Why Decommissioning is a Real Issue

The Nationalist minority in Northern Ireland is protected by the Agreement. One of the principles to which both Sinn Fein and the Progressive Unionist Party agreed in 1997 was that they gave their total and absolute commitment to the total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations. It is important for a U.S. audience to understand that those of us in Ireland who are concerned to maintain certain basic norms of representative democracy have good reasons to insist on the principle of the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons, regardless of who the weapons are held by, or for what motive. But if one of the parties in a coalition has an association with a paramilitary organization that is refusing in principle to disarm itself that party is likely to rely in its coalition negotiations on something more than just the weight of votes that it has in the Dail. A party associated with a paramilitary organization has, at all times, an extra lever in negotiations because a paramilitary organization is an organization that has held onto the means to use violence to achieve its ends

Twenty Years of Collapse and Counting: The Cost of Failure in Somalia

Analyzes the human and financial costs of Somali conflicts and famines, including costs of humanitarian and development aid; peacekeeping, military responses and aid, anti-terrorism, and diplomacy; piracy; and international crime and illicit money flows

Reflections on Brexit and its Implications for Ireland. CEPS Policy Insights No 2017/16/May 2017

This paper presents the testimony delivered by John Bruton, former Prime Minister of Ireland, on 27 April 2017, before the Seanad Special Committee on the Withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union. The Special Committee was established by the Seanad on February 27th to consider the implications of Brexit for Ireland. Mr Bruton began his testimony by commending the committee for its work and also the government for ensuring, through effective diplomacy, that the particular problems of Ireland have been publicly recognised in the negotiating positions of both the EU 27 and the UK

Consent of a majority of the rest of the EU will be needed if there is to be a new UK-EU relationship

The only place in the EU where the issues that might arise from a UK renegotiation or withdrawal are being debated in any detail is in the UK itself. But any change in the relationship will have an impact on all member states. Tim Oliver and John Bruton write that it is therefore not simply about what Britain wants from its relationship with the EU, but also what the other 27 states would want, and whether these can be reconciled