November 2000

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Review

The Warrior's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience, by Michael Ignatieff, Henry Holt & Company, New York, 1997

Elaine C. Hagopian is Professor Emerita of Sociology, Simmons College, Boston.

Ignatieff's Argument

Michael Ignatieff attributes the growth of Western conscience about the atrocities committed in ethnic wars to their horrific televised portrayals. The latter have given rise to a Western "narrative of compassion and moral commitment" and have made it more difficult "to sustain indifference or ignorance." Given this, he asks, what should the West do about these conflicts? He sets up his readers to follow the logic of his causal explanation of today's ethnic conflicts and thence to accept his proposed neocolonialist solution as the only remedy. Each chapter in the book offers a foundational plank in his hermetically sealed causal edifice which has only a single exit door.

He begins with several assumptions:

• Ethnic nationalism is a form of narcissism--a self-love that encourages devaluation and intolerance of others. Drawing on Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents, Ignatieff asserts a linkage between narcissistic nationalism and aggression.

• Ethnic nationalist conflicts result from the breakdown of the state and the concomitant collapse of common institutions that counter ethnic identities and allegiances. Such breakdowns occur in areas he identifies as "zones of danger," i.e., primarily non-western and formerly colonized countries. He contrasts these areas to the western dominated "zones of safety." Globalization has integrated the latter zones, while chaos characterizes the zones of danger. He describes the stages leading to ethnic wars in the zones of danger as follows: collapse of the over-arching state; growth of "Hobbesian fear," followed by paranoia, and then war. He insists that "People become ënationalistic' when they are afraid; when the only answer to the question ëwho will protect me now?' becomes ëmy own people.'"

• The West, he says, starts from "a universalistic ethic based on ideas of human rights; they [peoples in the zone of danger] start from particularistic ethics that define the tribe, the nation, or ethnicity as the legitimate moral concern." In short, westerners are solid, stable, and possessed of a universal moral conscience; non-westerners tend towards ethnic chauvinism.

His framework for understanding the emergence of ethnic conflicts established, Ignatieff goes on to explore and then dismiss the role of contemporary human rights groups as possible instruments of ethnic conflict resolution. Their mission, he asserts, is to improve treatment of victims on both sides of the conflict, not to work for justice. He fails to mention that his own proposed solution (see below) does not include justice as a goal. As an example, he notes that International Committee of the Red Cross focuses on assuring good treatment of prisoners of war, as well as promoting international laws governing war. The ICRC, he states, attempts to substitute these efforts for the pre-modern concept of "the warrior's honor." However, he believes that the ICRC and other human rights groups often succeed in prolonging the conflict with their material support to prisoners and victims of the war, by relieving the adversaries of accountability.

He further dismisses the United Nations' efforts as nothing more than "peacekeeping," not actual resolution of the conflict. Moreover, in what is a contradiction of his own "remedy," he disqualifies the idea of a UN Trusteeship as restorative solution. He asserts: "... it is doubtful that the international community has the staying power for such an exercise or that indigenous populations can endure being ruled by strangers [emphasis mine]. Trusteeship is bound to engender the same resentments that led to uprisings against imperial rule, and at the end of the day, Trusteeship may leave failed states as divided as they were when they went in."

Having "cleansed" the conflict resolution landscape of possible contributory instrumentalities, Ignatieff moves into the vacuum with his own repertoire. The foundational layer is the resurfaced Enlightenment heritage of universal human rights. Its "...moral rationale is the indivisibility of human interests and needs in an interdependent world." However, he insists, conscience alone may motivate zones of safety to offer charity to zones of danger, but not to take the action required to stem ethnic fires. For the latter to happen, Westerners have to understand that the security of each zone is tied to that of the other. That is, "...it seems evident that empire and imperial rivalry provided the zones of safety in which we live with a permanent rationale for involvement in the zones of danger." From this staging, Ignatieff asserts that the linchpin of conscience and interdependence is selective Western intervention in zones of danger. Such intervention is premised on takeover of the country in question to provide the stability and administration necessary for the growth of institutions and laws binding people together. The intervention should remain long enough to oversee the growth of an over-arching state to prevent further ethnic conflict and to assure long-term co-existence. Ignatieff criticizes the present form of Western intervention, i.e., quick strike and fast exit. He observes that the quick entry and exit policy does not allow completion of the job. He summons nostalgia for imperialism by noting:

"In the nineteenth century, this work was 'the white man's burden': ... the building of the infrastructure of imperial rule and administration .... At least in retrospect, imperial rule had a certain logic: Those who cannot agree to rule themselves may be able to submit to rule by strangers (emphasis mine; note contradiction with his statements about UN Trusteeships)."

It should be noted for the record that Ignatieff's interventionist solution (read re-colonization) is part and parcel of the growing chorus of right wing voices calling for a new round of colonialism under the guise of enlightened humanitarianism. (See Charles Radin, "Fixing Africa--in our minds, first," Boston Globe, July 16, 2000.)

Beyond re-colonization in selective areas--other areas may not be worth intervention, or support for the most "right" party may be an option instead of intervention--Ignatieff moves on to deal with the psychological absolutism of narcissistic nationalism which prevents embrace of the other. The latter contrasts sharply with alleged western universalism. Again, he cleanses the menu of options so his own proposal stands out in relief. He takes particular aim at truth and reconciliation efforts. These--as human rights efforts--are fine in many ways, but they are incapable of separating people from the perceptions of their adversaries embedded in nationalist myths that generate the desire for revenge. War crime trials concentrate on specific individuals rather than condemning whole nations. While these are important, they are not enough. Instead, he asserts, public rituals of atonement mobilized by leaders can bring about reconciliation built on mutual apology and mourning together. He insists that people have to be taught that vengeful killing will not bring their dead back. National cultures and traditions are not the culprits; specific individuals are. With this realization and public atonement led by the political and cultural elites of ethnic adversaries, people can eventually separate themselves from the distortions produced by seeing life through their nationalist prism.

Critique

Ignatieff's ideas fit into what Noam Chomsky and others have called the new paradigm rationale for imperial intervention, i.e., humanitarianism. This has replaced the cold war paradigm of fighting communism. The new paradigm is the modern cover for economic and political re-colonization of the non-western world to accommodate globalization needs of trans-national elites in the zones of safety. Ignatieff's work is deceptive and dangerous. Its logical conclusions are that western might makes right; and international law and organizations may be nice to have, but they are rather irrelevant. A further examination of his work is required to expose its inherent flaws.

Occasionally he admits that the imperial past was often vile, and the contemporary globalization may negatively affect the underdeveloped zones of danger states. Nowhere, however, does he acknowledge the devastating role of imperial capitalism and colonialism, past and present, in the destruction of traditional societies and their economies. Nor does he acknowledge fully, Western culpability in the creation of often artificial and intentionally devastated and economically dependent weak states. Until he addresses the zones of safety's monopoly of technology, finance, access to the planet's natural resources, media and communications, and weapons of mass destruction, combined with the western blockage of real economic development in the third and fourth worlds, he misleads his readers. This lack of development is a major factor in ethnic conflicts in the new states. Ignatieff's new imperial intervention (read re-colonization) is not aimed at developing the area, but at reconfiguring it and/or its people so as to play their subservient role in the world economy.

Ignatieff insists that a more ruthless intervention--instead of the quick entry and exit--on our part could have benefited many in the non-western world, e.g.,

Lebanon, Somalia, Bosnia, and Iraq. With regard to Iraq (and Bosnia), he states,

"Had we been more ruthlessly imperial, we might have been a trifle more effective. If General Schwarzkopf had allowed himself to become the General MacArthur of a conquered Iraq, the Iraqi opposition abroad might now be rebuilding the country .... This means ... accepting war [as] ... an unavoidable solution to ethnic conflict. It means accepting a moral pact with the devil of war, seeking to use its flames to burn a path to peace."

It is to be recalled that the Gulf war was not about ethnic conflict in Iraq, but--allegedly--about Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. (It was really about oil and American re-colonization of the Gulf area). Suddenly, he is talking about the Kurdish issue in Iraq, converting the war into an ethnic conflict. True, Iraqi Kurds have not had full rights in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nonetheless, the plight of the Kurds was exacerbated by the US/Iranian (Shah's Iran)/Israeli stimulation and manipulation of their nationalist desires in the early 1970s in order to undermine the Iraqi government. When Iraq cooperated with US/Iranian demands in 1975 regarding the Shatt Al-Arab waterway, the US dropped the exposed Kurds. Moreover, while Saddam Hussein's Iraq was our ally during the Iraq/Iran (Khomeini's Iran) war, the Kurds were not an issue. Iraq was a strong state, and one relatively developed, given its oil reserves. No doubt that Saddam Hussein is cruel dictator, but still, Iraq did not even fit Ignatieff's criteria for intervention. Clearly, Ignatieff's humanitarian façade is shed, and his rightist ideology displayed. The Iraqi Opposition has no constituency in the Iraqi people, but they would certainly be a compliant puppet regime, serving western (particularly US) interests in the area.

In yet another diatribe, Ignatieff focuses on refugees, victims of ethnic cleansing. He rightly observes that the victor attempts to eradicate evidence of the victims' past in the area. Then the victor rewrites history and practices amnesia. The victims, he says, keep pleading for justice while others tell them to face up to their defeat. He notes,

"Victims of ethnic war may refuse this truth, preferring to stick together in refugee camps ... rather than disperse as individuals to face the world alone. Refusing the truth of defeat ... traps them in an identity of collective victimhood."

He implies here that defeat must be recognized, but that the universalizing effects of mutual apology and public atonement will release the victims from their imprisoning nationalism.

Applied to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, his argument disintegrates. Whatever else the Zionist conquest of Palestine was for many Jewish people in 1948, it was a war of colonization and ethnic cleansing for Palestinians, aimed at transforming Palestine into an exclusive Jewish state. International law calls for the right of return of the Palestinian refugees to their homes and property in the conquered areas. For Ignatieff to recommend mutual apology and atonement (not likely to happen in this case any time soon, if at all) as a solution, and to encourage refugees' (in this case, Palestinians') recognition of defeat, add up to eroding and removing international law as a basis for resolution of the conflict. Ignatieff's formula basically implies that Palestinians give up their legal rights. But this is not a formula for peace, as Arafat is learning.

Ignatieff's penchant for psychological explanations and remedies is misleading and contradictory. He has neglected a wider body of work on nationalism by such people as Anthony Smith, Hans Kohn, Eric Hobsbawm, Anthony Giddens, and K.R. Minogue. While there is indeed a psychological dimension to the issues discussed, divorcing them from past and recent history allows him to evade real accountability. Making mutual apology and atonement the basis for reconciling ethnic nationalist adversaries, assumes equal culpability. Worse yet, it diverts attention from the need to radically change structurally-produced inequities to changing individual attitudes, putting the burden on individuals and not the conditions that gave rise to the conflict. However, when it comes to western intervention, he does focus on structural reconfiguration, but not real change. The reconfiguration is to restore "order" in the area so it can resume its role for the globalized North.

In the place of Ignatieff's imperial intervention, which he peddles as hard love humanitarianism, and his proposed method for divorcing individuals from vengeful nationalism, the world needs to build on what it has. The United Nations needs to be strengthened to resolve conflicts objectively. This means that the developed nations must cease manipulating it for their own interests, and yield sovereignty in various areas related to the common welfare of the world's people. Ignatieff is basically saying to hell with the UN even as a cover for US intervention, just go at intervention clear and pure. The world community needs to reinforce the authority of a reformed United Nations. Apology from and atonement from the violators are very important. When these are forthcoming, they can serve as the foundation for serious negotiations based on international law, and not on power imbalances.

Ignatieff has produced a book he claims is based on humanism, but his selective logic belies its arrogant and evil soul.

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