Citing Isaiah Berlin, Ignatieff compares ethnic nationalism to a twig that, if pressed down, will spring back with even greater force. Without an inclusive civic identity for people to embrace, one that recognizes people’s differ- ences without denying their equality, the forces of ethnic nationalism are likely to take hold.

Blood and Belonging has a personal dimension for Ignatieff, who has family ties to Ukraine and to Quebec, and who lived in the former Yugoslavia as a child. Visiting the crypt in Ukraine where his great-grandfather is buried, he discovers that a butcher has used his ancestor’s grave to cut meat. The experience prompts a cri de coeur:

Nations and graves. Graves and nations. Land is sacred because it is where your ancestors lie. Ancestors must be remembered because human life is a small and trivial thing without the anchoring of the past. Land is worth dying for, because strangers will profane the graves. The graves were profaned. The butchers slaughtered on top of the marble. A person would fight to stop this if he could.

He goes on: “Looking back, I see that time in the crypt as the moment when I began to change, when some element of respect for the national project be- gan to creep into my feelings.” The post-national, cosmopolitan consciousness that Ignatieff had acquired began to seem like a privilege of Western elites — those who can rely on a stable nation-state to return to and therefore have the luxury of forgetting that even old-fashioned Westphalian states are no simple task to maintain.

Reading this, one thinks: This is not how academics operate. You don’t admit coming to accept a certain brand of nationalism because you felt something in a crypt. You mention a theory. You cite new social science. In the worst case, you admit that your critics pointed out something you didn’t know. But you don’t let your feelings into it!

The crypt incident reveals the soft inner side of Ignatieff’s liberalism, which recognizes humans as conflicted, emotional beings, incapable of being defined by one overarching characteristic. In A Just Measure of Pain, Ignatieff expresses skepticism about the social-scientific view that humans can be gauged and explained by rational means alone. In The Needs of Strangers, he rejects the economic supposition that material self-interest is behaviour’s primary motor. In Blood and Belonging, his views about human nature begin to resemble those of Isaiah Berlin, whom Ignatieff describes as “an intuitive thinker, interested . . . in inner anguish, personal dilemmas, and the conflict between human values.”

Berlin regarded human beings, both individually and collectively, as fundamentally divided. Rather than trying to straighten what Kant called the “crooked timber of humanity” by imposing one supreme vision of how to live, a liberal polity’s task is to accommodate human duality by providing a peaceful realm where individuals are free to discover who they are and choose their own vision of the good. Self-discovery and choice, however, are often linked to a sense of belonging to something larger than oneself — a culture or tradition with which one can identify and where one can feel understood. It was for this reason that Berlin supported the creation of the state of Israel, which he maintained would grant Jews the freedom to decide whether to embrace their ancestral culture. Ignatieff’s willingness to recognize Quebec as distinct is based on similar thinking.

Showing one’s soft side may be anathema to academics, but it is not a bad thing for a politician. Politics requires knowing how to tap into people’s hopes and fears. It is also high drama, a place where making visceral decisions can appear noble, decisive, and comfortingly human. Intuitive decisions can be the stuff of high political mythology in the way rational decisions cannot.

Like a hedgehog, Ignatieff’s liberalism has a tough exterior as well as a soft inside. While some prominent liberal theorists take for granted the existence of stable, orderly states, for Ignatieff the maintenance and promotion of state stability is a core aspect of responsible, modern liberalism, and it is difficult to achieve. Whether at home or abroad, whether in prisons or through military intervention, creating stability often involves the use of coercive force by the state. Ignatieff’s tough exterior shows itself in those works where he examines the delicate overlap between this use of force and the moral principles it aims to protect.

The Warrior’s Honor, Virtual War, and Empire Lite round out a four-part series, which Blood and Belonging began, examining the world through the prism of ethnic conflict zones. The Warrior’s Honor is based on visits to Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola, and Afghanistan. Virtual War examines the ethical issues raised by the 1999 Kosovo bombing campaign, a war in the name of human rights, conducted largely by remote control, with zero casualties on the nato side. Empire Lite explores nation-building efforts in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan, documenting the emergence of what Ignatieff calls an American “humanitarian empire.”

One of the lessons in these books is that we do not live in a post-national world, and that for people who inhabit weak or collapsed states, the importance of sovereignty, security, and the rule of law are painfully clear. It is the weakness of states, rather than some fundamental inter-tribal antipathy, that causes ethnic and racial conflict. The nation-state, therefore, remains the best guarantor of peace, stability, and human rights, and so helping to strengthen weak states should be a serious priority for liberal internationalists living in the developed world.

When used as a last resort, Ignatieff argues that military intervention may be morally required as a way of protecting against systematic humanrights abuses or of countering threats to the international community. Decisions to intervene must carefully assess risks, capabilities, and consequences, and demonstrate that non-military means have been exhausted. This theoretical framework led Ignatieff to support the nato campaign in Kosovo, to argue that further military action should have been taken to prevent the Rwandan genocide, and to support, initially, the second Iraq war.