The Warrior's Honor

During the 1990s, Ignatieff 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. He 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 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 post-modern war to an unprecedented level of savagery. From the encounter of these two groups, he draws 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. The Warrior’s Honor is a profound and searching exploration of the perils and obligations of moral citizenship in a world increasingly scarred by war and genocide.