Beginning with his world-famous account of the Watergate scandal, All The President’s Men (co-authored by Carl Bernstein) in 1974, Woodward has specialised for the last half-century in bringing readers insight, information and intrigue about many of the world’s most powerful people.
Presidents Clinton and Obama each had two Woodward books written about their time in office, while Trump got his own trilogy and Bush Jr warranted a quartet of tomes detailing his administration’s ultra-hawkish foreign policy.
War is the now 81-year-old Woodward’s first book about the presidency of Joe Biden, and is centred around the response of his White House to the two unfolding catastrophic conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.
True to form, it is full of Woodward’s renowned inside-sourced fly-on-the-wall reporting, detailing intense world-changing conversations between key players, taking the reader behind the scenes of international diplomacy and revealing dozens of scoops along the way.
There are bombshell revelations aplenty... it is the high-stakes diplomatic efforts which often take centre stage
There are bombshell revelations aplenty – including General Mark Milley, who served as U.S. military chief under President Trump, branding Trump “a fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person ever”.
Trump, and the “shadow presidency” he conducts during the Biden years, is frequently referenced in alarming anecdotes which act as an ominous drumbeat towards the incoming election. Woodward’s descriptions of the intense and dramatic conversations occurring in the Biden White House after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including whether to deploy U.S. troops and the real risk of a nuclear war, are a startling juxtaposition alongside the chapters detailing Trump’s often mad-sounding foreign policy pronouncements.
Although War’s eye-catching cover depicts six key international players including President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, it is the high-stakes diplomatic efforts of secretary of state Antony Blinken, national security advisor Jake Sullivan and CIA director Bill Burns which often take centre stage.
Woodward is positive about Biden in the epilogue, describing his administration as “an example of steady and purposeful leadership”, but the book’s portrayal of Blinken’s diplomatic impotence when attempting to rein in Benjamin Netanyahu's plan for an attack on the Gazan city of Rafah (“it was obvious Blinken had no influence”) shows a U.S. administration frustratingly weak when faced by the continued refusal of its ally to de-escalate. As civilian casualties mount in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis worsens, we see too little in the way of “steady and purposeful” action from the Biden team to alleviate the suffering as Blinken’s relentless shuttle diplomacy bears no fruit.
It may be a consequence of War being a shorter read than some of Woodward’s previous works, but I felt the Biden administration’s big beasts – Blinken, Sullivan, Burns – seemed insufficiently defined as personalities by Woodward. We hear fascinating accounts of the decisions they took and the discussions they held in the corridors of power, but when historians look back on the Biden administration’s failings, especially in Gaza and Afghanistan, War offers less reporting and analysis than I wanted about the dynamics and character traits which made this administration unsuited to meeting many of the foreign policy tests it faced.
Furthermore, Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan gets scant attention from Woodward, described over just a few pages and only mentioned occasionally thereafter, despite the catastrophic effect it had on the perception of Biden around the world and how this may have helped to embolden Putin to invade Ukraine.
Details of policy disputes and debates within the administration itself, a core tenet of Woodward’s Bush At War quartet, are in shorter supply in War. Perhaps this is testament to the media water tightness of Biden’s foreign policy team that even Woodward, the great investigator, seems to have gleaned fewer details about the leading players of this administration than he did about some of their predecessors.
Despite these criticisms, War remains a vital read for anyone interested in world events and how power is really wielded in geopolitics. It serves as a vocal warning of the dangers posed by Donald Trump’s return to the White House, and the Putin-praising, isolationist and whim-driven worldview he brings with him.
Rating: 8/10
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