At least as much as it is a search for peace, the peace process is a struggle for moral supremacy. Seeing this allows us to avoid wishful thinking, piety and moral posturing, and to see more clearly the meaning of events.
The Northern conflict changed significantly with the Hume/Adams process and the ceasefire of 1994, when Irish republicanism declared peace on its enemies, challenging unionism and the British on the issue of ending the conflict.
For a long time, republicans had fought a war without caring what anyone thought of them. They thus acquired a high nuisance factor, particularly with regard to British public opinion, which provided them with a clear channel for the pursuit of their objectives. But a changing moral climate placed a limit on the efficacy of armed struggle. Crucially, the shift in attitudes in the Republic, having pendulumed with the politics of the last atrocity, began to settle into a disgruntled anti-nationalism by the mid-1980s. IRA "mistakes" and the success of British and unionist propaganda had dried up support in the South, restricting republican sentiment to the North's nationalist ghettoes.
A forward dynamic was essential because inertia, being the core of unionist survival strategy, was the enemy of republicanism.
This was the context in which Hume/Adams occurred. John Hume, representing the wider nationalist population, had a strong mandate to engage republicans in a constitutional process. But, even more so, Gerry Adams had a requirement, on behalf of republicanism, to regain the high moral ground and re-create the wider support base on which the forward march of republicanism depended.
The new republican tactic was to shame its enemies, using their own rhetoric as the instrument of attack, to employ the judo-fighter's trick of turning the strength of the opponent to advantage. By challenging their enemies on the issue of peace, republicans could expose anti-nationalist hypocrisy and present unionism with a Hobson's choice: agree to movement which might willy-nilly place the Union in jeopardy, or be seen as opposing peace and co-operation.
Since the election of David Trimble to the leadership of the UUP, unionism has been seeking, with considerable success, to outplay republicans at this game of moral chess. Trimble, realising that failure to engage would reverse the propaganda gains of unionism, sought to walk the tightrope between dismantling the Union and handing the moral advantage to republicans.
Several times in the past few years, republicans and unionists have swapped places on the high moral ground, as the propaganda battle about decommissioning ebbed and flowed. The unionist tactic was to insist on the peace process retaining an implicit acknowledgement that republican armed struggle lacked a moral basis, whereas unionism was without fault.
Just as republicans sought to drive unionism into the gap between moral bankruptcy and dismantling the Union, unionists sought to push republicans into a stark choice between surrender and a return to violence. They knew the IRA would never surrender and could never be defeated: what they hoped for was its final moral ostracism. Republicans, on the other hand, sought a form of conflict-resolution which would validate their armed struggle and place all sides on an equal moral footing.
Of course, republicans could at any time have secured an enormous propaganda coup by eschewing violence and committing themselves to politics. But this once-off gain, given the disingenuousness of unionism and the antipathy to republicanism in both Ireland and Britain, would have lost its moral currency in the cold reality of political grind. Anyway, in the theology of republicanism, no generation of Irish republicans could claim the moral authority to abandon completely the option of physical force.
But two weeks ago, republicans delivered what for them was the ultimate moral challenge, a strategy which allowed for the maintenance of the military integrity of republicanism while also opening up a degree of political space and issuing a definitive challenge to unionism to put up or shut up. The latest proposal from the IRA is ingenious in its potential for keeping republicanism in the political equation while refusing the core unionist requirement.
The idea of opening up IRA arms bunkers for inspection by two independent outsiders is deeply symbolic in terms of what republicans have been trying to achieve. Far from a ritual of surrender or withdrawal, it is a way of dramatising the paradox of armed struggle, combining the propaganda benefits of military inactivity with a show of strength. The gesture is deliberately ambiguous, presenting the metaphorical resonance of the silent gun in what is also a subtle symbol of military deterrence.
Nevertheless, the proposal is difficult for those who say they favour peace to argue against. Republicans have called "check" and unionists need a deus ex machina to get them off the hook. Unionists know this, but, hoisted on the petard of their own rhetoric, have a narrowing route of escape.
Although the resources of the Southern neo-unionist conspiracy have been loosed to try to bail them out once again, it is clear the two governments are now so determined to see the decommissioning issue as irrelevant humbug that they are prepared to go along with virtually anything in the nature of an IRA gesture.
If such sub-texts appear cynical, either in their conception or description, consider the fact that all this is an alternative to slaughter. Is this progress? Yes. Was this also part of the republican strategy? I believe so. Will republicans receive due credit? Echo answers "credit?"