CIA Director William Burns said that he has spent much of the last four decades working in and on the Middle East, and he has "rarely seen it more tangled or explosive."
In a rare article published by the US Foreign Affairs magazine, Burns warned the US against abandoning its support for Ukraine in confronting the ambitions of Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that this support prompted Chinese President Xi Jinping to "recalculate and reconsider" the US capabilities to face any invasion of Taiwan.
He pointed out the dangers that Iran poses to the Middle East because its regime "seems ready to fight to its last regional proxy" to extend its dominance over the region.
In the article entitled "Spycraft and Statecraft: Transforming the CIA for an Age of Competition," the CIA director addressed the development of espionage methods adopted by various countries, including the US, and the significant transformations that this world witnessed in the twentieth century and the challenges facing the current century, referring to President Joe Biden's assertions regarding what the United States is facing.
As President Joe Biden has reiterated, the US faces one of those rare moments today, as consequential as the dawn of the Cold War or the post-9/11 period.
"China's rise and Russia's revanchism pose daunting geopolitical challenges in a world of intense strategic competition," said the official, acknowledging that his country "no longer enjoys uncontested primacy" and in which existential climate threats are mounting.
"Complicating matters further is a revolution in technology even more sweeping than the Industrial Revolution or the beginning of the nuclear age," he said, referring to microchips, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing as "emerging technologies are transforming the world, including the profession of intelligence."
- Putin unbound
"The post–Cold War era came to a definitive end the moment Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022," Burns said, adding that he had spent much of the past two decades "to understand the combustible combination of grievance, ambition, and insecurity that Russian President Vladimir Putin embodies."
He concluded that "it is always a mistake to underestimate his (Putin's) fixation on controlling Ukraine and its choices. Without that control, he believes it is impossible for Russia to be a great power or for him to be a great Russian leader."
Burns stressed that Putin's invasion "prompted breathtaking determination and resolve from the Ukrainian people," noting that this war "was a failure for Russia on many levels," including killing or wounding at least 315,000 Russian soldiers and destroying two-thirds of Russia's prewar tank stockpiles.
"Putin's vaunted decades-long military modernization program has been hollowed out."
"Putin's overblown ambitions have backfired in another way, too: they have prompted NATO to grow larger and stronger," he added.
He believed that Putin's war in Ukraine was "quietly corroding his power at home," referring to the short-lived mutiny launched last June by the mercenary Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.
He expected 2024 to be a "tough" year on the battlefield in Ukraine, and it will be a test for staying in power, noting that as Putin "regenerates Russia's defense production – with critical components from China, as well as weaponry and munitions from Iran and North Korea – he continues to bet that time is on his side, that he can grind down Ukraine and wear down its Western supporters."
"The key to success lies in preserving Western aid for Ukraine."
It represents less than five percent of the US defense budget and is a relatively modest investment with significant geopolitical returns for the US and notable returns for the US industry.
- China's powerplay
Burns believed that "no one is watching US support for Ukraine more closely than Chinese leaders," recalling that China "remains the only US rival with both the intent to reshape the international order and the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do so."
Chinese leader Xi Jinping began his third presidential term "with more power than any of his predecessors since Mao Zedong."
He believed that instead of using this "power to reinforce and revitalize the international system that enabled China's transformation, Xi is seeking to rewrite it."
Xi's growing repression at home and his aggression abroad, from his "no limits" partnership with Putin to his threats to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, are impossible to ignore, according to Burns.
He warned that the Chinese leader tends to see the US as a "fading power" but that the US leadership in Ukraine "has surely come as a surprise."
"One of the surest ways to rekindle Chinese perceptions of American fecklessness and stoke Chinese aggressiveness would be to abandon support for Ukraine. Continued material backing for Ukraine doesn't come at the expense of Taiwan; it sends an important message of US resolve that helps Taiwan."
- The Middle East
Burns said: "The crisis precipitated by Hamas's butchery in Israel on October 7, 2023, is a painful reminder of the complexity of the choices that the Middle East continues to pose for the United States."
He stressed that "the competition with China will remain Washington's highest priority, but that doesn't mean it can evade other challenges."
Speaking about his experience during the past four decades in the Middle East, he said: "I have rarely seen it more tangled or explosive," considering that "winding down the intense Israeli ground operation in the Gaza Strip, meeting the deep humanitarian needs of suffering Palestinian civilians, freeing hostages, preventing the spread of the conflict to other fronts in the region."
The same applies to "resurrecting hope for a durable peace that ensures Israel's security as well as the Palestinian statehood, and takes advantage of the historical opportunities for normalization with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries."
However, he stressed that "hard as it may be to imagine those possibilities amid the current crisis, it is even harder to imagine getting out of the crisis without pursuing them seriously."
He also asserted that the "key to Israel's – and the region's – security is dealing with Iran," whose "regime has been emboldened by the crisis and seems ready to fight to its last regional proxy, all while expanding its nuclear program and enabling Russian aggression."
The director noted that "in the months after October 7, the Houthis, the Yemeni rebel group allied with Iran, began attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea, and the risks of escalation on other fronts persist."
He acknowledged that Washington "is not exclusively responsible for resolving any of the Middle East's vexing problems. But none of them can be managed, let alone solved, without active US leadership."
