What if, after the Brighton Attack in 1984, the Prime Minister and Cabinet sanction the SAS to liquidate all members of the Provisional IRA and other Republican groups?
How long would the IRA and other groups last as a fighting force?
What would the political ramifications be in the UK, the rest of the world especially the USA?
Would a "Good Friday" power sharing agreement come any time quicker, or would Loyalists wait it out so not to have any power sharing?
Regards filers.
How long? For as long as there are people breeding on Ireland. What is being proposed would create a generation and more of future recruits. You'd be causing those with Republican sympathies but no real interest in getting involved to become politicised. You'd turn the whole Province into an "Us versus Them" situation, and it would fall apart into something that makes the mid 70s look like a children's tea party.
It's not even as though the SAS were actually that good at locating and eliminating IRA members. Once they got into a shoot-out, they were effective. The trouble was, unfortunately for the security forces, the IRA didn't go around wearing signs saying: "I am a member of the IRA". They looked like farmers and butchers and bus drivers, and it's probably not the best idea in the world to go around shooting people on suspicions. I forget how many times SAS patrols got arrested while conducting operations in Eire. Rather more than should have been the case. It was possible to cross the border on a patrol for a look around. I should know. I took a few patrols that way myself, back in the 70s. However, being mere Royal Marines, and not the supermen that SAS myth has one believe, we didn't get spotted, and got back without anyone being any the wiser.
Political ramifications in the UK? One can't really say it would split the country. It was already. This was the period of the Miners' Strike, and The Enemy Within. All that happens is that you split the country even more than it already was. Impact on the USA? Reagan was President. Reagan made a great deal of his Irish roots. He was proud of them. You remember that good friendship Thatcher used to have with him?
There would be no hope of a Good Friday agreement in living memory of the event. Bloody Sunday, in 1972, was one sticking point for the GFA. I'm trying to imagine a policy of constant repetitions of Bloody Sunday. It won't look pretty.