The IRA ceasefire called yesterday will be the last for a generation. Contrary to what sections of the media and spokesmen for the various unionist parties say, a purely tactical ceasefire would destroy both the political credibility of the republicans in Ireland, Britain and the US and the leadership of Sinn Fein who, against all odds, won a second cessation.
A tactical ceasefire would make for dreadful politics and a complete breakdown of trust, making any subsequent political development impossible for the republican movement. No one will be more aware of that than Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinnesss, who have risked their all in persuading the IRA once again to trust them with their Hume-Adams political initiative.
The notion of a tactical ceasefire is usually floated by those who refused to believe the first ceasefire could have been achieved and who now are loath to be proved wrong a second time - but they are.
If such experts believe that men like Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness put their political careers - and perhaps their very lives - on the line to secure ceasefires that are essentially phoney in nature, then they make very fundamental errors. A previous Sinn Fein leader, Michael Collins, lost his life seeking to bring the armed revolutionary movement to a political path.
Any Sinn Fein leadership undertaking this task does so in the full knowledge that failure can cost them their lives.
Since the aftermath of the IRA hunger-strikes both McGuinness and Adams have been involved in an often quixotic, always frustrating, but ultimately rewarding search for a political path for their movement to take. Their efforts in securing this second ceasefire must be acknowledged. At a minimum they need an improved constitutional role for the Irish Government in Northern Ireland and major developments on prisoners, policing and equality issues for the nationalist community.
They understand the risks and that it may go wrong at the negotiating table. It would, after all, have been relatively easy for Adams, McGuinness and the SDLP leader, John Hume, to play out the political game without ever taking the political chances that have led to the current breakthrough.
Hume, in particular, has been vilified in sections of the media for trusting the IRA through thick and thin. Setting aside his perseverance with the Hume-Adams process, if we consider his party's action in sitting down with the loyalist paramilitaries, one of whose members at the negotiating table was linked to the death of a leading SDLP member some years ago, we get the true meaning of what it takes to make peace. David Trimble's refusal to meet Sinn Fein looks churlish in comparison.
We should now expect nothing less than what Hume has given from the other leaders involved in the best chance for peace in Ireland in our lifetime.
It is to those other leaders that great responsibility passes now. If this ceasefire breaks down in the future it will not be for tactical reasons but rather because the political process will have demonstrably failed and IRA hardliners with no interest in further political dialogue will undoubtedly take over, in which case talk of any more ceasefires will disappear for decades.
The only way in which that nightmare scenario can occur is if the British and Irish governments and the Northern Ireland parties, all assisted by the US administration, collectively fail in their responsibility to bring about peace for the people of Ireland and Britain, given the extraordinary opening provided by a second ceasefire.
Once again, the conditions are in place for the beginning of a historic process. There is a new British government with a safe majority, a new Irish government which is philosophically closer to Northern nationalist thinking and a US government which continues to play a huge, if underestimated, role.
The American connection to the new peace process is crucial, not just in terms of the outreach to the political parties in the North via former Senator George Mitchell, the talks chairman, but also in terms of the Clinton-Blair axis, which the British government knows is by far the most important international relationship it has.
Clinton told the British cabinet during his recent visit to London that peace in Ireland was "an article of faith" in his household. At the G7 summit in Denver he took the unprecedented step of convening a 30-minute meeting with Tony Blair on the margins to discuss primarily Northern Ireland. Blair understands Clinton's engagement with the Irish peace process, and there is much enlightened self-interest in his bold moves to bring about a peace settlement there.
As a result, for Tony Blair the prize of a new special relationship with the US is now partially tied to the Northern Ireland issue. Clinton and Major never saw eye to eye after Major sent help to Clinton's opponent, George Bush, in 1992, and Blair's accession was greeted with relief in Washington. Blair would like nothing better than to inherit the international stature that Margaret Thatcher carried - a stature that in large part was conferred on her by Ronald Reagan. Clinton seems set to confer the same status on Blair.
For Bertie Ahern, too, there is much at stake. He is the unsung hero of this second cessation. He is in power less than a month, but he instinctively understood the reality that the current ceasefire has been waiting since last October to happen. Back then, John Hume presented John Major with the document agreed with the IRA as the basis for the new ceasefire. It is salutary to contemplate the lives lost since which might have been saved if that document had been acted on.
Ahern will bear a heavy responsibility in the months and years ahead. Sinn Fein accepts that it is up to the Irish Government to negotiate the major constitutional issues with the British government. While Tony Blair may well state, as he has, that the outlines of a settlement are there for all to see, there is still a huge onus on the Taoiseach to deliver the best possible outcome for Northern nationalists who have long felt abandoned by Irish governments.
For all the parties there is also the lurking reality of the demographic tide which could well deliver a nationalist majority in Northern Ireland relatively early in the next century. Given that reality, surely it would seem in the unionists' best interest to negotiate rather than stonewall now? There will be many tough moments in the weeks and months ahead, beginning with the threatened unionist boycott of the talks if the decommissioning issue is not resolved to their satisfaction. But first principles, a peaceful landscape for negotiations, has been re-established. We cannot afford to let this opportunity slip away once more.
Niall O'Dowd is founding publisher of the Irish Voice newspaper and the founder of the Irish-American peace delegation
