PERSPECTIVE ON NORTHERN IRELAND : Don’t Rush In and Tip the Scales : The IRA cease-fire offers diplomatic openings, but the United States must beware of fueling the fears of Loyalists.

A unilateral cease-fire is a curious thing. Why are the Republicans in Northern Ireland willing to lay down their weapons after such a long fight? The cease-fire announced by the Irish Republican Army on Aug. 30 reflects a shift in the balance of power. Although some believe that the Republicans are capitulating in the face of insurmountable odds, it appears, instead, that the winds of diplomacy are gradually shifting in their favor.

One look at the Protestant response to the declaration indicates that those who lived perhaps most directly in fear of the IRA violence are not celebrating the lifting of that weight. On the contrary, Loyalists, both militant and mainstream, fear this turn of events because it signifies a closer relationship between the British and the Republicans. They believe something significant must have happened behind their backs in order for the Republicans to concede to meeting the British government’s criteria for negotiation.

As the British open up formal lines of communication with the Republicans, the Loyalists increasingly fear that the British will sell them out, either by leaving them stranded on the island to fend for themselves or by forcing them into a union with Ireland where they will lose their freedoms, status and identity. However accurate or inaccurate an estimation of British intentions those impressions are (and there is some evidence that British commitment, both popular and governmental, to maintaining a presence in Northern Ireland is weakening), they are the reigning perceptions of Loyalists and their leaders such as Ian Paisley and James Molyneaux.

These perceptions are important to keep in mind as Americans and the Clinton Administration respond to this new turn of events. Although the declaration of a cease-fire opens up many U.S. diplomatic opportunities, we must be extremely careful about interfering in a very delicate balance of power that holds many lives at stake.

The Clinton Administration has been quick to claim credit for the declaration, citing the visas granted in the last few months to Joseph Cahill, Patrick Treanor and Gerry Adams as evidence of the U.S. involvement in the shifting balance in Northern Irish politics. Loyalists do not see the U.S. role in the same light. They are already suspicious of the United States for its refusal to extradite suspected Republican terrorists to Britain and for American support for Noraid (the U.S. fund-raising group that aids families of prisoners caught up in Northern Ireland strife, also suspected of funding the IRA). And they are already compromised by the improving relationship between Britain and Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing. Thus Loyalists feel that the United States is acting to destroy them, directly or indirectly. Pushing them too far may result in a Unionist backlash that would cripple the peace process.

Because all sides must be party to a lasting peace, the United States should be wary of ruining the progress made in getting the Republicans to sit down at the table by scaring off the Unionists. As hard as it is to accept, American solutions to the conflict are not Irish solutions, and imposing our will upon other sovereign peoples is neither good diplomacy for us nor true reconciliation for the Irish. After all, as 600 years of conflict on the island of Ireland should have taught us, what Ireland needs is less foreign interference, not more.