War  takes us into the Biden White House and its foreign policy challenges.    Biden had no shortage of  heavy issues coming into office amid a pandemic,  but the changing global scene would create far more.   Woodward’s narrative sews together a multitude of conversations between Biden, his officers,  and their counterparts in Ukraine, Russia, Israel, and so on, but lacks what I would expect from someone with Woodward’s name cachet:  independent analysis and original content. 

While the outbreak of the Russo-Ukraine war takes center stage,  Trump is always on the sidelines – or yelling through the back curtain. Trump, to his credit, signed orders to withdraw the US military from Afghanistan by May 2021: Biden, to his credit, honored that treaty and finally ended the Forever War.  Woodward doesn’t dwell on this much at all, which disappointed my hopes of learning if the withdrawal debacle owed to a lack of planning during the Trump administration,  or poor planning and execution during the Biden administration.  Instead,  the gathering storm clouds over the Russo-Ukrainian border soon attract all attention. Although the Biden White House urged Zelensky to take the Russian threat seriously,   the  TV-politician turned real-politician ignored them, and was soon in the fight of his  life.  Biden was adamant about not repeating the mistake of his predecessors and thrusting American troops into harm’s way across the globe. (Unmentioned is the fact that war with Russia, a nuclear power and formerly the heart of a global empire, is rather different than war with  desert warlords.)   Woodward’s account has Biden trying to support Ukraine as much as possible without  triggering Putin into drastic action,  as well as defending Israel while at the same time trying to restrain Bibi from doing something crazy like nuking Gaza or bombing Tehran.  The narratives of both of these are frequently interrupted by Woodward quickly panning the camera to Trump, usually saying something outrageous: only one time does this have relevance to the  story, when Trump is essentially controlling the Republican legislative response to a Biden proposal in Congress.  As the book starts winding down, Woodward looks at Biden’s flagging energy and mental readiness, and salutes him as someone who bowed to the facts rather than brushed them off.  The book is written not just as a history of Biden’s foreign policy, but a condemnation of Trump in general, complete with a half-page dedicated to denouncing him with no connection to the narrative at all. 

Given Woodward’s reputation, I was wholly underwhelmed by this title and wonder if his other volumes are similar – a coasting on his reputation achieved from the Nixon days.  As far as the content presented goes, it’s fine:   Woodward knows how to write, and I liked getting to “witness” these conversations between statesmen and officials as they try to find the best response in the crisis at hand, though given the lack of footnotes I’m hesitant to trust those elements that were not public statements and the like.   Biden comes off as level-headed and pragmatic, except when he’s vigorously swearing at Putin and Bibi.   What’s missing on Woodward’s part is any criticism:  he simply relates what he’s told, and doesn’t push back or dig in to anything.  We’re told that there had been conflict in Ukraine since 2014, when Putin invaded Crimea: why did he do that? Was there something like a coup that directly threatened Russia’s legal assets in Crimea?     He dismisses the claims of neo-Nazism in Ukraine on the grounds that Zelensky is Jewish,   as if that makes the Azov battalion and the Right Sector nonexistent. This isn’t journalism, it’s just  parrotry.  I liked the inside-the-keyhole look, but Woodward does not impress.  I can see reading some of his earlier works, though, to see if this quality is consistent or just the sign of an aging author phoning it in a la John Grisham.