THE resumption of talks this week on the future of the North has done little to dispel the sense of pessimism about the peace process. What is, perhaps, of even greater concern is the drift of much recent commentary on the North into hand wringing resignation. There has been much frothy talk - mainly by people who would not have to endure the outcome - of cantonisation and repartition.
But at its simplest, Northern Ireland is a majority minority problem. Suppose it were to be cantonised by district council areas. What would be the result? Twenty six majority minority problems.
Cantonisation can only work in a context where populations are divided into relatively homogenous districts. And how might that come about in Northern Ireland? This was precisely what people who believed in old fashioned ideas like pluralism and tolerance found so appalling about the 1993 Vance Owen plan for Bosnia, which sought to carve it up into Serb, Croat and Muslim areas. Either it means the "wrong" people are told to leave their homes, or they read the writing on the wall (sometimes literally), themselves.
And what of west Belfast in any repartitioned Northern Ireland? Would the international community be asked to defend that as a "safe haven"? Would it be any "safer" than Srebrenica was? The very idea is inconceivable except in the wake of "ethnic cleansing" on a Bosnian scale. And as an invitation to massive paramilitary restocking, it would be hard to better.
So why have such zany notions acquired such currency? They are the perverse result of the steady triumph in recent years of a cynical real politik, applied to zones of ethno national conflict - in ex Yugoslavia as in Northern Ireland - which seems to work on the principle that universalist ideas of democracy, as the exercise of freedom and equality within a common domain, must be set aside.
In the name of "realism" all sorts of deals have been cut involving paramilitary warlords and communalist politicians, which have demoralised liberal opinion, entrenched polarisation and increasingly rendered civilised coexistence impossible. And on the in for a penny principle, the next step in the shoring up of sectarianism is, yes, cantonisation or repartition.
The fact is, however, that the failure of politics in Northern Ireland is not predetermined: there is no gene marked "ethno nationalism". Well thought through and sensitive political interventions can diminish nationalistic passions and encourage integration; woolly thinking and insensitivity can inflame them and segregate communities.
There have been three fundamental errors in policy in recent years, which if they can be reversed can begin to reverse the polarisation with which they have been associated.
The first has been to treat violence as if it were the cause rather than the symptom of conflict. As Adrian Guelke pointed out recently in Fortnight, the whole focus on getting paramilitary ceasefires, then on decommissioning, put the cart before the horse. It has enhanced the importance and power of the paramilitaries and correspondingly reduced the pressures on the main political forces to arrive at a settlement. It is getting that settlement which is the best hope of an end to violence.
Second has been the illusion, in foreshadowing a settlement, that an institutional "fix" can be found for every clash between the irreconcilable particularistic values of the principal opponents. It was these "fixes", layer upon layer of them, which generated the baroque but utterly fragile architecture of the Framework Document. As one astute Southern commentator pointed out, it was as if a couple were to draw up a contract for their relationship, so replete with checks and balances that they could only be left wondering why they wanted to live together at all.
The alternative is to start from universal democratic values to which all ostensibly subscribe, see what institutions should embody them, and seek agreement on that basis. Freedom and equality can be reconciled in ethno nationalist conflict zones, but only in as far as these are constitutionally redefined in multi cultural, multi ethnic and multi religious terms. It is on that basis that a single entity called Northern Ireland can survive and develop a new rapprochement with the Republic.
The events of the summer have shown that unless underpinned by a sense of democratic ownership, shared by all in Northern Ireland, such a benign future cannot be achieved. Which brings us to the third error - to assume a monopoly of wisdom in Dublin and London for a situation quite unlike either jurisdiction and remote from their day today concerns.
Most people in Northern Ireland are neither paraders nor protesters. The politics of recent years has greatly emboldened those who are. Talk of cantonisation and repartition threatens to hold out to them the ultimate prize - the prospect of victory.
