ONE of the great assumptions of discussion in Ireland, as on all sites of intense national conflict, is that the travails of that particular country are unique, incomparable with those of other societies, and insulated from the rest of the world. This is in part of a result of the way in which the politics of any country is discussed - international factors may enter from outside, hopefully in the form of external liberation, or grants, but basically the history of the nation is discrete. For many, this is also a point of honour.
I remember once being rebuked by Ruairi O Bradaigh, when I asked him: what the international influence on Irish nationalism had been: "In Ireland", he said, fixing me with the stare of his former, schoolmasterly, profession, "we have no need of your Che Guevaras and your Ho Chi Minhs. We have Robert Emmet, O'Donovan Rossa, Cathal Brugha, Dan Breen." And so he continued: no need for any comparison, or external influence, here.
The same is often true of those opposed to, or critical of, Irish nationalism. Thus Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien, who no one could accuse of national parochialism, or of being slow to make a cross cultural reference, remarks in his recent Ancestral Voices on how "rum" Irish cultural nationalism is, suggesting indeed that it may be the rummest in the world.
It should not take anyone long to show that both forms of exceptionalism, that of Mr O Bradaigh or that of Dr O'Brien, are mistaken. The whole history of Irish nationalism is one shaped by international factors from the United Irishmen and Young Ireland through to the slogan Sinn Fein, a Gaelic rendering of the programme of Friedrich List, these influences are clear.
The slogan "No Surrender" wins no more prizes in this contest. The Russian Revolution may have had little impact on Ireland, but the same cannot be said of other great upheavals - the Reformation, the English Revolution, the American and French Revolutions, and the first World War, to name but a some.
Nor is the cultural nationalism of the Irish so unique, indeed one would be hard pressed to see anything original, or particularly new, in it at all. Irish nationalism has sought, with the material selected from the Irish past, to make real a Fichtean and Herderian programme: a grand narrative of national oppression and rebirth, a linguistic revival, an essentialist claim to one national narrative, a final deliverance through independence.
Coma pared to the Turks, who claim all languages in the world are descended from Turkish, or the Dutch, whose national symbol is a herring, or indeed the English whose greatest national symbol, the monarchy, has been occupied by foreign dynasties since the 11th century, the cultural nationalism of the Irish seems tame indeed, not that much rummer than others.
THIS international dimension of Irish conflicts has nowhere been more evident than in the course of the last quarter of a century. For all the internal causes of the explosion of the Catholic Protestant British conflict in the late 1960s, there were obvious international causes too: deindustrialisation, Vatican II, the rise of the US civil rights movement, the revalidation, albeit in left wing form, of "armed struggle". In this the launching of violent action in Northern Ireland is analogous to the two other outbreaks of ethnic violence in western Europe at that time, in the Basque country and in Corsica.
Last year in a cafe in the Corsican interior the waiter who served me had a T shirt with the words "Sinn Fein, Herri Batasuna, Consulla Nazionale". Perhaps he had another one in the back room, saying "IRA, ETA, FLNC".
Equally, international factors, albeit of ambivalent import, lay behind the declaration of the 1994 ceasefire: the greater US involvement, British concern to promote London as a safe centre for international finance, the European dimension. The end of the Cold War did not directly contribute to the Irish ceasefire: it did, however, help to create a climate in which alternatives to violence, and possibilities of ending apparently unendable military conflicts, came nearer.
The international dimension was, however, open to misuse: ultimately peace cannot come from abroad, from Washington or Brussels, in the absence of support for it within Ireland itself. Equally, neither nationalism nor loyalist communities will, in the end, be reassured to be told that in an era of globalised capital, or an "emerging European identity, their particular concerns and fears no longer matter.
In the aftermath of the South Quay bomb there are many who have, for a variety of motives, resorted to international analogy. References are made to the three other cases, where, after much greater bloodshed than Ireland's, peace remains on the agenda, and despite what are termed setbacks: the Arab Israeli dispute, South Africa, former Yugoslavia. One can think of other cases - Vietnam, Zimbabwe, Ireland itself in the run up to 1921 - when negotiations leading to peace took place simultaneously with continued armed conflict.
All this may be true, and one bomb does not end a peace process, but the lessons of international comparison may not be so one sidedly reassuring. In the first place, the difficulty, the defining difficulty, of the Northern Irish conflict is that it is a triangular, not a two sided one, more akin to Yugoslavia than to South Africa or the Arab Israeli conflict. Two leaderships can deal, but this may omit, may even provoke, the third. We have not heard the last of this in Yugoslavia, more particularly in Croatia: the intentions of the most devious Dr Tudjman remain obscure.
SECONDLY, where in the other negotiation processes bombs continued to go off, the negotiations could continue because these were clearly the work of minority extremists. The problem in Northern Ireland is that the South Quay bomb was not in the work of some breakaway, some Provisional IRA mark 2, or some other rejectionist front. From all that we can now see the IRA, Oglaigh na Eireann, spoke with one voice: there is no Fateh to its Hamas or PFLP.
Thirdly, and most seriously, while in these other cases it was clear what a reasonable compromise could be even if it was difficult to get to, this is still not the case in Northern Ireland. The biggest mystery remains what Gerry Adams was thinking when, in 1994, he agreed to a ceasefire: there was no secret deal, nor could he admit defeat. What lies between the two, trips to Washington and vague promises of Euro money aside, is not clear. There are, on the other hand powerful factors of comparison between Ireland and, these other cases which might help to consolidate peace, at, least over a longer period, One is the fact that, in comparison to 25 years ago, there is a much greater willingness to accept the reality, and legitimacy, of other communities. Croats and Serbs, Israelis and Palestinians, Afrikaners and blacks all sought to delegitimate each other by, casting the other as something undesirable - fascists, settlers, immigrants, whatever.
When the Croatians started expelling Serbs on the grounds that "the Ottomans brought them in the 15th century", no one in Ireland or Palestine needed any interpretation.
This is much less so today.
Secondly, we are looking at a situation in which the absolute claims of nationalism one community, one land, one narrative - are somewhat attenuated.
Thirdly, and provisionally, in the other three cases at least we can see a situation in which the political leadership has decided that the benefits of peace outweigh those of war. They have not been replaced by nicer, more liberal, leaderships. They have not changed their spots. But they have been cajoled, and coerced, and bribed, into risking peace rather than war. We do not yet know if, and when, this will be the case in Northern Ireland. In the Basque country more moderate nationalists openly express their regret that they do not have a " Gerry Adams, someone with sufficient clout to deliver. No doubt their militant opponents will be feeling happier now.
But the lesson of other conflicts is that it is only when the military leaders of yesterday see advantage in peace, that we can be sure that peace is permanent. On this criterion, Northern Ireland has not got there yet, but we know that one day it will.