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The article focuses on the problems associated with political control in the strategy of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). There are four main reasons regarding the political control over the means of coercion and violence. One of the reason is theoretical, while the other three reasons are related to the Irish republican political tradition. They present an interesting set of problems with which Irish republicanism has suffered during its history. The first reason is that no armed conflict ever presented between exactly equal combatants. The second reason is that the IRA has been charged with a sense of military forerunner.

This article critically appraises Malachi O'Doherty, book "The Trouble With Guns: Republican Strategy and the Provisional IRA." It is with pieces of outstanding historical revisionism like "The Trouble With Guns" that doubts about one's chosen profession arise. This book is the first to offer a serious reinterpretation of the Provisional IRA and Northern Ireland history since 1969. In a way, we have waited over twenty years for such a study that questions the popular imagery surrounding this small, but still controversial, and highly written about, civil conflict. Yet the disturbing truth for an academic pro- fession that cherishes its freedom of inquiry is that a book of this nature should have been written long ago by one of their number. The fact that a journalist, Malachi O'Doherty, has accomplished this task is evidence not only of his intellectual rigor, but also of the academic neglect of the military and strategic dimensions of the conflict, the result of which has been to allow partial, ill-formed images to flourish unchallenged.