While there is much in the collection that one could analyze rigorously, the most fruitful element from a philosopher’s perspective is Ignatieff’s explorations of the theoretical clashes of neutralism and interventionism, and of universalism and relativism, as they are instantiated between and within the agencies and individuals attempting to help war’s victims. Of particular interest is the role of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The ICRC was founded on the principle of moral and political neutrality in order to assist the victims of war, regardless of their culpability, and to teach new warriors the rules of war. The dilemmas the ICRC faces epitomize the ideological paradoxes plaguing modern international politics—of remaining neutral in the face of evil and of helping when assistance may prolong the evils of war. War’s evil increases when its rules of conduct are ignored, and Ignatieff reports the ICRC agents’ frustrations in trying to teach young soldiers reasons why the rules ought to be obeyed.

The rules of war, Ignatieff notes, are ancient, and are founded for the most part on the warrior’s own code of honor, the universal ethos required of the warrior. It is worth adding to his account that such rules did not and do not normally require a state or international organization to enforce them, for they are cultural responses to a prevalent human institution, without which, Ignatieff rightly argues, “war is not war—it is no more than slaughter” (117). This commonsense approach is not, however, without opposition. Cicero wrote “Laws are silent in time of war—silent enim leges inter arma” (Fifth Phillipic), and Clausewitz in On War wrote that to introduce into war any moderation was absurd. Often the rules of war are politically ignored on general utilitarian grounds or military strategy, yet an emerging problem identified by Ignatieff is that the rules of war are not always culturally absorbed by today’s fighters; that is, they are missing the subtle social structures that could teach them the warrior’s codes, because many fighting the ragged wars of drug runners, guerillas, and petty rulers are children.

Ignatieff’s experiences and reflections lead him to conclude that the just war codes depend ultimately on the warrior’s own code of honor: on a conception that “lies within the warrior himself” (118). His honor provides the basic virtues by which he fights; in war, one of our most ancient, albeit extreme and destructive institutions, honor is defined by the agents’ own vision of themselves. However, Ignatieff finds that the modern battlefield is populated often with armed young males—children whose aggressive instincts have not yet been tamed by cultural structures that would normally forge a sense of honor. While the plight of children on the battlefield is symptomatic of a collapse in the proper rules of conduct in war, Ignatieff also argues that it also reflects a larger breakdown in morality and social order.

Moving from the local reasons for the failure of codes of proper conduct, Ignatieff thus slips into the macro argument. He accepts the validity of political rationalism, the theory that good politics and social order come from good government in the form of a nation-state. Conflict and the decline of morality in war, he observes, are at their worst when the state is absent or redundant. The empirical proposition, however, must be related to political philosophy; while it may be true that an absence of the state fosters moral regression, one has to be careful not to imply that the state is the foundation of the laws and codes of conduct that provide societal order. Logically and historically moral laws precede the government, and the state is formed to sustain the majority’s general values. Ignatieff is aware of his implications, for he characterizes the conflicts he investigates as Hobbesian (the violent natural state of humans existing without a state) and asserts that their goal ought to be Lockean (the cooperative formation of a state designed to protect the peaceful majority from the aberrant minority). While order is preferable to chaos, and peace to war, the difference in the political philosophy of the two models is of vital importance; but Ignatieff confuses this slightly in claiming that if the West had been militarily stronger in Iraq, Somalia, and Bosnia, and forcibly defended governmental institutions, the Lockean world may have been attained. But it needs to be noted that such a policy is more Hobbesian than Lockean and lends itself to the outmoded and more dangerous political model of the powerful state rather than to the Lockean cooperative commonwealth. Nonetheless, Ignatieff’s liberal credentials steer his conclusions toward what can be identified as the Millian political doctrine of self-determination. Ignatieff reluctantly recognizes that accepting a laissez-faire approach by the United Nations may imply permitting a very bloody emergence of a new state, a dilemma that wreaks havoc on the western conscience.

In all, the macro failure of the state in such regions has led to the failure of law, and the resulting collapse of order has in turn led to the local demise of traditional, older rules—of codes of honor and their conscientious obedience. In such societies humanity evaporates and man becomes an Aristotelian outlaw—beyond the limits of peaceful social cooperation. The life of the outlaw is not human, and this entity is what Ignatieff finds employed in the irregular armies fighting for peripheral values around the world.

The abysmal conditions Ignatieff explores are fortunately not the prevalent condition for most of humanity. Most of the world enjoys a peace and order that are becoming alien to those caught in the vagaries of postmodern war. Nevertheless, Ignatieff’s deliberations are a valuable account of the failure of proper government and the resultant demise of society and the warrior’s honor. But, as he well explores, the outsider becomes burdened with moral dilemmas entwined in intervention and assistance, judging and keeping the peace, securing order yet creating unhealthy dependencies.

I have focused on a few of the political points that Ignatieff makes, but there is much more in The Warrior’s Honor—for instance, his critique of news reports in “The Ethics of Television”—to make it a worthwhile collection.