In an extraordinary passage, in Bob Woodward’s revealing new book, War, an exasperated American President Joe Biden, yells over a telephone call at the Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. ‘Bibi, what the f**k?’ screams Biden driven to the brink of frustration at Netanyahu’s dour and obstinate refusal to bide by Biden’s call for judiciousness and prudence. For good measure, according to Woodward, Biden also confided to a ‘friend’ in annoyance – “I have spent five hours going back and forth, back and forth on the phone with two of the biggest f**king assholes in the world, Bibi Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas (the latter being the Palestinian leader).”
War primarily deals with the shambolic and ambivalent American foreign policy in relation to the currently ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine. The book, according to its author’s is based on ‘interviews conducted under the journalistic rule of “deep background.” This means that while all the information could be used the author would be precluded from revealing the identity of the sources. According to Woodward, Biden was forced to face the equivalent of the Cuban missile crisis in 2022, when intelligence reports suggested that there was a fifty percent chance of an increasingly desperate Russian forces under Vladimir Putin deploying a tactical nuclear weapon to overrun the obstinate Ukrainians.
An irate Biden instructed his team to “get onto all channels with the Russians” and use language “that is threatening without being directly threatening.” The US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin promptly hauled up his then Russian defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu. On being told that Shoigu didn’t like being threatened, Austin tersely replied, “Mr. Minister, I am the leader of the most powerful military in the history of the world. I don’t make threats.” Lloyd Austin finds liberal mention in the book, and keeping him, company are Secretary of State Antony Blinken, CIA Director Bill Burns, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and the NSC’s Middle East Coordinator Brett McGurk.
In an interesting recollection that denotes the degree to which US-Saudi Arabia relations have deteriorated, Blinken arrives at Saudi Arabia as part of his Middle East trip following the horrific October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas on Israeli soil. Blinken is informed that Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman would meet Blinken later that night, failing which the meeting would be conducted the next morning. The Crown Price, or MBS as he is universally known, keeps Blinken on tenterhooks until 7.00 A.M. A miffed Blinken ruefully remarks, “MBS was nothing more than a spoiled child.”
The book also provides a worrying account of the failing health of Joe Biden. Just before announcing his withdrawal from the Presidential Race, Biden attends a fund raiser where the attendees alarmingly remarked that the President resembled “an eighty-seven-year-old senile grandfather.” In yet another fundraiser organised by the Silicon Valley, Biden used a teleprompter, even though the number of people attending the event was a meagre number of thirty. Controversies surrounding Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, also seem to have a taken a toll on the mental psyche of Biden as he is portrayed as an overtly concerned and worried father.
Divided into seventy-seven concise and lucid Chapters, War makes for some arresting reading. With the Presidential elections bringing the egregious Donald Trump back into harness, it would be interesting to see how the cataclysmic geopolitical situation prevailing in the Middle East and Ukraine would pan out.