the views stated here, I have benefited considerably from the insights derived from conversations with Robert Bell, Theo Farrell, Conor Gearty, Bruce Hoffman, Nicholas Khoo, Nick Lewin and the Algerian specialist, Claire Spencer, who reminded me that Northern Ireland is not the only conflict which has been under studied and misunderstood. Prime Minister, Statement to the House of Commons, September . International Affairs , () – *6. Smith.PM6 77 18/12/98, 1:55 pm M. L. R. Smith The Prime Minister’s stated intention to banish the past and concentrate on the future was given expression in renewed efforts to work towards the full implementation of the agreement. Further progress was seen after the Omagh bombing with the IRA’s political brethren, Sinn Fein, trying to inch towards an accommodation over the vexed issue of the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons. This was soon followed by the first face-to-face meeting between David Trimble, Northern Ireland’s Unionist First Minister, and Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein. A few days later, in mid-September, the inaugural session of the new Northern Ireland Assembly took place. For the first time sworn enemies sat in the same chamber, ‘embarking’, in Trimble’s words, ‘on one of the most novel and challenging journeys in the annals of democratic arrange- ments’. Events like those at Omagh have tempered some of the unfettered optimism with the realization that the road ahead is strewn with potentially serious problems that need to be negotiated with care. This realization has kept analytical attention focused on the present to ensure that these problems can be surmounted and forward momentum sustained. All these developments are, of course, positive and welcome. But before we all charge off into the distance, I would like to issue a mild, though I hope not too timid appeal to hold on a minute. I want to suggest we pause for a moment to consider how we, the people who analyse events in Northern Ireland, have got to where we are. By this I do not mean simply raking over grim events of the past or dissecting the mechanics of the peace process, but taking a step back to think about how Northern Ireland has been treated in scholarly discourse. In particular, I would like to take issue with one of the most pervasive ideas about the Northern Ireland conflict, namely that it has been rigorously studied; on the contrary, I would contend that for the past three decades Northern Ireland has been one of the most under-studied conflicts in the world. That may sound absurd. It is indeed absurd that this small but brutal war in a corner of western Europe has received negligible attention from scholars who have been eager to study every other facet of the conflict, excepting only the one which for so long has given the conflict its crucial form—the military dimension. The proposition here is that the academic study of the conflict in Northern Ireland has been, to a great degree, insulated—intellectually interned, to coin a phrase—from influences and debates at work in the wider academic world. It is suggested that this is especially noticeable in the lack of treatment of the implications of the Northern Ireland conflict in international relations thinking. This state of affairs, it is argued, has its origins in scholarly approaches that have arisen within the field of Northern Ireland studies. It is contended that the restrictive premisses which underpin most studies of Northern Ireland have been embraced, if only implicitly, by the international relations community to Sean O’Neill, ‘First name terms as Adams and Trimble meet’, Daily Telegraph, September . Quoted in Martin Fletcher, ‘Milestone as old foes sit for first assembly’, The Times, September . *6. Smith.PM6 78 18/12/98, 1:55 pm The intellectual internment of a conflict absolve its neglect. Further, it will be claimed that this neglect is most evident in the scarcity of analysis of the military dimension of the conflict, where our understanding remains rudimentary. Finally, it is submitted that this academic oversight has been detrimental to a full and accurate appreciation of the conflict which reflects poorly on certain scholarly practices both within and beyond Northern Ireland, and that the cumulative effect of all this contains potential dangers for the future. Stating the case: international relations and the Northern Ireland crisis Before proceeding further one point needs to be made so that readers will be clear about the direction of the argument and, in particular, will understand why most of this discussion is located in the present tense. Despite the peace process, paramilitary ceasefires, the Good Friday Agreement and all the progress that has been made, I shall assume that the conflict is not yet over. Continuing communal hostilities, competing nationalisms and political ideologies, paramilitary punish- ment attacks, the threat from armed splinter groups and, especially, disputes over weapons decommissioning all underscore the persistence of the basic sources of the conflict, now and for years to come. For the moment I concur with the view of Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness that ‘The process of removing the gun from Irish politics is going to be a very lengthy one and very problematic.’ If one examines British international relations literature, both past and present, the impact of the Northern Ireland conflict barely registers. Somewhat ironically, the conflict has received greater, though still sporadic, attention in some American texts. Even when Northern Ireland is mentioned, it is often lumped together unthinkingly with a host of other diverse examples of conflict and left undifferentiated and unconsidered. In one central British international relations text the single reference to Northern Ireland is made in connection with the notion that military responses can exacerbate a conflict: ‘Witness the example of the effects of military violence in Uruguay, in Bangladesh just before its war of liberation from Pakistan or indeed Northern Ireland.’ No further elucidation is offered to back up this assertion. In another central text Northern Ireland is bracketed along with over other conflicts from Afghanistan to Zaire as having been ‘marked by intervention of external powers’. The definition and nature of external ‘intervention’ across these disparate conflicts went unstated as if its meaning were self-evident, which in the case of Northern Ireland it isn’t. Quoted in Liam Clarke, ‘Hume plea to IRA on arms’, Sunday Times, September . See e.g. Fred Halliday, Rethinking international relations (London: Macmillan, ); Rick Fawn and Jeremy Larkins, eds, International society after the Cold War (London: Macmillan, ). See e.g. David W. Ziegler, War, peace and international politics (Glenview, Ill: Scott, Foresman, ), pp. , . Robin Luckham, ‘Militarism: force, class and international conflict’, in Michael Smith, Richard Little and Michael Shackleton eds, Perspectives on World Politics (London: Croom Helm, ), p. K. J. Holsti, International politics: a framework for analysis (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, ), p. *6. Smith.PM6 79 18/12/98, 1:55 pm M. L. R. Smith Such glib, unsupported and misleading references are so general as to be devoid of meaning and succeed only in causing one to wonder what other analytical atrocities are committed in the name of international relations. It would be presumptuous to expect students of international relations to examine the impact of the Northern Ireland conflict if there were not much to study or if it were a strictly internal problem with few revelations for the discipline. This is, no doubt, how many international relations scholars would justify their distance from the conflict. But this, of course, is the easy way out. So, to pose the fundamental question: why should international relations be bothered? After all, in comparison with most other wars, that in Northern Ireland is statistically insignificant: fewer than , killed, a few dozen thousand injured. But the bare figures do not tell the whole story.
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