Garrett M. Graff is editor of Politico Magazine, former editor of Washingtonian magazine and author of, among other works, The Threat Matrix: The FBI at War (Little Brown, 2011).

Summer has always been fighting season. It’s when wars heat up, conflicts erupt and armies march. Globally, last year was no exception—with high-profile wars in places like Ukraine and Gaza, and the steady advance of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. This year already looks like it will be similar, as Washington frets whether ISIL might be in Damascus by Labor Day and whether Vladimir Putin’s shadow war will further break apart Ukraine in the months ahead.

For Politico Magazine’s first War Issue, we broadened the lens on combat and explored the backstage policy battles that shape our military conflicts and inform who fights, how and where. Our cover story, “Who Lost Iraq?,” convened a dozen voices, just as President Barack Obama announced he would send U.S. troops back to Iraq, to look at how Washington has fumbled the security and politics of the country we first invaded a dozen years ago.


Here in Washington, one of the most controversial military debates is the role of women in combat, and Helen Benedict, who has spent most of the past decade covering women in the military, delves into the military’s misogyny problem and how its very culture makes it harder to accept women in those combat roles. To accompany her piece, photographer David Burnett—who nearly 40 years ago photographed the first female cadets to enter West Point— tracked down five of those cadets, as they approach the ends of their careers, to see how their lives have unfolded.

Mark Perry, an astute Pentagon observer, traces the high-stakes, off-camera fight to position the U.S. military for its next major potential adversary—China—and how America’s Army is struggling to find relevance as the nation refocuses on threats in the Pacific. And Dan Ephron returns to last summer’s war in Gaza to explore the debate over Israel’s controversial “Hannibal” directive, its secret military plan launched when a soldier is believed to be captured by the enemy. “Hannibal” is a violent military response meant to solve a thorny political question: How much is the life of one soldier worth? The answer, to Israelis at least, is a great deal.

The experience of combat undoubtedly changes people—mentally, emotionally, physically and politically. Two members of Congress— Republican Sen. Tom Cotton and Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth, each indelibly linked to this century’s wars—write about how their military training and service affected the way they lead today. Their essays are part of our larger examination of the 102 veterans in Congress, which today has the lowest number of veterans in a half-century.

Few recent members of Congress know combat better than Virginia’s Jim Webb, the former senator and one-time secretary of the Navy who was heavily decorated in Vietnam. What many people forget about Webb, a potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, is that he spent much of his career as a bestselling military novelist. To close out this issue, he has written for Politico Magazine his first piece of fiction since re-entering politics, an intimate look at what it means to kill. It’s a short story you can’t help but read and wonder: Just how much is actually fiction?

Even the profile that kicks off the issue, Luke O’Brien’s story about Michael Bloomberg, explores a more metaphysical war for the soul of his eponymous media empire. The New York mayor’s return to Bloomberg L.P. last year has brought to the fore his company’s inherent tension between its sky-high profits and lofty journalism ambitions. So far, there’s been no blood drawn in the fight, but as you’ll read, there have been plenty of casualties.