Page 140 - JSOM Winter 2017

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

138