The Foreign Service Journal, April 2016

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | APRIL 2016 43 FEATURE Successful solutions will invariably include a reasonably equal application of the rule of law and an effective effort to ensure “parity of esteem” between the parties. BY ANDREW D. SENS AndrewD. Sens, a Foreign Service officer from1966 to 1997, served inUganda, France, Norway, Iran, Pakistan, Argentina andWashington, D.C. His last assignment was as executive secretary to the National Security Council. Fol- lowing retirement, he served as the Americanmember of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, set up by the British and Irish governments in 1997 in Belfast and Dublin to facilitate the disposal of paramilitary arms fromboth sides of the Northern Ireland conflict. He also lectures and consults. N early a decade ago, I wrote in these pages that the opportu- nity to end the long-running sectarian divide in Northern Ireland that opened up in the 1990s came about only when leaders at both the national and local levels accepted the inevitability of a discussion of legitimate local grievances and fears, and parties and people on both sides of the conflict took part in the conversation that ETHNIC AND SECTARIANCONFLICT TWOCORE ISSUES ensued (“Lessons from Northern Ireland’s Peace Process,” September 2007 FSJ ). The “Troubles,” as that conflict was called, reflected deep dissatisfaction by minority nationalists (usually Catholic) over widespread social and political discrimination by majority unionists (usually Protestant), and their fear of intimidation from violence-prone paramilitary gangs that unionists, at least tacitly, often supported. For their part, unionists protested strong nationalist opposition to their time-honored traditions and religious convictions, their determination to maintain a constitutional link to the United Kingdom, and the very real despair caused by the Irish Republican Army’s violent anti- British campaign. Under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, British policy toward Northern Ireland had been heavily oriented toward security. The idea was that the IRA not only had to be defeated, but be seen as vanquished. But this approach only led to a seemingly endless cycle of death and destruction, provoca- tion and retaliation. Moreover, children sent by their unionist parents to school in England and Scotland during the Troubles tended to stay there, threatening the majority’s very existence.