With the most recent initiative of the two governments grinding to an inglorious halt and, once again, impasse being the defining feature of our process, it's worth reminding ourselves of how we arrived at this point by putting the whole thing in its proper context.
If the current crisis in the peace process leads to an indefinite period of suspended animation stretching way beyond the autumn - or even brings about a collapse of the entire project - republicans, with their apparent twin-track approach to peacemaking, will have only themselves to blame. The recent suspension of elections to the Assembly and the rejection of thesaurus-inducing statements of intent are the inevitable fallout from the many confidence-destroying activities they have been engaged in.
This twin-track approach could not have been more clearly illustrated than by three specific incidents involving republicans. The running of an elaborate spy ring at Stormont, whose tentacles reached to the highest echelons of government(s); the break-in at Castlereagh police complex, when hundreds of highly sensitive Special Branch files were stolen; and their as yet undefined, but nonetheless incontrovertible, relationship with the Colombian narco-terrorist group, FARC. If indeed the IRA is found to have been trading bomb-making expertise with FARC guerrillas, how obscene it will seem to the loved ones of those killed as a result of that expertise to know that their suffering derived from people supposedly wedded to a peace process.
The accelerating impact of all of that on an initially lukewarm and already declining unionist support for the agreement was enormous. Add to this the subsequent police investigations into the missing Castlereagh files uncovering an ongoing republican intelligence-gathering network of staggering proportions and David Trimble and his Ulster Unionist colleagues could not have continued in government with republicans, even if they were of a mind to.
By the same token, neither can they now be expected to return unless clear and unequivocal guarantees of intent and future conduct are forthcoming on behalf of the entire republican movement. If nothing else is clear about the latest IRA statement, the fact that we are not at that point yet certainly is! The notion that unionists are incapable of "reading between the lines" is a myth. It's just that hard experience has taught them, where republicans are concerned at least, that benign interpretation and wishful expectation are no substitute for clear commitment.
Republicans have been given the benefit of the doubt on numerous occasions over the past number of years when the IRA has clearly been implicated in activities ranging across the spectrum from murder to arms importation. But Sinn Féin could not forever get away with playing their "get out of jail free" card by alluding to the need to keep IRA volunteers busy and on-board every time an embarrassing incident arose. They eventually over-played their hand and patience was exhausted.
After more than five years, it is clear the Ulster Unionists and the two governments are no longer willing to accept a twin-track approach. Frankly, the unionists couldn't afford it even if they wanted to! The price of keeping the republican base on board has been the gradual pushing off-board of a large number of unionist people who were initially supportive of the agreement.
David Trimble, who seems forever destined to be portrayed as the villain of the piece, is often accused of not being fully committed to the Good Friday agreement. This accusation studiously ignores the fact that Mr Trimble, with some justification, could have walked away on a number of occasions but chose not to. Given the abuse that he, his family and supporters have endured and the pressure his party and the unionist electorate have come under, it's his limpet-like tenacity that is more deserving of comment.
The two governments, for their part, seem to have reached the wholly understandable conclusion that any element of the republican base not on-board at this juncture is beyond being convinced. And that those who are on-board must now accept the obvious imperative of the whole peace process by moving genuinely, completely and irreversibly into purely democratic mode. Surely republicans can't seriously have thought that their various activities could continue ad infinitum without running the risk of fatally wounding the peace process?
All that is not to say that republicans haven't moved; they quite clearly have, and been handsomely rewarded by the electorate for doing so. But we can't pretend they started off equidistant from the centre of democratic gravity with everyone else - they always had much further to travel. The challenge for them now is if they can travel the remaining distance. For republicans, it really is make-your-mind-up time.