If Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s trip to Israel this week to call for a ceasefire is anything like his other ten visits in the past year, it might look something like this. Halfway through a fruitless two-hour negotiation with Prime Minister Netanyahu, an alarm signalling a rocket attack will ring. They will descend six floors to a bunker, where Blinken might catch a word with the Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who will restate his view that Israel is fighting “human animals and we are acting accordingly”.
Meanwhile, Blinken’s adviser will wander off into the bunker’s garage to find phone signal in order to update the National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan on the Israelis’ intransigence. And back above ground, Netanyahu might say “not a drop” of aid will get into Gaza, or refuse requests for a ceasefire by passing notes to the Americans during a cabinet meeting. On the plane home Blinken will call President Biden who might once again rail against “that son of a bitch, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad fucking guy!”
These details can be found in Bob Woodward’s latest book, War, a verbatim account of the Biden administration’s attempt to steer the world away from conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East. He recounts a tight group of brainy, sleepless diplomats – including Blinken, Sullivan, and his deputy Jon Finer – lobbying world leaders to send artillery shells to Ukraine and pleading with the Israelis and Arabs for a ceasefire in Gaza. War is told scene by scene, like a screenplay. You can almost hear Woodward shout “Cut!” at the end of each two- or three-page chapter before he divulges another secret conversation in the Pentagon, or the Kremlin. It’s the closest journalism comes to the West Wing. In his review of War, the Atlantic’s Franklin Foer called Woodward “the most gifted sensationalist of his generation”.
And the details are sensational. We learn that Blinken believed that Sergei Lavrov, who he’d known for years, was not aware of the plans to invade Ukraine, that US intelligence thought the chances of Putin deploying a tactical nuclear weapon was a “coin-flip”, and that Hunter Biden’s trial for gun-related charges broke Biden more than anything else because he felt he had failed his son. Throughout his account of the Biden White House, Woodward drops in vignettes declaring the danger that Donald Trump poses with a foghorn. The former president, for instance, really did ask his Defense Secretary whether he could “shoot” Black Lives Matter protesters. Coverage of War has been dominated by the revelation that Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley thinks his old boss is a “fascist to the core”.
Every few years Woodward amasses what most Washingtonians spend a lifetime hunting: reems of insider information about those at the apex of American power. He embodies the reporter’s defining dilemma: balancing favourable coverage in exchange for scoops. Trump unexpectedly, is an exception. His thirst for reading about himself in the press means that he will speak to journalists days after raging against their work. Even after Woodward’s first book on Trump, Fear, called his presidency a “nervous breakdown”, Trump agreed to an interview for the sequel.
Other sources require different treatment. Christopher Hitchens once noted that a careful reader could always spot Woodward’s moles by the complimentary descriptions of their appearances. Woodward’s sources in War need less care to spot: it is full of conversations between two people in an otherwise empty room. Blinken and Biden have a private dinner in the small room beside the Oval Office, for instance, during which Woodward reports that the president dismisses the IDF as “overrated”. Woodward goes on to tell his reader that Biden did not speak to him for the book.
But beyond the gossip, War does reveal Biden’s first principles and instincts vis-à-vis foreign policy. Despite Woodward’s admiration for Biden and his team – in the epilogue he says they will be remembered “as an example of steady and purposeful leadership” – War exposes the inability of the Biden administration to influence the Israeli government. Biden’s red lines, such as stopping the assault on Rafah, are crossed with little consequence. The distrust between Biden and Bibi operates on a separate plane from the president’s unwavering commitment to Israel’s security. Netanyahu knows that support will always be there while Biden is in power. Which is why, despite all the late-night conversations and stairwell diplomacy, Blinken’s visit to Israel this week will probably resemble the last.
