NO COLD WAR, NO PROBLEMS:

rish Lessons (Anne Applebaum, March 24, 2004, Washington Post)

Read the British or the Irish press and you'll see references to the "battered" peace process or the "flagging" peace process, stories of Irish Republican Army beatings and kneecappings, tales of hopelessly complex machinations among Belfast politicians. But Trimble agrees that there have nevertheless been some fundamental changes over the past decade. Some IRA members, while still claiming they are fighting a war for Irish independence, in fact spend much of their time smuggling cigarettes and dealing drugs. Others have morphed into democratic politicians, and now compete in Northern Irish elections. It's unsavory for someone like Trimble to deal with them, and cigarette smuggling and drug dealing don't contribute much to the greater social good either. Still, this is preferable to the frequent bloody attacks on innocent people that once characterized the IRA's "war" on Britain.

Nor is the IRA unique: Moving to another part of the world, the same phenomenon was on display last weekend in El Salvador. There, two parties that represented in effect the two sides of that country's old civil war clashed in a bitter, unfriendly but ultimately nonviolent election. The loser, a former FMLN Marxist guerrilla leader who recently congratulated Fidel Castro for imprisoning dissidents, was ungracious, refusing to congratulate the winner of his own country's election. Nevertheless, he didn't take to the forests, go underground or set off bombs. That, too, is progress.

These conflicts, as well as South Africa and Israel-Palestine--which seemed intractable for fifty years but have been quickly settled in recent years--were largely functions of our failure to reckon with the Soviets in the 40s, as we should have. It has obviously helped that the respective militant movements have lost their main source of funding and armaments, but even more important--if subtler--is the fact that if we still had a significant geostrategic rival we would not have allowed the replacement (or potential replacement) of allied regimes at these navigational chokepoints, nor in South Africa's case ceded control over its natural resources.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 26, 2004 8:24 AM