31/01/2025

War by Bob Woodward

War by Bob Woodward has the dubious honour of receiving only 1 star from me AND a highly-recommended & everyone should read it. This has a very simple explanation, the analysis is poor, but it is important to understand why things happened and this can offer an insight into what the Biden administration told themselves, from 2021 to late 2024. I will write a rather long review, as I usually do when the book is under 4 or 5 stars.

This was written by a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, with access to behind-the-scenes. The blurb mentions “three wars”, as in” “Ukraine, the Middle East and the struggle for the American Presidency”. Well, first of all, is russo-Ukrainian war (not a civil war, there is an invader who should be named), secondly is the Israel-Gaza war (or Israel-Hamas), and lastly, getting a president elected is nothing like being bombed and killed and listen to air alerts and being displaced.

Biden and his team made US look pathetic. I say that because US is the most powerful country in the world, it has incredible resources, technology and intelligence, the support of the free and civilised world. By acting so stupidly, US looked pathetic, ran by a team of what seemed like scared little children:
– The withdrawal from Afghanistan made US look scared of the Talibans, a bunch of cave dwellers with improvised rocket slings made out of wood.
– The dealings with putin made US look scared of nukes, as if US doesn’t have nukes as well. The idea that “nobody wins a nuclear war” can be true only if a nuclear power deters another nuclear power by making it clear that any kind of use of nukes will be responded in a similar manner. Mutual assured destruction was a much better way of framing this.
– The snub by Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel doing whatever they wanted to do, also made US look pathetic because its allies can’t trust its judgement.

The author, which was supposed to enlighten us with the analysis failed miserably. I will give some examples on why:
– Biden moaned to putin about russian cyberattack on the fuel supply on the East Coast:

“Put yourself in my shoes”, Biden said… “Imagine if something happened to your oil infrastructure…

(page 34)
Something does happened to the russian oil infrastructure and Biden kept saying that the Ukrainians should stop and delayed military aid. Now that he is gone, the attacks on russian oil are happening more than once a week.
– Biden said he didn’t want to give Ukraine weapons that are too powerful or big because they might fall into russian hands. He was thinking of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. (page 102). It is a shame, then, that Biden and his team didn’t think a bit more of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, for 2 reasons. Firstly, people that defend their country will win against all odds. Secondly, I will share a subtitle of an article on NYT: “Few countries have been willing to fly rescue missions into Afghanistan since the Americans left. Ukraine is an exception. It says it has a different definition of danger.”, while they reported that Ukrainians saved 96 people in September 2021, 2 weeks after everybody else fled.
– Harris was asking Zelenskyy to say that an invasion will happen, without giving anything – weapons, sanctions. There is no analysis about this. As for the German intelligence, the head of the German Foreign Intelligence, had to flee after the full-scale invasion started because he had no idea it will start.
– Another gem is this, without any interpretation:

“We underestimated the Ukrainians’ resolve badly and we overestimated the russian military.”

(page 128). My interpretation is simple – this is American imperialism and xenophobia.
– “wartime back-channel diplomacy” US apparently avoided a nuclear war because they forced the Ukrainians not too push too hard in September 2022.

“The other decisive factor in dissuading putin from nuclear use was that there was no catastrophic break in russia’ forces.”

(page 164)
That might have been how it looked back then, but considering that Ukrainians have taken part of russia [Kursk] and kept it for over 6 months, it shows that russia wouldn’t have used nukes for the “new regions” [Ukrainian territory]. Thousands of people died in Ukraine since Autumn 2022 and a part of that blame lies with US.
– Woodward said more than 2,400 civilians died in Mariupol (page 183)… yes, more than 2k, at least 20k and the highest number is 100k. There were so many new graves that it was visible from space. Mariupol could have been saved if US would have given HIMARS in March-April and not late June-July. The author ignores everything.
– there are 6 pictures with putin and/or russians, but only 1 picture with Zelenskyy.
– one of the pictures is putin and Shoigu in a holiday in Siberia with the remark “it was a strange and dangerous pairing” – well, no, only if you are an uniformed American journalist. Shoigu is the best option putin had for a defence minister. In an authoritarian state, who controls the army matters because they can bring down the regime. Shoigu is a native of Tuva, hence not an option for the racist muscovites. Shoigu couldn’t have assume power because of the colour of his skin and his ethnicity.
– One more gem:

” Never in history, McGurk realised, had any country tried to defeat 110 ballistic missiles.”

(page 282)
Hmm… russia attacked with:
– 122 cruise and ballistic missiles and 36 drones on 29 December 2023;
– 99 missiles and 35 drones on 2 January 2024;
– 88 missiles and 63 drones on 22 March 2024. These were prior to 13 April, when Israel was attacked by Iran.
After that day, russia attacked with:
– over 40 missiles, when Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital was hit, on 8 July 2024;
– 127 missiles and 109 drones on 26 August 2024; (I was in Ukraine at that time and I was expecting this)
– 120 missiles and 90 drones on 17 November 2024.
In addition, there are daily attacks on Ukraine, 50-60 or more drones. Of course, Ukraine needs to manage this on its own, with a limited amount of air defence systems and interceptors.

I think this book should be read with care, thinking of what happened next. Use hindsight to see if the things talked in the White House were real or imagined by poorly prepared civil servants with biases and xenophobia against Eastern Europeans. It made me wonder. If Ukrainian lives do not matter or, at least, matter less than Israeli and, apparently, russian… would my life matter? Would the life of others like me matter? People left under communism by previous American administrations, who responded to US’ plea for help when it triggered Art. 5. I wonder…