Product Description

In the age of terrorism, the temptations of ruthlessness can be overwhelming. But there is also the anxiety that a violent response to violence makes us morally indistinguishable from our enemies.

There is perhaps no greater political challenge today than trying to win the war against terrorism without losing our democratic souls. Michael Ignatieff confronts this challenge head-on with a combination of pragmatic idealism, historical sensitivity, and astute political judgment.

Ignatieff traces the modern history of terrorism and counter-terrorism from the nihilists of Czarist Russia and the militias of Weimar Germany to the IRA and Al Qaeda. He shows how the most potent response to terror has been force, decisive and direct, but—just as important—restrained. Restraint also gives democracy its strongest weapon: the moral power to endure when the furies of vengeance and hatred are spent.

Finalist for the 2004 Lionel Gelber Award

"An impeccably argued case for how to balance security and liberty in the face of the new kind of threat posed by today's terrorists…"—Publishers Weekly

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #168594 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-07
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Amazon.ca
The Lesser Evil, which comprises Michael Ignatieff's six essays based on his 2003 Gifford Lectures, is a useful introduction to and assessment of liberal political thought and behaviour in the face of opponents who don't play by the rules. The consequences to the state of engaging with its enemy outside the laws of war are perilously uncertain, Ignatieff admits, but they have to be faced and accepted. Ignatieff certainly tries to face them. If terrorists are not stopped, he argues, the living conditions inside the besieged state would become unrecognizable. Liberal regard for individual rights would disappear. The carnivore must overrule the herbivore, therefore, even in the liberal state and especially when that state is attacked. Ignatieff uses these shocking nouns to contrast realpolitik with civil libertarianism in this context. However, "If the automatic response to mass casualty terrorism is to strengthen secret government, it is the wrong response. The right one is to strengthen open government."

Ignatieff places his faith in the state ultimately in its citizens' duty to persuade, even more than in their armed force. Terror's every provocation is unique, though, and none can be reacted to solely according to precedent. Ignatieff was an apologist for the invasion of Iraq, until shortly before the Abu Ghraib revelations. He then reversed his stance, admitting that "intentions do shape consequences." The record of this distortion and correction of his political will is an excellent example of what he calls in The Lesser Evil the "enormous moral hazard" to which democracies and their citizens expose themselves when countering terrorists. --Ted Whittaker

Books in Canada
Michael Ignatieff is one of the distressingly few progressive intellectuals who have been prepared to take the threat of terror seriously; too many have preferred to share with Canada’s former Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, the comforting fallacy that at root the problem lies in poverty, its redress in “equity”. Ignatieff has the courage to recognize that what motivates terrorists is nihilism. Al Qaeda does not want what we have, it wants to punish the West and others who fail to share its myopic vision. The purpose of terrorism “is to strike a blow that asserts the dignity of Muslim believers while inflicting horror and death upon their enemies.” In the face of such attacks Ignatieff suggests it is difficult to conceive a political response: “Such an attack cannot be met by politics but only by war.”
Ignatieff is conscious of the threat terrorism poses to the institutions and values of liberal democracies. The question he seeks to answer is what lesser evils a democratic society might commit in defending against the greater evil of terrorism. Civil liberty absolutists resist any dilution of traditional legal protections but as Ignatieff succinctly observes, “A constitution is not a suicide pact,” and an emphasis on rights cannot be so great as to undermine the ability of government to take effective action.
Historically the goal of terror has been to force governments into increasingly authoritarian and brutal responses, in the hope (usually unfulfilled) that the population will rally to the terrorists’ cause. Ignatieff’s summary of this history is provocative and insightful. It will be uncomfortable reading for those arm chair radicals who have sympathised with Basque militants, Irish republican bombers or Tamil insurgents. Ignatieff’s description of the Tamil Tigers should be compulsory reading for Canadian politicians: “For twenty years, the Tamil Tigers used suicide bombings to crack the will of the Sinhalese majority… to force it to concede a separate Tamil state. Moderate Tamils willing to negotiate with the government were a particular target of attack. These attacks were intended to coerce the Tamil majority into obeying the terrorist group, and to prevent the emergence of a negotiated settlement.”
Ignatieff accepts that fighting terrorism will require some sacrifice of traditional civil liberties. What he seeks is a middle way, which will protect against a slide into arbitrary injustices and ensure that the system of checks and balances which characterize effective democracies is deployed to full effect. Legislatures must be aggressive in scrutinizing the activities of the administration. Ignatieff wants a continual balancing of the argument of necessity and the claims of morality, insisting that “a constitutional state must remain answerable to the higher law, a set of standards that protect foundational commitments to the dignity of every person.” Western democracies must be relentlessly conscious of the importance of the values they seek to defend and of their universal application.
The mounting evidence of ill-treatment at Abu Ghraib and the consequent attempts within the U.S. military and the Bush administration to deflect blame illustrate the ease with which the kind of vigorous interrogation of suspected terrorists, approved by Ignatieff, can descend into abuse. The outrage provoked in the Arab world at the deliberate humiliation of prisoners provides eloquent evidence of the political consequences of the retreat from democratic values. For Ignatieff “rights-based commitments to individual dignity are intrinsic to the definition of what a democracy is.”
Ignatieff is alert to the temptation of turning a blind eye to abusive practices: “A culture of silent complicity may develop between civilian political leaders and their security chiefs, in which both sides know that extralegal means are being used but each has an interest in keeping quiet about it. In this way, the clear constitutional duty of civilian leaders to maintain executive control over security services can be subverted.” Ignatieff suggests this provides some understanding of how a democratic France could sanction torture in Algeria, even as its politicians denied it was occurring. Reports coming out of Iraq raise questions as to how far the Americans succumbed to a similar temptation. Leaked reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross, and reports from other human rights groups, published in Harper’s, suggest that prisoners at Gauntanamo Bay also experienced abuse.
This is a timely contribution which might be usefully read by those in the American administration who appear to believe that expedience provides the best moral compass-providing, of course, you are not found out.
Martin Loney (Books in Canada)

From Publishers Weekly
Ignatieff, a leading liberal thinker on human rights issues, offers an impeccably (if often redundantly) argued case for how to balance security and liberty in the face of the new kind of threat posed by today's terrorists. His basic principle is that neither security nor liberty trumps the other-a middle-of-the-road position-but the more security-minded will no doubt find the author leans more to the civil libertarian side as he insists that, while the president may have prerogatives in terms of, say, limiting civil liberties, these actions must always be subject to legislative and judicial review. In the course of his discussion, Ignatieff, director of Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights, touches on key and troubling issues, such as how a democracy fighting nihilistic terrorists can avoid falling into the nihilistic trap itself, and why (according to Ignatieff) there is no moral equivalence between the violence perpetrated by a Palestinian suicide bomber and that of Israel's military retaliations. On the question of torture, Ignatieff argues, against Alan Dershowitz, that even in "ticking-bomb" cases torture must be abjured. Equally controversial but forcefully argued is his contention that a liberal democracy must respect the human rights of its enemies, however inhumane their own actions have been. The bottom line for Ignatieff is, in the end, commonsensical: a moral response to terrorism, while advancing security, must respect the equality and dignity of all and "make the fewest possible changes to our tried and tested standards of due process." This is an essential starting point for liberals and civil libertarians in grappling with the difficult moral and political challenges posed by the war on terror.
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