Honor Among Nations: Intangible Interests and Foreign Policy

Honor Among Nations: Intangible Interests and Foreign Policy, Edited by Elliott Abrams, Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1998. pp. 112 (paper covers), $14.95.

A companion book to Abrams' Close Calls: Intervention, Terrorism, Missile Defense and 'Just War' Today, Honor Among Nations addresses the intangible reasons that nations are willing to go to war. According to Marx, belligerent actions by "capitalist" nation-states are invariably economic in origin. The authors of the four essays in this volume do an excellent job of developing the "honor" aspect which has at most a remote connection with economics. The lead author, Donald Kagan, Bass Professor of History, Classics and Western Civilization at Yale University, looks at several examples of the role of honor in going to war: the wars of Louis XIV, World War I, World War II, Mussolc ino in Abyssinia and the Cold War. All involved a sense of honor. In Kagan's words, "When we translate 'honor' into such terms as 'deference,' 'esteem,' 'just due,' regard,' 'respect' or 'prestige,' its practical importance in the competition for power becomes evident."

The remaining essays are entitled "Honor as Interest in Russian Decisions for War," The Politics of Grandeur: De Gaulle and National Identity," and "Alexander Hamilton on Honor and American Foreign Policy." Although the authors do not quite put it in those terms, honor takes on several meanings ranging from keeping one's word in a contract (read "treaty" -- Hamilton) to outright arrogance (de Gaulle?). While this slender volume does not deal with every facet of "honor," it does provide a provocative introduction to why nations regard it as at least as important as economics.

Each essay is followed by a commentary which more often than not supports the premises of the preceding essay.

Reviewed by Robert C. Whitten Book Review Editor

Copyright Dr. George Kourvetaris Summer 1999
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