That the institutions set up under the Belfast Agreement are now in the gravest peril cannot be in doubt. Middle-ground unionism appears to be shedding the last vestiges of whatever cohesion it had when the Agreement was signed more than four years ago.
The republican movement cannot, or will not, move towards full democratisation at the pace that is required and expected of it. Extremists in both traditions gleefully anticipate the collapse of the democratically-mandated Assembly and Executive.
Friday's dramatic swoop by police on Sinn Féin offices at Stormont and the accompanying arrests have been portrayed over the weekend as perhaps the final nail in the coffin of the devolved administration. And so they may prove to be. But it would be well to be cautious, as Deputy First Minister, Mark Durkan, advised, in assessing just what this is all about. Stormont has long been riddled with espionage. Sensitive documents have frequently found their way into the wrong hands in the past.
None of this is to diminish the seriousness of what is alleged to have taken place on behalf of Sinn Féin and the IRA. The core of the crisis within the peace process is the Sinn Féin stance of trying to inhabit two worlds simultaneously - the paramilitary and the democratic. It is not what the people of Ireland voted for in 1998 and it is certainly not what middle-ground unionism bought into when it agreed to empty the prisons, to stand down the RUC, to have Sinn Féin members in government and to work new North-South institutions across the border. There is an abundance of evidence that the IRA remains intact, well-armed and active. Meanwhile, Sinn Féin withholds its support for the new policing structures.
Mr Martin McGuinness blames the crisis on unionists who are simply opposed to power-sharing and the failure of Mr David Trimble to sell the Agreement to his own people.That belies the fact that the unionist community - albeit by a slim majority - voted for it at his urging in 1998. But they did not vote for the continuing parallel existence within Northern Ireland of two power-structures, one led by the Assembly and the Executive, the other by the IRA Army Council - with crossover membership between the two.
The republicans will privately acknowledge that this will have to end and that they will, in time, have to support fully the PSNI and the authority of the state. It is a problem of managing the republican family to that end, they say, while avoiding splitting it. But if the Agreement is to survive, republicans will simply have to pick up their pace.
Meanwhile, over the coming days, the two governments have to get back into the business of crisis-management. It may be that suspension of the institutions is on the cards. If it happens, it does not have to be forever and it could provide space and time for reflection all round.