Leading Article: Peacemakers should be praised, for they have moral greatness

IT IS all too easy for those of us lucky enough to live in peaceful times and in peaceful places to take the gift of non-violence for granted. Most of the wars in the world since 1945 have happened or are happening far away. Apart from North America, Europe has been the safest continent on which to live. But there has been one armed conflict right at the heart of our rich, democratic and civilised society: the terrorist war over Northern Ireland that has claimed 3,000 lives. For most of us, living in other parts of the United Kingdom or in the Republic of Ireland, that conflict may have had little direct effect, but we are still able to rejoice in the Good Friday agreement and to applaud the Nobel Peace Prize for John Hume and David Trimble.

Mr Hume's contribution has long been recognised - even by the award of several other prizes. Indeed, it has been so long recognised that it takes an occasion like this to jog our memory of just how important a role he has played in standing up to armed republicanism and in persuading the IRA that the war was over. Mr Trimble's citation is of shorter standing, but is the greater surprise. This is the man who came to the leadership of the main Unionist party by putting himself at the head of the mob demanding the right to march down a Nationalist road at Drumcree. He is not the first leader of the No party to say Yes, but he is the first to take most of his party with him. The first danger of the Good Friday agreement was that of the Unionist veto, and that has not happened. It may still be premature to declare the conflict in Northern Ireland over, especially as the IRA continues to refuse to give up its weapons, but it has undoubtedly moved into a different phase, in which the prospect is of a much lower level of violence.

Of course, the business of measuring peace and the contribution to it made by individuals is an arbitrary one. The idea of peace prizes makes as much sense as those of beauty contests, literary awards and lists of the 10 greatest pop songs this century. But it is possible - indeed imperative - to make judgements about the causes of modern conflicts and the best ways to resolve them. Next week the International Institute for Strategic Studies publishes its invaluable guide to armed conflicts all over the world, which will suggest that the last year has been one of great uncertainty and worsening bloodshed. The turmoil in Russia, the economic downturn in east Asia and the Pakistani nuclear tests provide a gloomy backdrop to a picture of civil wars gradually replacing the more static international conflicts of the Cold War period.

Yesterday's award is less likely to be mocked by history than the one four years ago, shared by Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin. The Oslo Agreement may have been a step forward but, as the Israelis and Palestinians attempt to repeat the experience in Maryland, the Middle East peace process has taken two steps back. Both sides are armed with much-diminished moral authority, and neither side has a real incentive to try to solve the apparently insoluble.

And, of course, peace prizes are a feeble mechanism for advancing the cause of peace around the world. What will really determine whether or not the world is a more peaceful place over the next few years will not be the Swedish academy's attempt to compare and choose between chalk and cheese, but the effectiveness with which the United States deploys its leadership role. The lesson of the post-Cold-War era so far is that US leadership of groups of interested nations (sometimes described pompously as "the international community") is the best way to resolve conflicts. The United Nations on its own is not yet capable of reacting with speed, policy coherence or military power. And the US on its own cannot act as the world's policeman; it simply ends up bombing an aspirin factory in Khartoum in order to distract attention from the President's local difficulties.

But there are limits to the power of the US, even acting in concert with other nations, as we have seen in the Middle East and in Kosovo.

So, however flawed the Nobel Peace Prize, it is still valuable as an incentive to political leaders who want their place in history, because, in writing the first draft, a peace prize is a good first stab at a measure of moral greatness. Today it gives us the opportunity to pay tribute to two exceptional men.