Book Review: War by Bob Woodward

A significant new book was released today by Simon & Schuster, written by the renowned journalist Bob Woodward, titled War.

In this book, double Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Woodward reveals the behind-the-scenes story of three wars managed by the White House in Washington: the war in Ukraine, the war in the Middle East, and the struggle for the U.S. presidency.

The book explores the events the Biden administration has been heavily involved in and documents, in Woodward’s outstanding journalistic style, one of the most turbulent periods in presidential politics and American history.

It covers extensive meetings and discussions involving President Joe Biden and his senior advisers, highlighting his tense conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Woodward also dedicates significant details to presidential candidate Donald Trump as he runs a shadow presidency, seeking political power.

Through unparalleled insider reporting, Woodward illustrates President Biden’s approach to managing the war in Ukraine, the most significant ground conflict in Europe since World War II, and his difficult path to contain the escalating conflict in the Middle East between Israel and the Palestinian and Lebanese resistances and Iran.

Woodward unveils the extraordinary complexities facing the Biden administration since January 2020 and traces the consequences of backchannel diplomacy during wartime decision-making that aims to deter the use of nuclear weapons and prevent a swift slide into World War III.

The book recounts the developments and events that quicken the political turmoil of these wars as Americans prepare to vote in November 2024, focusing on President Biden, Trump, and the unexpected rise of Vice President Kamala Harris as a Democratic presidential candidate.

It provides a candid examination of the Vice President as she tries to embrace Biden’s legacy and policies while beginning to carve out her own path as a presidential candidate.

Through this engaging and provocative book, Bob Woodward once again sets the standard for journalism in its most reliable and enlightening forms.

Nearly six months into Biden’s presidency, Trump continued to insist that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen from him, despite the absence of credible evidence to support this claim; Trump merely needed people to believe him.

Polls showed that 53% of Republicans believed Trump was the “real president,” even though Biden sat in the Oval Office.

During my interview with Trump before the 2016 election, he told me, “Real power is, and I don’t even want to use the word, fear,” but now Trump’s true power lies in sowing doubt.

Trump boasted before a crowd at Mar-a-Lago, his lavish residence in Palm Beach, Florida, saying, “I wouldn’t be surprised if they found thousands and thousands and thousands of votes. This was a rigged election, and everyone knows it!”

In a statement made in May regarding the 2020 election, Trump said, “If a thief stole all the diamonds from a jewelry store, the diamonds must be returned.”

Yet over 60 court cases and numerous investigations, audits, and recounts across several states found no evidence of widespread fraud. The legitimacy of the 2020 election results was reaffirmed repeatedly.

In the 2020 election, Trump received 74 million votes, more than any presidential candidate in history except Joe Biden, who won 81 million votes. Biden secured the Electoral College with 306 votes compared to Trump’s 232.

Biden won the 2020 election, but six months later, he was still fighting to maintain his presidency.

Despite more than 50 planning meetings, Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan turned into a disastrous chaos; they failed to anticipate emergencies and plan for the worst-case scenarios. By the time they did plan, it was too late.

On July 6, the remaining American forces secretly withdrew from Bagram Air Base under the cover of night, an hour’s drive from Kabul and the largest airfield in Afghanistan. At one point, Bagram had hosted up to 100,000 American troops. Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul operated with more than 1,400 Americans protected by just 650 Marines and soldiers.

If Kabul fell into the hands of the Taliban, the Bagram exit would cut off the only route for evacuating non-combatants whom the U.S. had promised to protect after years of service.

On July 23, Biden spoke with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani about the rapidly deteriorating situation, urging him to alter the global perception that the fight against the Taliban was going poorly.

Biden said, “Clearly, you have the best army; you have 300,000 well-armed troops against 70-80,000 Taliban who can clearly fight well.”

Ghani responded, “Mr. President, we are facing a full-scale invasion, composed of the Taliban, full Pakistani planning and logistical support, and no fewer than 10-15 thousand international terrorists.” The Taliban wave swept the country in a tidal surge, with provinces falling one after another at an astonishing pace that startled Biden and his administration. Afghan forces showed little resistance, and in some cases, they simply dropped their weapons.

As the Taliban drew closer to Kabul, Secretary of State Blinken spoke with President Ghani by phone on August 14. Ghani defiantly proclaimed that he would defend Afghanistan to the end. The next day, he was in the United Arab Emirates; he had simply fled.

Kabul fell swiftly and dramatically. Taliban fighters took over the presidential palace, posing for photos around Ghani’s office while holding rifles.

Thousands of desperate Afghan civilians surged onto the tarmac at Hamid Karzai International Airport. People clung to the wings of U.S. evacuation planes as they took off, with some falling to their deaths.

President Biden blamed the Afghan government for the situation. In a speech delivered from the East Room on August 16, Biden stated, “I have no regrets about my decision to end the American war in Afghanistan.”

He continued, “The truth is this happened faster than we expected, so what happened? The Afghan political leaders surrendered and fled the country; the Afghan army collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight.”

On September 1, 2021, President Biden welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the White House for the first time. Zelensky, a former comedian, won the Ukrainian presidential election in 2019 by a historic landslide against the incumbent billionaire Petro Poroshenko, who had been Biden’s adviser when he was vice president. Zelensky won with a commanding 73.17% of the votes compared to 24.5% for Poroshenko.

After being elected at age 41, Zelensky took office without any political experience – the complete opposite of Joe Biden. He had owned a successful television production company called Kvartal 95 and became a household name when he portrayed the fictional president of Ukraine in the popular TV series Servant of the People, which aired from 2015 to 2019.

In the show, Zelensky’s character, a high school history teacher, is accidentally elected president after his speech about government corruption spreads online. However, his actual approval ratings as president plummeted to 38% in the spring of 2021.

Zelensky’s sudden entry into the political arena mirrored his fictional character in many ways. A political outsider, he embodied the role of an everyman.

On May 20, 2019, Zelensky walked to the Ukrainian Parliament building in Kyiv, dressed in a dark fitted suit and polished shoes, waving, shaking hands, and taking selfies with supporters before being sworn in as president.

Zelensky said in his inaugural address: “Dear Ukrainians. After I won the election, my six-year-old son asked me, ‘Dad, they say on TV that Zelensky is the president… does that mean I am the president too?!’ At that moment, it seemed funny, but later I realized it was true. Because each one of us is the president.”

He added, “From now on, each one of us is responsible for the country we leave to our children. Each one of us, in our place, can do everything for the prosperity of Ukraine.”

Finally, Zelensky concluded, “Throughout my life, I’ve tried to do everything I could to make Ukrainians laugh. That was my mission. Now I will do everything I can so that Ukrainians at least don’t cry anymore.”

However, in Washington, D.C., Zelensky was not known primarily as the television star who became president, but rather because of the controversy surrounding Trump’s first impeachment trial.

When William Burns was the U.S. ambassador to Moscow in 2008, he sent a lengthy personal email to then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice through secure channels.

“Ukraine’s accession to NATO is the foremost red line for the Russian elite (not just for Putin). In over two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from shadowy meddling in the Kremlin to Putin’s liberal critics, I’ve yet to find anyone who sees Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

Burns stated that even initial steps could be seen as “throwing down a strategic gauntlet.” “Russia will react today. Russian-Ukrainian relations will enter a state of deep freeze.”

Burns concluded, “I can’t imagine any big deal that would allow the Russians to swallow this pill calmly.”

Avril Haines, who as National Intelligence Director oversaw all U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA, had a wealth of intelligence regarding Putin’s logic and leadership during the new data points they gathered.

Haines stated that insecurity and mistrust were two sides of the same coin for Putin. “He can be insecure, and he can also be someone who believes he is the only one capable of returning Russia to its former glory.”

Putin had long lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union, which he described as the greatest disaster of the 20th century. He believed that Ukrainian territory was the “cradle of Russia.”

Haines remarked, “He believes Ukraine should return to Russia and that must take precedence over everything else.” There was an absolute presumption of ownership.

However, Ukraine was clearly distancing itself from Russia while deepening its ties with the West and NATO. The Ukrainian military was becoming stronger and better with Western assistance. The longer Putin waited to invade, the stronger the Ukrainian response would likely be.

Putin assessed that military action would be the best option to prevent Ukraine from further integrating with the West. He felt he had to stop this at any cost. Haines stated, “For Putin, losing Ukraine is indeed an existential threat.”

The Russian president concluded that any consequences for his country would be short-term. Economic sanctions from the West would be offset by Russia’s strong sovereign wealth fund and favorable economic indicators in the coming years before Putin faces his next election. Rising energy prices would make it difficult for Europe to join the U.S. in imposing significant economic sanctions that would harm European domestic economies.

Over time, European and American resolve would weaken as food shortages, inflation, and energy shortfalls worsened. “Russia would be better at sustaining resolve, and Putin’s judgment was that time was on his side. At least that’s what U.S. intelligence showed.”

“That’s what Putin is planning to do,” Burns reiterated. It was unusual for intelligence agencies to be this definitive.

Biden said, “That would be insane. I know the leaders. Leaders tend to think much more about the downside risks than the upside gains, and Putin is an opportunist but greatly dislikes risk-taking. He operates at the lower end of the risk acceptance spectrum. This is entirely different from what I know of him,” Biden said. “And for a leader to decide to do this without lighting a specific match? That would be insane.”

Biden added, “I see the intelligence.” The president was not disbelieving of it.

A sense of shock—and fate—hung in the room.

Biden finally said, “Now I have to deal with a Russia that just swallowed Ukraine?” He had just been through the Afghanistan ordeal. And now this?

Feiner believed this would transform Biden’s presidency, the administration’s goals, and global stability.

Feiner said, “This will be the year looming over the rest of our lives, if not the rest of this term. This will be what drives and dominates it.”

Biden issued directives to continuously assess the situation from a 360-degree perspective, considering every possible angle.

Biden reiterated his top priority: “First, to prevent that.”

“But,” he added starkly, “our ability to prevent that is limited.” The aggressor, prepared to invade, held a significant initial advantage. That was the reality of the global turbulence they might face.

Nevertheless, Biden’s directive was: “Try. We’ll put on a play and see.”

There were two main reasons to intervene; the first was total preparedness: “If this happens,” Biden said, “we need to be as functional as possible, so our response bolsters our interests rather than draining them.” They wanted to avoid any scrambling for paperwork and months of bureaucratic delays in funding and arms delivery after Putin’s invasion.

Sullivan could see how Biden was applying decades of foreign policy experience. The president spent a considerable amount of time thinking about alliances, NATO, U.S.-Russia relations, and great power politics.

Sullivan remained in regular contact with Fred Kagan, a military history and strategy expert who regularly wrote for the Institute for the Study of War, an independent research center recognized as the gold standard for providing independent assessments of the strategic landscape of conflicts worldwide.

Kagan plainly told Sullivan: “He won’t do a large invasion.” He sounded confident. The Institute for the Study of War was counting Russian battalions and monitoring the Russian military buildup.

Kagan said, “This is war 101.” “You need to lay the groundwork for war, and there’s none of that. None of that.”

Kagan’s perspective made Sullivan pause for a moment.

In their endless discussions, Sullivan and Feiner debated whether Putin might engage in a kind of mind game.

If the expectation was a massive invasion, but a smaller invasion occurred instead, Putin might be counting on less resistance from the U.S. and Europe. Feiner noted, “So you scare people with the big thing to negotiate the takeover of something smaller.”

The bigger issue with this theory was that it did not align with the intelligence showing Putin’s plan was for a full invasion.

The consequences of Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan loomed over the intelligence. This was an area where Putin perceived only vulnerabilities in Biden and his administration, according to intelligence from conversations inside the Kremlin. This vulnerability suggested that Biden would not know what to do when Putin invaded.

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SAKHRI Mohamed
SAKHRI Mohamed

I hold a Bachelor's degree in Political Science and International Relations in addition to a Master's degree in International Security Studies. Alongside this, I have a passion for web development. During my studies, I acquired a strong understanding of fundamental political concepts and theories in international relations, security studies, and strategic studies.

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