Understanding terrorism and what we can do about it: a continuing conversation with Lord John Alderdice, (former) speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly and international commissioner for the International Monitoring Commission

Dr Ramzy began her introduction of psychoanalytic psychiatrist and former Head of the Assembly of the Northern Irish Parliament, Lord John Alderdice, by saying that he had been actively engaged in the political arena laboring for peace since 1978. She noted that Dr Alderdice had led the Alliance Party’s delegation to the multi-party peace talks chaired by US former Senator, George Mitchell, and had helped to negotiate one of the most successful peace processes of the twentieth century culminating in the Belfast agreement of 1998. Signed on Good Friday of that year, the terms of the agreement urged the (former) combatants to abandon armed struggle and to deal with the underlying social confl ict in Northern Ireland via the political process – “with words rather than weapons” as Dr Ramzy put it. In January 2004, Lord Alderdice was appointed by the British and Irish governments to the newly created International Monitoring Commission, whose goal is to promote a stable and peaceful government in Northern Ireland by reporting to the British and Irish governments about the activities of paramilitary organizations and on the progress of normalizing security arrangements in Northern Ireland. During the same month, he was also invited to speak at the 2004 winter meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association about terrorism. Dr Ramzy then reminded the audience that, during his presentation, Lord Alderdice had said that an act of terrorism entailed not only breaking through social and moral conventions to shock people, but it also threatened their standard of living. According to Alderdice, Ramzy continued, the ultimate purpose of terrorism was to undermine the capacity of the powerful, and to menace their core prin-