In “War,” renowned author and journalist Bob Woodward confirms the triumph of the American empire and the extinction of the republic. The former is earmarked by a warfare state; the latter was earmarked by liberty and the march of the mind.

The latest in Woodward’s cavalcade of books about power and marquee personalities, “War” deftly chronicles the ongoing co-belligerency of the United States, with Ukraine warring against Russia and with Israel warring against Hamas, Hezbollah, Yemen and Iran. Woodward’s narrative delights the reader with the speed of a racehorse never slowing even for victory laps.

But Woodward disappoints by neglecting to examine whether U.S. national security warrants spending more than $100 billion to arm and defeat the enemies of Ukraine or Israel. Russia, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah or Yemen (the Houthis) would be instantly crushed to smithereens if they attempted to invade us. We are the most powerful and safest country in the history of the world by orders of magnitude. The risk of an American death from an international terrorist attack is less than the risk of death by a falling vending machine.

Woodward unthinkingly embraces the orthodoxy that vital interests of the United States turn on the fates of Ukraine and Israel. He can’t imagine the optimal national security policy might be American neutrality in foreign conflicts coupled with invincible self-defense to deter aggression, forestall blowback and shrink our frightening $35 trillion and soaring national debt. Former Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen warned over a decade ago, ”The most significant threat to our national security is our debt.”

Withdrawal from NATO and ending virtually limitless support for Ukraine and Israel might strengthen rather than imperil the United States.

Woodward and his multiple sources unconvincingly insist that a Russian conquest or vivisection of Ukraine would be a calamity for the United States. They assume a Russian victory would embolden President Vladimir Putin to invade NATO members in an attempt to re-create the Soviet Empire and invite China to attack Taiwan. In either or both eventualities, they declare, the United States would be undone. We would be next on the chopping block to be destroyed in one fell swoop or on an installment plan.

Suppose Russia defeats Ukraine. The victory would be pyrrhic. Russia’s military has already been severely depleted. In desperation, Russia has conscripted criminals and accepted North Korean soldiers. It has needed weapons and economic sanctions evasions from Iran and China to avoid financial collapse. Putin has confronted insurrection from the notorious Wagner Group and erstwhile leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died in a Putin-orchestrated plane crash.

A conquered Ukraine would be in constant upheaval like Eastern and Central Europe during the Cold War. Occupying Ukraine would bankrupt Russia. Subsidizing and building essential infrastructure in Crimea alone since its annexation in 2014 has cost Russia a fortune. Russia gave up on Eastern and Central Europe in 1989 and let the Berlin Wall crumble because the cost of propping up its puppet states became prohibitive. If the United States withdrew from NATO, Putin would probably end his Ukraine invasion. The United States is the alpha and omega of NATO. Among other things, it was summoned to contain the Balkan upheavals in NATO’s backyard after the death of Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito.

Putin was provoked to attack Ukraine (with its constitutional commitment to NATO membership) by NATO’s encirclement. Notwithstanding the warnings of George Kennan, architect of America’s Cold War victory, after the dissolution of the Soviet Empire in 1991, NATO membership in Russia’s sphere of influence mushroomed. (The United States has established a comparable sphere in South America since the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, including interventions in Mexico, Chile, Nicaragua, Panama, Haiti, Cuba and the Dominican Republic).

Kennan presciently opined, “Bluntly stated … expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.”

President Joe Biden has called Putin “a killer,” followed by a gaffe a year later: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” The United States assisted in the overthrow of Chile’s popularly elected President Salvador Allende in 1973 in favor of the murderous dictator Augusto Pinochet because of a vastly lesser threat to national security. National security adviser Henry Kissinger elaborated, “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”

Woodward is oblivious to the finest hours of American foreign policy: scrupulous neutrality combined with impeccable constitutional example at home to influence events abroad. “War” reveals Woodward as an understated spokesman for the flawed premises of the multitrillion-dollar military-industrial-security complex.

Bruce Fein (X: @brucefeinesq; www.lawofficesofbrucefein.com) was associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan and is author of “American Empire Before the Fall.”