A sturdy deep dive into the Biden approach to international relations.
An examination of world affairs in the post-Trump years.
Ward, an award-winning journalist specializing in national security, notes that foreign policy played only a modest role in the 2016 election, and Trump limited himself to the lowbrow jingoism that delighted his followers: portraying dictators as admirable leaders who get things done and immigrants as threats to the nation. The author begins with a pertinent question: “How would Biden, a president who came of age in a time when America was the undisputed superpower, attempt to make it genuinely great again—respected and trusted by its allies, feared by its enemies, and no longer willing to kowtow to the despots that Trump seemed so enamored of?” When he took office, the new president and his administration focused on “foreign policy for the middle class,” negotiating a five-year extension of the nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia, thus making the world a little safer and suggesting the possibility of productive talks. Soon after, Biden was forced to confront the disastrous situation in Afghanistan. An advocate of reduced involvement in Afghanistan ever since his years as Obama’s vice president, he proceeded with the withdrawal. Despite 20 years and more than $1 trillion of assistance, few had confidence in the Afghan army, but U.S. intelligence determined that it could resist for several years. Few officials foresaw such a rapid collapse, and Ward’s cogent account of what followed makes for simultaneously illuminating and painful reading. But memories of foreign debacles are short, and the administration addressed another massive problem when intelligence officials determined, six months before it occurred, that Russia was preparing to invade Ukraine. Readers know what happened next, so Ward’s expert account of earnest diplomacy and consultation with allies lacks urgency, but history buffs will be fascinated nonetheless.
A sturdy deep dive into the Biden approach to international relations.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593539071
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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