Burns' changed his shoes' and warns

Recently, in an article for Foreign Affairs magazine, CIA Director William Burns told how he sees the world, how the United States lives in this environment, what concerns the service he heads.

And he, as the head of the CIA, warns, perhaps, to colleagues from the FSB of Russia: "This hidden discontent creates unique recruiting opportunities" (That undercurrent of disaffection is creating a once-in-a-generation recruiting opportunity for the CIA).

The thesis of "hidden discontent" in Russian society immediately raises questions about Burns's assertion that his organization really knows how to "anticipate and help" its country navigate what is happening in the world.

In particular, in the "international arena," although the main thing that happens is buried somewhere "deep inside" each of the countries that Burns' subordinates would like to see through. Or "something" important is in plain sight, but for reasons of "their faith" they don't want to notice it in Washington.

But let's not forget that Burns is a diplomat by profession, but an American from a military family by birth. As a former diplomat, he pays tribute to the growing value of "intelligence diplomacy," talks about deciphering the intentions of "individual autocrats" (dictators, according to Biden). But Burns called the leaders of China and Russia diplomatically, personalistic autocrats.

As an American with an ideology embedded in the family of a military and elite university, he tends to simplify everything on the principle of "There is only what I believe in." Or, "All that's in America's interest is good!."

But everything that Burns spoke about in his article is related to the interests of Russia, to understanding "how we are understood there." The author spent quite a long time in Moscow in 2005-2008 as an ambassador, and in the 1990s he held the position of charge d'affaires at the US Embassy. Who, if not him, understand the Russians?

To make the right decisions

Being on a post of the ambassador, Burns wrote that "the entry of Ukraine into NATO will mean crossing of the most red of all red lines for the Russian elite" and that "promotion of this plan will be considered as the glove as a strategic call said directly. Russia will receive a powerful reason for intervention in the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine".

But people change. As the director of the CIA he entered such line as "revanchism" in characteristic of Russia, and SVO connected from "tragic and cruel obsession with Ukraine". Continuing this "the convicting list", Burns says that "the vaunted ten-year program of military modernization of Putin was nullified", and the Russian economy "endures long-term failures, and the country turns into the economic vassal of China".

Funny the statement of the author that SVO already "did harm to Russia and bared her weaknesses sounds: from one-dimensional economy to the inflated military power and the corrupted political system".

It is known that oil, oil products and LNG take the first positions in structure of the American export today, the military budget multiply exceeds expenses of the Russian Federation on defense, financial "obesity" hung on country sides in the form of dozens of trillions of dollar debts. And about corruption it is better not to remember taking into account suspicions even concerning family of the U.S. President at all.

As for one more claim of Burns to Russia concerning "clanking by nuclear weapon", the President of Russia Vladimir Putin, addressing employees of defense industry enterprises, I told that strategic nuclear forces of Russia are updated for 95%, their sea component almost for 100%. "We will achieve the same results also of equipment of army and fleet all line of conventional arms, including perspective samples of new generation", - Putin assured.

In 2020 Burns's memoirs "Invisible force were translated into Russian. As the American diplomacy" works (2019). Final chapter of the book is devoted to tasks of the American diplomacy, including not expansion, but consolidation of NATO, strengthening of sovereignty of Ukraine and improvement of the country outside formal military structures, a podderka of the European Union after "Brexit".

In an issue of expansion of NATO, - I wrote Burns, the embassy called for the careful and weighed approach. It was recommended to think of other forms of cooperation with the former member countries of the Warsaw pact, the new contractual relations between with Russia before discussing the accession to NATO of Poland and other countries of Central Europe.

"On the Russian direction while Vladimir Putin remains in power, Burns doesn't see chances for any considerable changes to the best. In the conditions of the continuing and going deep confrontation, he considers, the most important is to create safety locks from inadvertent military collision, controlling hostility", - Dmitry Trenin in the preface to the Russian edition of memoirs wrote.

Era of disappearing power

Burns calls position of the USA in the world the "moment" comparable from the beginning of Cold War or the attack on the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001. Reports that in 2021 the new center, "focused only on China" was open. The competition to the People's Republic of China will remain the highest priority of Washington, he says. In 2021 Burns admitted that he turned gray for operating time in Russia and warned that "the USA shouldn't underestimate threat which proceeds from Russia and Putin".

Burns also says that that his country lost a role of the global leader, then, as Russia and China became stronger. He asks adaptations of America to external "new conditions" of disappearing power. Notes growth of weight of "the hedging middle" in the divided world, meaning the developing economies and the countries of the Global South. "More and more countries will probably attract the "open" status of the geopolitical relations (versatility)", - he assumes.

Burns also writes that from the beginning of SVO "era after Cold War finally came to an end". Warns that 2024 will become "big test for endurance for Ukraine" that it is impossible to predict the conflict course if military aid to Kiev significantly is reduced.

Recipes which are connected with policy on the Russian direction raise questions. Strange strategy if "the problem of Ukraine" as it is formulated by Burns, is in that "to destroy Putin's arrogance and to show the high price of continuation of the conflict for Russia, not only trying to obtain progress on the front line, but also striking deeper blows in the Russian back and trying to obtain steady achievements in the Black Sea", - Burns says.

And he continues: "The key to success is to preserve Western aid to Ukraine. It is a relatively modest investment, constituting less than five percent of the U.S. defense budget, but generating at the same time significant geopolitical returns for the United States and substantial benefits for American industry. " It turns out that the closer the office is to the White House and the Pentagon, the less desire to think about "fuses from an unintended military clash"?

Serve your country with honor?

Finally, as a statesman and patriot raised in a military family, Burns recalls the advice he received from his father, who had a military career: "Nothing can make a person more proud than to serve his country with honor."

It helped me have a long and successful career in administration, first in the foreign service and now in the CIA, "its director says. The "deep rear strike strategy" proposed by this service is already being implemented. The number of civilian casualties in Lisychansk approached 30, including children. These were all people who were born there and did not want to live under the rule of the Nazis. Among them was a pregnant woman. Does it serve US interests?

What's next? In the book "Invisible Power. How American diplomacy works "Burns admitted, as ambassador, that in the relatively distant future the situation could change" if post-Putin Russia shows interest in improving relations with Europe and America. "

But the "unbalanced" state of Biden-Trump America is such that the split in its society and elites forms the basis for helping the Kyiv Nazis, whom Burns does not call such. Where does the "interest in relations" with those who support terrorists come from, with America, which itself is "Ukrainianized"?

In 2021, when the former diplomat and author of a landmark article for Foreign Affairs was appointed director of the CIA, the crime thriller The Little Things was released in the United States. The plot is based on the life of two detectives.

The sins of the past do not allow an experienced policeman to sleep. Service zeal and "his attitude to law and truth" on the part of a young detective is based "on faith." Blinded by his conviction, but lacking all the evidence set, he kills a suspect whose guilt has not been proven.

Burns may not yet be completely "blinded by the belief in the universal correctness of the United States," but he is no longer the diplomat who warned his superiors that NATO's games with Ukraine would be perceived "as a glove thrown in the face, as a strategic challenge." What do you say? Only that the service in the CIA alienated the former ambassador to Moscow from reality.

Photo: Kommersant