Negotiating the Good Friday Agreement and Ending the Ukraine War

Abstract

This article argues that an understanding of the successful process which led to the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (GFA) provides a useful context for understanding the constraints and opportunities for peace making in Ukraine. In Northern Ireland political actors took a pragmatic Realist approach to negotiations using a range of political skills, including manipulation and deception, to bring various contrasting and often antagonistic audiences to support or acquiesce in the Good Friday Agreement. Accommodation was achieved against the determined efforts of British Conservative and Republican ‘Dissident’ Militarists, who preferred the ‘moral certainties’ of war to conciliation and the messy morality and politics of peace making. The successful Realist approach applied in Northern Ireland provides some hope for a negotiated end to the Ukraine war.