The IRA must be forced to tolerate Ulster Loyalists. Or, indeed, Trimble must be forced to tolerate Adams. Mr Clinton and Mr Blair would run a mile from any such injunction. Northern Ireland, mired in centuries of bitter experience, is never overtly forced to do anything. It lives in the real world of ancestral hatreds, refurbished packages - and endless patience.
Statesmen see it coming and clear their diaries.
The language of force is reserved for other, lower links in the chain. Disjunction with the Balkans is both obvious and deeply disheartening. We grind away at Northern Ireland because we know there is no other way. We know that telling the Orange Order where they can or can't march, is a sport of lighted matches and fireworks. We know about the long grind to win hearts and minds and gradually, painfully gradually, about securing a state of relative peace rather than undeclared war.