The Warrior's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience - Softcover

Ignatieff, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805055193 ISBN 13: 9780805055191

Publisher: Holt Paperbacks, 1998

Synopsis

Since the early 1990s, Michael Ignatieff has traveled the world's war zones, from Bosnia to the West Bank, from Afghanistan to central Africa. "The Warrior's Honor" is a report and a reflection on what he has seen in the places where ethnic war has become a way of life. In a series of vivid portraits, Ignatieff charts the rise of the new moral interventionists -- the aid workers, reporters, peacekeepers, Red Cross delegates, and diplomats -- who believe that other people's misery, no matter how far away, is of concern to us all. He brings us face-to-face with the new ethnic warriors -- the warlords, gunmen, and paramilitary forces -- who have escalated postmodern war to an unprecedented level of savagery. From the encounter of these two groups, he draws dramatic and startling realizations about the ambiguous ethics of engagement, the limited force of moral justice in a world of war, and the inevitable clash between those who defend tribal and national loyalties and those who speak the universal language of human rights.

About this title

Review:

Written for a variety of periodicals during the small wars of the New World Order, these essays on modern warfare discuss the collapse of old ideas of chivalry under the influence of frankly silly nationalist ideas that would be ludicrous if they did not lead to atrocity. The internationalism opposed to this is itself by definition suspect because it is so heavily mediated by television and by the globalisation that implies. Compassion is a complex entity when heavily loaded with voyeurism and with a feeling that knocking heads together is the role of the powerful of the world; Ignatieff points out how compassion gets thoroughly muddled up with what is a bit too much like bullying. Freud's phrase "the narcissism of minor differences" is apposite; small nations define their difference from nations not distinguishable from them by outsiders by exaggerating minor traits. The typical soldiery of the 90s is an irregular without the constraints on their conduct which military training tends to produce. Ignatieff discusses the role of the UN at length and the paradoxes involved in the phrase "peacekeeping forces"; he also discusses the Red Cross and its complex negotiations with the realities of, say, the Taliban in Afghanistan. History has become nightmarish again. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

"*A moving and superb discussion of the dilemmas of modern humanitarianism amidst modern cruelty." --William Shawcross

"A splid and beautifully written book. Honest, lucid, subtle, full of important information." --Conor Cruise O'Brien

"Compelling and penetrating." --The Boston Globe

"Ignatieff's argument is simple and, to my mind, irresistible." --Alan Ryan, The New York Times Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0805055193
• ISBN 13: 9780805055191
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 228