Page 142 - Journal of Special Operations Medicine - Winter 2016

Blood and Belonging

Journeys Into the New Nationalism

Ignatieff, Michael. Blood and Belonging: Journeys Into the New Nationalism. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and
Giroux; 1995. Paperback: 276 pages. ISBN-10: 0374524483 and ISBN-13:978-0374524487.
Review by COL (Ret) Warner “Rocky” D. Farr, MD, MPH

efore the Cold War ended, the politics of national countries like Germany, Ukraine, Quebec, Kurdistan,
Bidentity were mostly overshadowed by the bipo- and Northern Ireland. He argues that nationalism can
lar super power world and were confined to isolated be either a constructive, binding force or a “collective
incidents of ethnic strife and civil escape from reality, whose adherents, inhabiting a delu-
war in faraway, not much reported sional realm of noble causes and tragic sacrifice, strait
on, countries. After the collapse of jacket themselves and other groups in the fiction of an
Communist regimes of Eastern Eu- irreducible ethnic identity.” He gives a firsthand look
rope and the progression of Cold inside a Kurdish guerrilla camp in northern Iraq; a meet-
War East–West relations, a surge ing with a neo-Nazi skinhead in Leipzig, Germany; an
of nationalism seems to have swept interview with an octogenarian Yugoslav dissident; and
the world. In Blood and Belonging, an encounter with the Cree Indians of northern Can-
Michael Ignatieff, an international ada. The Cree are adding their voices to the separatist
journalist, examines why blood ties calls of French-speaking Quebecois by demanding self-
in regions as varied as Yugoslavia, determination in an effort to stave off encroaching hy-
Ukraine, Kurdistan, Northern Ireland, Quebec, Ger- droelectric development. The Quebecois are demanding
many, and the former Soviet republics all could describe self-determination from Canada while the Cree within
the definitive factor in modern international relations Quebec are demanding self-determination from Quebec,
today. He explores how ethnic pride morphs into eth- and separatist Quebec is saying no!
nic cleansing, whether modern citizens can abandon a
warring past, and why a people want a national state As Special Forces looks at resurrecting the unconven-
of their own. More and more, post–Cold War armed tional warfare business, this exploration of nationalism
struggle seems to be in vogue and seems to begin to be in the post–Cold War era is a great read. Modern nation-
more justified. alism and its often-brutal results provide good studies
about what invokes and inspires a guerrilla movement.
To understand this current upstroke in nationalist ten- The author provides a good reading list as an appendix.
sion, terror, and balkanization, Ignatieff traveled to Published in 1995, this book is findable as a used book
war-torn countries (Yugoslavia) and then to reunited on the Internet.

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