making peaceby george j. mitchell
TRANSCRIPT
Making Peace by George J. MitchellReview by: Philip ZelikowForeign Affairs, Vol. 78, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 1999), p. 171Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20049480 .
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thought. Such gushy trivialization is not
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MakingPeace. by george j. Mitchell.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999, 193 pp. $24.00.
The two landmarks of the Northern Ireland peace process over the last decade
are the Downing Street Declaration of
1993 and the Good Friday Agreement of
1998. Former Senator Mitchell led the
panel of outside mediators that helped
produce the Good Friday understanding and he has now written a memoir of his
work from 1995 to 1998. Thankfully, it is too brief to convey a full sense of the ex
hausting but deadly important wrangling involved. Yet the reader needs only
a little
imagination to come away impressed with
the patience, dedication, and courage
displayed by Mitchell, his colleagues, and their staffs. From this concise, modest
account, Mitchell complemented those
qualities with measured judgment and
ingenuity. Carefully composed at a time
when the issues and people are still very
much alive, this book is often eloquent in what it does not say. Among many key
figures, Unionist politician David Trimble was
apparently the truly indispensable man, exhibiting
an array of sklls that few
other politicians would even understand.
Among the author's gifts is that he does
understand, perhaps even more now than
he did before coming to Northern Ireland.
The Wilsonian Century: U.S. Foreign
Policy Sincei?oo. by frank
ninkovich. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1999, 330 pp. $27.50. Ninkovich's last book, Modernity and
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successors. Building
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FOREIGN AFFAIRS September/October 1999 [171]
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