The Warrior's Honour [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

He addresses the role of the media and the triangle of relationships between audience/media/political leaders; he looks at the rise in humanitarian organisations and the peculiarities of the ethics under which they work; he brings insights from the field on the way the UN is so often programmed to fail.

The power of Ignatieff's writing stems from his unique capacity to bring together the perspectives of news correspondent, novelist and philosopher. He is direct and extremely readable, while also knifing into the subtle heart of the "New World Order."

In the chapter entitled "The Narcissism of Minor Difference" he comes as close anything I have read to explaining why ordinary people are moved sometimes to conduct atrocities on their neighbours. It is vivid and convincing.

If you feel exasperated by the hideous mysteries of ethnic and sectarian conflict, I urge you to read this book, if for that chapter alone.

Now that I have read it, however, I understand why it so often gets quoted by other authors; despite its relatively short length, it is literally one of the very best books on the issue of ethnic-based conflict. Ignatieff's writing is extremely quotable, and on numerous occasions I found myself highlighting passages which so aptly drove to the heart of what other authors require whole chapters to evoke. Rich in sources - both literary and philosophical - it is, unquestionably, a master's exercise in conciseness and analysis.

The chapters "The Narcissism of Minor Difference" and "The Seductiveness of Moral Disgust" are especially enlightening, and I know I will be revisiting them frequently.

This book, along with Jonathan Glover's Humanity, should be read by anyone who hopes to cast a ray of light, however feeble, into the shadowy realms of man's inhumanity to man.

The book is a sort of meditation on the nature of these "modern wars" that is colored much by his own personal experiences in several of them. The observation that is central to the book is that diverse people (who are really much alike too) can fall into a state of viewing the "other" as the enemy when a state begins to fail to protect them, and anarchy looms. In successful modern states, the protection is present, and the fiction that diverse people are underneath it all, the same, is maintained.

The book has a very intelligent treatment of the dilemma of the various aid agencies such as the Red Cross and the UN Peacekeepers in trying to ameliorate the effects of war, and maintain their credibility, while not prolonging it or even intensifying it.

On the other hand, the author is a little too reverent of Freudian and even Marxist ideas on the nature of man, both of whom have about zero credibility to the discerning reader. His account of the "Narcissism of Minor Differences" is just so much hooey to me. Ignatieff seems to be entirely uninformed of modern thinking on this problem, which goes by the name of evolutionary psychology, and to me, seems so much more insightful and informative.

The general problem of war is not treated here, only a particular form of it. The wars that inform his thinking in this book are those in Angola, Lebanon, Ireland and, especially, Yugoslavia, with a few "lessons" from the holocaust thrown in. There is not much in the way of systematic study, but rather a grab bag of ideas and anecdotal observations. Eloquently written, though...