Abstract
This chapter argues that the principal Irish nationalist script exaggerates the role of the international, in particular the US, in the peace process. The US President took his cue to enter the stage from the Irish and British governments. His role was to perform in support of the ‘pan-nationalist front’ in order to persuade the IRA that ‘unarmed struggle’ would be more successful than ‘armed struggle’ in driving back the British ‘pan-unionist front’. The US President played his role in the charade by attacking the British government and demonstrating to a hardline republican audience the power of pan-nationalism in the negotiating process. The US performance, however, was too impressive, underlining unionist isolation and undermining the peace process.
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Dixon, P. (2019). All the World’s a Stage. In: Performing the Northern Ireland Peace Process. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91343-8_9
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