IRA bank robbery: OK'd by Adams to restore the peace process?

That's the theory posited by Ed Moloney, author of A Secret History of the IRA.

The peace process was always going to involve huge ideological concessions for Irish Republicans.

They would have to recognise the existence of the Northern Ireland state they had tried to destroy with bomb and bullet and they would have to accept that it would stay British until a majority of its people, the Protestants, said otherwise. Republicans would have to become Ministers of the Crown and eventually accept and join the police force. The IRA would have to disarm and eventually disappear.

But if, at the outset of this journey, Adams had spelled all this out to his IRA and Sinn Fein colleagues the process would never have started and he would have been accused of treachery; indeed he would have been lucky to escape with his life.

A cautious and careful man, Adams instead opted for another approach, one which involved placing the IRA in circumstances where its options were so limited it had little choice but to go where he wanted it to go.

As they say: We report, you decide.

Via Scott MacMillan on Slate.

More: Pieter at Peaktalk discusses asymmetric peace talks, illustrating parallels among the IRA, the PLO and Khmer Rouge, here and here.