Ontological Security and Peace-Building in Northern Ireland

Abstract

Ontological security, which focuses on the security of oneself, one's identity, and group affiliations, best informs the nature of sectarian conflict and conflict resolutions in contemporary Northern Ireland. This article seeks to move the debates over the role of ontological security concepts in international relations by applying a mainly theoretical discussion to testable case studies. While high-end, official peacemaking can be explained by rational actor models, constraints on peace-building remain ontologically driven. This explains the dichotomy between the dramatic reduction of violence since ‘the Troubles’ and the existential anxieties that persist despite the peace process. In parts of Northern Ireland politics and security are ontologically defined. Choices that might not seem rational in the sense of value maximizing are better understood via this framework. Northern Ireland shows a clear correlation between ontological security frameworks and post-peace process developments. Ontological security also shows the possibilities and limits for exporting formally rational, state-centred models of peacemaking, and reminds us that the urban geographer might be as important a security actor as the diplomat or military representative.

Notes

Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), p. 92.

Peacemaking – negotiating and sustaining a political settlement – was possible in Northern Ireland because of unique circumstances that shaped cost-benefit thinking. Firstly, by the time negotiations began, both sides were at a stalemate; no further gains could be made via the status quo. Secondly, once diplomacy began, all sides had a vested interest in success. Thirdly, ambiguity in the accords allowed each party to sell them to their constituents. Finally, internationally negotiated settlements were seen as possible, even between Israelis and Palestinians, and there was a great sense of economic potential. The most essential, and difficult, aspect of the negotiations was the decision to include former participants in the conflict, such as Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams, in diplomacy. See Audrey Kurth Cronin, How Terrorism Ends (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 42–8.

Roger MacGinty, Orla T. Muldoon, and Neil Ferguson, ‘No War, No Peace: Northern Ireland after the Agreement’, Political Psychology, Vol. 28, No. 1 (December 2006), pp. 1–11.

Paul Nolan, ‘The Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report: Number One’, February 2012, pp. 16–17, available at http://www.community-relations.org.uk/fs/doc/publications/NIPMR_2012_new_1.pdf.

See Noa Epstein, ‘Explaining the War on Terrorism from an Ontological Security Perspective’, MIT International Review (Spring 2007), pp. 13–14.

David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), p. 61. Italics in original.

Ibid., p. 62; italics in original.

Ibid., p. 63.

Jennifer Mitzen, ‘Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma’, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 12, No. 3 (2006), p. 43.

See John Herz, The Nation-State and the Crisis of World Politics (New York: David McKay, 1975), p. 157; Robert Jervis, ‘Cooperation under the Security Dilemma’, World Politics, Vol. 30, No. 2 (January 1978), pp. 186–214; and Stephen Van Evera, ‘Offense, Defense, and the Causes of War’, International Security, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Spring 1998), pp. 5–43. This was the case in the conflict in Northern Ireland, as actions of one group provoked actions of another during the Troubles. For example, in the late 1960s, the British army sent troops ostensibly to protect Catholic rights in Derry. However, as anti-British protests grew larger, British forces responded harshly. This led to the mobilization of the IRA, which in turn led to the mobilization of Protestant groups. The IRA saw itself as protecting its people and Protestant groups likewise theirs – especially as the conflict hardened in the key areas of Belfast. See Naill O'Dochartaigh, From Civil Rights to Armalities: Derry and the Birth of the Irish Troubles (London: Palgrave, 2005) and Richard English, Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) for an assessment of the evolution of the Irish Republican Army. For an account of how average people became involved with paramilitary organizations, see Shane Paul O'Doherty, The Volunteer: A Former IRA Man's True Story (London: Strategic Book Publishing, 2011).

John J. Mearsheimer, ‘The False Promise of International Institutions’, in Michael E. Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller (eds), The Perils of Anarchy: Contemporary Realism and International Security (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), p. 337.

MacGinty et al., ‘No War, No Peace’ (note 3), p. ‘Northern Ireland’.

On the pervasiveness of identity in Northern Ireland, see Brendan O'Leary and John McGarry, Understanding Northern Ireland: Colonialism, Control and Consociation (New York: Routledge, 2012).

Interview by the author with Eamon Gilmore, then Labour Party leader, Dublin, Ireland, 21 July 2010.

David Gordon, ‘Peter Robinson: My Problem with Martin McGuinness’, The Belfast Telegraph, 17 September 2010.

Nolan, ‘The Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report’ (note 4), p. 128.

Northern Ireland Life & Times Survey 2010, available at http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2010/

Campbell, Writing Security (note 6), p. 17.

Ibid., p. 51.

David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild, ‘Containing Fear: The Origins and Management of Ethnic Conflict’, International Security, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall 1996), pp. 41–75.

Duncan Morrow, ‘Violence and the Sacred in Northern Ireland’, Contagion, Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, Vol. 2 (Spring 1995), pp. 145–64 (at p. 145).

Joseph Liechty and Cecilia Clegg, Moving Beyond Sectarianism: Religion, Conflict, and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland (Dublin: Columba Press, 2000).

Fenna Van Marle and Shadd Maruna, ‘“Ontological Insecurity” and “Terror Management”: Linking Two Free-Floating Anxieties’, Punishment & Society, Vol. 12, No. 7 (2010), p. 10.

Catarina Kinnvall, ‘Globalization and Religious Nationalism: Self, Identity, and the Search for Ontological Security’, Political Psychology, Vol. 25, No. 5 (2004), p. 742.

Franco Fornari, The Psychoanalysis of War (New York: Doubleday, 1974).

Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), pp. 6–7.

Ted Hopf, ‘The Logic of Habit in International Relations’, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 16, No. 4 (2010), pp. 539–61.

Chaim Kaufmann, ‘Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars’, International Security, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Spring 1996), pp. 136–75 (at p. 173, 174).

Stathis N. Kalyvas, ‘The Ontology of “Political Violence”: Action and Identity in Civil Wars’, Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 1, No. 3 (2003), p. 479.

Ibid., p. 481.

Kinnvall, ‘Globalization and Religious Nationalism’ (note 24), p. 755.

Ibid., p. 755.

Mitzen, ‘Ontological Security in World Politics’ (note 9), p. 342.

Ibid., p. 342.

Kalyvas, ‘The Ontology of “Political Violence”‘ (note 29), p. 476.

Mitzen, ‘Ontological Security in World Politics’ (note 9), p. 354.

Kinnvall, ‘Globalization and Religious Nationalism’ (note 24), p. 751.

Ibid., p. 742; italics in original.

Ibid., pp. 745–6.

Barry Smith and Leo Zaibert, ‘The Metaphysics of Real Estate’, Topoi, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2001), pp. 161–72.

Van Marle and Maruna, ‘“Ontological Insecurity”’ (note 23), p. 10.

Jock Young, The Exclusive Society (London: Sage, 1999), p. 15.

Speech by John Hume, Mt. Holyoke College, 14 March 1995, available at http://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/csj/950316SE/speech.html.

Morrow, ‘Violence and the Sacred in Northern Ireland’ (note 21), p. 152.

John Darby, The Effects of Violence on Peace Processes (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2001).

More than 3,700 people were killed in the violence, an average of just over two a week for over 30 years. Had a similar conflict consumed the United States, the equivalent death toll would have been 600,000. Nearly 1 in every 50 people were injured during the Troubles. Ed Moloney, ‘Introduction’, in A Secret History of the IRA (New York: W.W. Norton, 2002).

Lee Smithey, ‘Anti-Catholicism and the Politics of Persuasion in Northern Ireland’, available at http://www.jstor.org/pss/30095371.

Nolan, ‘The Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report’ (note 4), p. 8.

Interview by the author with senior official of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, Belfast, 14 July 2010. For background on Ardoyne as a flashpoint of conflict in Belfast, see Peter Shirlow and Brendan Murtagh, Belfast: Segregation, Violence, and the City (London: Pluto Press, 2006).

Interview by the author with senior official of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, Belfast, 14 July 2010.

See International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence, ‘The Return of the Militants: Violent Dissident Republicanism’, October 2010, available at http://www.icsr.info/publications/papers/1289498383ICSR_TheReturnoftheMilitantsReport.pdf.

Interview by the author with senior official of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, Belfast, 14 July 2010.

UTV News, 12 July 2010.

Interview by the author with senior official of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, Belfast, 14 July 2010.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Interview by the author with two senior officials of the International Monitoring Commission, Dublin, 19 July 2010.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

See Eamonn McCann, War in an Irish Town (London: Pluto Classics, 1993).

Statement by Hubert O'Neill, available at http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/bsunday/sum.htm.

Statement by David Cameron to parliament on the Saville Commission, 15 June 2010.

Martin McGuinness, statement to the press, 15 June 2010.

Interview by the author with Eamonn McCann, Derry, 12 July 2010.

Nolan, ‘The Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report’ (note 4), pp. 69–70.

Northern Ireland Life & Times Survey 2010 (note 17).

Meeting with curator of the Bloody Sunday Museum in Derry, 12 July 2010.

See, for example, Ed Moloney, Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland (London: Faber and Faber, 2010) and Ardoyne Commemoration Project, Ardoyne: The Untold Truth (Belfast: Beyond the Pale Publications, 2003).

Mark Phillips, ‘Oral History of Northern Ireland Tapes Raises Dilemma’, CBS News, 9 February 2012.

Patricia Lundy and Mark McGovern, ‘A Truth Commission for Northern Ireland?’ ARK, Social and Political Archive, No. 46 (October 2006), available at http://www.ark.ac.uk/publications/updates/update46.pdf.

Senator John Kerry, ‘Irish Future Shouldn't Get Lost in Violent Past’, Boston Herald, 4 April 2012.

See Anna McGuire and David Young, ‘Nuala O'Loan Slams Ombudsman on Investigation of Murders’, Belfast Telegraph, 14 March 2012.

Henry McDonald, ‘Nuala O'Loan Calls for Single Body to Investigate Crimes of Troubles’, The Guardian, 26 December 2011.

Guardian Unlimited, 4 July 2007, cited in Jessie Blackbourn and Kacper Rekawek, ‘Ten Years On: Who Are the Winners and Losers from the Belfast Agreement?’, p. 21, available at http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/peace/docs/blackbourn_rekawek_08.pdf.

Blackbourn and Rekawek, ‘Ten Years On’ (note 76), p. 21.

Nolan, ‘The Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report’ (note 4), p. 7.

Blackbourn and Rekawek, ‘Ten Years On’ (note 76), pp. 21–2.

Nolan, ‘The Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report’ (note 4), p. 68.

Blackbourn and Rekawek, ‘Ten Years On’ (note 76), p. 38.

Ibid., p. 22.

Bloomberg News, 7 July 2011.

Interview by the author with former Protestant paramilitary activist, 14 July 2010.

Blackbourn and Rekawek, ‘Ten Years On’ (note 76), pp. 10–17.

Ibid., p. 27.

Northern Ireland Life & Times Survey 2010 (note 17).

Interview by the author with former Protestant paramilitary leader, Belfast, 13 July 2010.

For further details see Ann Bill et al., Beyond the Gauntlet: The Silent Voices of Upper Ardoyne, Amidst the Travesty of Holy Cross (Belfast: Ann Bill, 2002); Anne Cadwallader, Holy Cross: The Untold Story (Belfast: Brehon Press, Ltd, 2003); and Aidan Troy, Holy Cross: A Personal Experience (Belfast: Currach Press, 2006).

Blackbourn and Rekawek, ‘Ten Years On’ (note 76), p. 30.

‘McGuinness Warns Robinson over Education Comments’, BBC Northern Ireland, 17 October 2010.

Tony Gallagher, ‘After the War Comes Peace? An Examination of the Impact of the Northern Ireland Conflict on Young People’, Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 60, No. 3 (2004), pp. 629–43.

Blackbourn and Rekawek, ‘Ten Years On’ (note 76), p. 25; and Nolan, ‘The Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report’ (note 4), p. 153.

Nolan, ‘The Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report’ (note 4), p. 9.

Ibid., p. 83.

Interview by the author with former Protestant paramilitary leader, Belfast, 14 July 2010.

Blackbourn and Rekawek, ‘Ten Years On’ (note 76), p. 57.

Ibid., p. 66.

Interview with senior Irish-American interest group official, Washington, DC, November 2010.

Interview by the author with Shari Rosenfeld, New York City, October 2010.

Ibid.

Interview by the author with Fiona MacMillan, Belfast, 14 July 2010.

Nolan, ‘The Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report’ (note 4), p. 168.

See ‘Cooperation Ireland: The Peacebuilding Charity’, available at http://www.cooperationireland.org/aboutus/whoweare.

See interview with Peter Sheridan, available at http://www.agendani.com/issues/issue_19_July_August_2008/Peter_Sheridan.php.

Interview by the author with Peter Sheridan, via Skype, Derry, October 2010.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Tom Peterkin, ‘New Blood, Bad Blood: New Breed of IRA Learn Deadly Trade’, The Scotsman, 15 March 2009.

Interview by the author with senior police official, Belfast, 15 July 2010.

Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey 2006, available at http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2006/

See Liechty and Clegg, Moving Beyond Sectarianism (note 22), p. 123.

Stefania Paolini et al., ‘Effects of Direct and Indirect Cross-Group Friendships on Judgments of Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland: The Mediating Role of an Anxiety-Reduction Mechanism’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 30 (2004), p. 770.

Northern Ireland Life & Times Survey 2010 (note 17).

Off-the-record interview by the author with former paramilitary activist, Belfast, 14 July 2010.

Sean Byrne, ‘Consociational and Civic Society Approaches to Peacebuilding in Northern Ireland’, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 38 (2001), p. 327.

Nolan, ‘The Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report’ (note 4), p. 30.

Ivan Little, ‘UK PM Says Segregation in Northern Ireland Must End’, Reuters, 9 June 2011.

Sean O'Hagan, ‘Belfast, Divided in the Name of Peace’, The Observer, 21 January 2012.

Nolan, ‘The Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report’ (note 4), p. 74.

Ibid., p. 5.

Ibid., p. 151.

Gallagher, ‘After the War Comes Peace?’ (note 92), p. 638.

Nolan, ‘The Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report’ (note 4), p. 11.

For a perspective on future research areas relative to ontological security in Northern Ireland, see Colin Knox, ‘Peace Building in Northern Ireland: A Role for Civil Society’, Social Policy & Society, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2010), pp. 13–28. Also see the work of the Belfast Interface Project, available at http://www.belfastinterfaceproject.org/#. For a consideration of future research that might help bridge the idea of ‘peace without reconciliation’, including reflection on implications for new approaches in Northern Ireland and the Arab–Israeli conflict, see Ariel Heifetz Knobel, ‘A Paradoxical Peace in Northern Ireland’, Praxis: The Fletcher Journal of Human Security, Vol. 26 (2011), pp. 89–96. On the physical and cognitive implications of ‘shared space’ as a geographical approach to community reconciliation, see Milena Komarova, ‘Shared Space in Belfast and the Limits of a Shared Future’, Divided Cities/Contested States Working Paper No. 3, 2008.