The Warrior's Honor

Michael Ignatieff's The Warrior's Honor is a graphic and unflinching portrait of modern warfare and humanitarian engagements to make war more "civilized." While Ignatieff is skeptical towards avowedly "neutral" engagements such as the Swiss Red Cross, he retains a measure of hope or at least reserved optimism for the prospect that warring parties can reconcile if "rituals in which communities once at war learn to mourn their dead together" (190). The tone of the book is …

…the continuing woes of the former Yugoslavia, it is increasingly obvious that problems of wartorn disintegrating states are not confined to borders of first or third world. Ignatieff offers no solutions for the mess we are in - he is certainly not an advocate of civil disobedience - nevertheless, there are some directions we can work towards, and two methods, reconciliation and shame, combat for a temporary peace, or at least for an illusory justice.