Xi will be winner if West abandons Ukraine to Putin, warns CIA chief

William Burns says increasing support for Kiev would send China an ‘important message of US resolve’ against international aggression.

President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping shaking hands during a meeting in Beijing, October 2023. Picture: Sergei Guneyev/AFP

A collapse in American support for Ukraine would “stoke Chinese aggressiveness” around the world and particularly towards Taiwan, the CIA director William Burns has warned.

President Xi’s view of the United States as a fading power has been confounded by its robust support of Ukraine, Burns claims in an article for Foreign Affairs magazine, in which he accuses China of providing Russia with “critical components” to help “wear down [Ukraine’s] western supporters”.

Burns set out a resolute case for spending “a relatively modest investment” of less than 5 per cent of the US defence budget arming Ukraine, at a time when continued support is mired in election-year politics in Congress.

Republicans are refusing to approve more funding for Ukraine unless security to block migrants at the Mexico border is dramatically increased. Donald Trump, the probable Republican candidate for president, has vowed to end Russia’s war with Ukraine on his first day back in office, but has given no details.

CIA Director William Burns testifying during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats in Washington, March 2023. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

“The United States’ willingness to inflict and absorb economic pain to counter Putin’s aggression, and its ability to rally its allies to do the same, powerfully contradicted Beijing’s belief that America was in terminal decline,” Burns, 67, wrote in an overview of the CIA’s most pressing challenges. Those included rapidly changing technology and the rise of China, which meant the US “no longer enjoys uncontested primacy” as a superpower.

“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,” he said.

Burns gave the latest US assessment of Russian losses in Ukraine, saying that “at least 315,000 soldiers have been killed or wounded”, with two thirds of Russia’s tank inventory destroyed.

He claimed that Russia was “sealing its fate as China’s economic vassal”, but added: “Putin’s repressive grip does not seem likely to weaken any time soon.”

However, Burns, who gained extensive first-hand experience of Russia and Putin himself while serving as US ambassador in Moscow from 2005 to 2008, believes that Putin’s grip on power is “quietly corroding”.

Burns was appointed by President Biden in 2021. Picture: Getty Images

The mutiny led by the Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin before his sudden death last August “offered a glimpse at some of the dysfunction lurking behind Putin’s carefully polished image” of control.

“Prigozhin’s biting critique of the lies and military misjudgements at the core of Putin’s war, and of the corruption at the heart of the Russian political system, will not soon disappear,” Burns wrote. “[The] undercurrent of disaffection is creating a once-in-a-generation recruiting opportunity for the CIA. We’re not letting it go to waste.”

Burns was appointed by President Biden in 2021 and joined his cabinet last year. His views on the importance of backing Ukraine place him firmly behind the Biden administration’s thinking and at variance with a rising isolationism among Republicans who follow Trump’s America First credo.

In a climate where the so-called three-letter agencies are viewed warily by many Americans, Burns felt it necessary to state: “The CIA remains a resolutely apolitical institution, bound by the oath I and everyone else at the agency have taken to defend the constitution, and by our obligations under the law.”

The Times