EVEN IF what is know as the "peace process" breaks down and the IRA resumes a full scale campaign all is not lost. The 17 month ceasefire changed a great deal and this cannot be undone.
The most important change has been the acceptance by the IRA that a settlement can be secured only through negotiation. It has stated this repeatedly in the last 18 months and it acknowledges that the "armed struggle" cannot achieve such a settlement.
The IRA also accepted, following the Hume Adams statement of September 25th 1993, that such a settlement must achieve "the agreement and allegiance of all sections of the Irish people." At the heart of that acknowledgment is an acceptance that not alone must a majority of the people of Northern Ireland be brought to agree, and give their allegiance to any settlement, but that the unionist community as a whole must also (there is a difference, for "a majority" of the people of Northern Ireland need not constitute a majority of unionists).
But for the IRA the most importance change has been an acknowledgment that the "war" is not now about forcing a British declaration of intent to withdraw, or the establishment of the right of the Irish people as a whole to national self determination. It is now about a far more modest aim the inclusion of Sinn Fein in all party talks on a settlement.
It is not at all obvious how the IRA leadership can galvanise its members to risk their lives and their liberties not in the pursuit of an aim that can be characterised as noble and historic, but instead for the mundane objective of inclusion in all party talks. Yes, of course, this objective entails the respect and esteem of the republican community, and an acknowledgment by all parties of that. But it ain't the mountain top.
There have been other changes. Nationalist Ireland, apart from Sinn Fein perhaps, has abandoned nationalism, and that too cannot be, undone. The core of the nationalist position is that the Irish people as a whole have the right to determine the future of Ireland and that no minority has a right to "trump" the right of the people as a whole. That is gone.
NATIONALIST Ireland has given in on nationalism it accepts that a minority has the right to "trump" the "right" of the people as a whole. And, in truth, Sinn Fein's position differs from the rest of nationalists only on the tactical issue of when to concede that point.
The Conservative and Unionist Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has also come some way indeed it has abandoned unionism. The core of the unionist position is that no part of the United Kingdom has the right to secede from the kingdom by definition it would no longer be a United Kingdom if bits of it were to go their own way. That position is gone too.
The Conservative and Unionist Association has stated through the Downing Street Declaration and otherwise that Britain has no selfish, strategic or economic interest in remaining in Northern Ireland and if a majority of the people there want to secede then they can. By sponsoring the Framework Document the British have also committed themselves to radical institutional change in Northern Ireland to accommodate the separate identity and aspirations of the nationalist community.
The depth of United States involvement in Irish affairs is also a change. Until President Clinton came to the White House there were no more than benign platitudes from there on Northern Ireland. That has now changed greatly and, potentially, with transformative effect.
Potentially transformative effect not because the US could or would push the British government or any of the parties into positions they would not otherwise accept, but because its involvement can help give reassurance and guarantees to parties about the goodwill and intentions of other parties.
Alas, the potentially pivotal position of the US can change. If President Clinton is defeated in November and Bob Dole, Lamar Alexander or Pat Buchanan is elected, it is likely that the US influence will be more peripheral than pivotal. It is far too early yet to feel any security about Clinton's re election chances.
There can be no security at all about John Major's re election chances, and the likelihood is that he will have gone for his tea by this coming autumn.
That too would be a big pity. Certainly he cocked things up in the wake of the publication of the Mitchell report and his tone has often been offensive to nationalist ears. But he proved his mettle again on Monday night last. He risked the stability of his government not its survival, because he would have won a vote of confidence today by refusing David Trimble's latest overtures on the voting system for the proposed elections.
HE has risked a lot more throughout the last four years and there is little indication that his likely successor would have anything like the same commitment. Or the same trustworthiness.
Perhaps there will not be a full scale resumption of terror and atrocity, but as of the time of writing it seems the probable outcome. This is because commitments seem unlikely to be made in terms that would convince Sinn Fein and the IRA that all party talks are definitely going to happen in the near future and without preconditions that would exclude them. Not even John Major can bring himself to commit his government to talks if the unionists will not show up.
And this time the violence is likely to spread to the South more devastatingly than ever before but all will not be lost.
We are now, and will remain, far closer to reaching an accommodation on a permanent "cessation of military operations" than ever was the case from 1970 to the middle of 1994. It will not require great ingenuity, merely some time, to put together what is required for that.
The intensive help of the US would be useful as, incidentally, would the assistance of those academics who are paid so handsomely from the public purses to examine conflicts such as this and their resolution. We will not be back to another 25 years of slaughter and conflict, probably no more than two or three years at the most. A horrific prospect, but not as bad as sometimes suggested.
The great tragedy will be that so many lives will be lost, so many lives maimed and so much devastation caused, all not in the name of anybody's noble ideal but because the nuts and bolts of a start to negotiations have not been arranged.
Reaching a long term settlement afterwards will be a different matter. For alone amid the landscape of change are those dreary steeples of unionism, which have not changed.