By Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, 1945, 8/2/23

This is the final chapter of a four-part series providing a balanced analysis of the good, the bad, and the ugly of Russia’s military performance since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The last installment looked at “the bad” in the tactical record of the Russian armed forces. This final assessment considers “the ugly” performance of Russian’s senior leadership, which if not corrected could prove to be Russia’s undoing.

As detailed in the previous article, Russia built a Potemkin military in the decade prior to the invasion, and the strategy it chose to conduct the invasion was deeply flawed. The two men responsible for building that fragile army and designing the invasion plans were Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Gen. Valery Gerasimov. Both men rose to power in 2012.

When the army Russian President Vladimir Putin thought he had built over the past decade was exposed as a hollow shell, and after the strategy for the invasion imploded, one might have expected Putin to fire these two men. Yet they never faced discipline or demotion. Both remain firmly in place – and since February 2022, they have remained at the center of controversy.

Failure to Prepare for Ukraine’s 2022 Fall Offensives

After the initial invasion plan fell apart, and it became clear that an insufficient number of inadequately prepared troops could not accomplish the Kremlin’s objectives, Russian leaders ordered the withdrawal of tens of thousands of Russian mechanized troops north of Kyiv and Kharkiv. These troops redeployed toward the Kremlin’s main effort, the Donbas region. Given the situation, this was the best move in a basket of bad options.

The Russian army did recover from its disastrous opening round, and through the early summer of 2022 it successfully captured the key cities of Mariupol, Severodonetsk, and Lysychansk. But by early July, the Russian army ran out of steam and effectively stopped its westward drives. The Ukrainian command, meanwhile, sacrificed thousands of its troops and conscripts to slow and then stop the Russian drive westward while building up two offensive formations. Russia knew about one of these, in Kherson Oblast, but the formation in the Kharkiv region escaped Gerasimov’s notice.

While Russian troops were licking their wounds and resting from the summer offensive in the Donbas, they were busy preparing in Kherson for Ukraine’s widely publicized offensive. Initially, Russia’s preparation proved effective, as the Ukrainian Armed Forces made little headway and suffered enormous casualties.

But while Russia myopically focused on Kherson, Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi pulled off the biggest surprise of the war. Zaluzhnyi covertly assembled a large attack force in the Kherson region and unleashed an offensive for which Russian forces in the north were completely unprepared.

That lack of preparedness was yet another failure of Russia’s top commanders. When Russian forces redeployed the bulk of their forces from the northern part of the country in April and May, they left what amounted to a token force to cover tens of thousands of square kilometers. Russian troops there were outnumbered eight to one, but even that doesn’t explain the true discrepancy.

A New York Times investigation into the battle revealed that to defend the vast expanse in Northern Ukraine, Russia’s high command had “relied on bedraggled backup forces, many of them separatist fighters from Ukraine’s long conflict in its divided east, to hold territory as the regular Russian army fought hundreds of miles away.” 

The Russian commanding generals should never have left so much territory to so few and untrained men. Even then, they should have ordered them to build hasty defensive positions and given them the resources to do the job. Otherwise, they should have reduced their holdings and held on to only as much territory as they had men and resources to control.

The Russian command did neither. It lost thousands of troops and thousands of square kilometers in the process. Thus, by the beginning of December 2022, Putin had learned that his top two military leaders had crafted a poorly designed, inadequately resourced, and badly executed invasion. He had seen their subsequent offensive operations throughout the summer founder, and by the fall, he had seen yet another major operational error committed by Gerasimov and Shoigu.

Putin took no action to discipline or remove either man.

Russia’s most senior military leaders still were not done making major mistakes. Perhaps as cover for Shoigu and Gerasimov’s errors, someone had to take the blame for the loss of Kherson. That fell on the commander of Russia’s so-called special military operation, Gen. Sergey Surovikin. Putin not only refused to challenge his top general, but in January, he demoted Surovikin and elevated Gerasimov to commander of all Russian combat forces in the war.

Failure to Prevent Open Rebellion

Just days before the change of commanders, another problem arose, as the violent and emotional leader of the Wagner Group private military company, Yevgeny Prigozhin, went public with harsh and foul-mouthed criticism of Gerasimov. Prigozhin claimed that the Ministry of Defense was intentionally withholding critical ammunition stocks for Wagner’s fight in Bakhmut, causing his troops to suffer greater casualties.

The feud continued into 2023. In February, Prigozhin accused the Russian generals of treason for failing to provide the necessary ammunition. On May 5, Prigozhin threatened to pull his troops out of the fight for Bakhmut if Moscow didn’t provide more artillery ammunition. He delivered an expletive-filled tirade against Shoigu and Gerasimov, accusing them of failing to provide the promised ammunition.

At no point did Gerasimov or Shoigu discipline Prigozhin. At no point did Putin take any public action, either against his top two generals or Prigozhin. The matter was allowed to fester, and on June 24, Prigozhin’s feud with Gerasimov and Shoigu exploded into an armed revolt. Prigozhin drove tanks into Rostov-on-Don, where Gerasimov’s headquarters was located, and occupied the headquarters building. He then ordered other armed columns to start driving to Moscow, to “seek justice” for his men’s losses.

Only when a potential coup was underway did Putin get involved. Prigozhin’s audacious move failed. The Wagner Group was effectively dismantled in Ukraine. Its tanks and other equipment were folded into the regular army, and Prigozhin’s men were sent to Belarus, Syria, or Africa. Gerasimov and Shoigu, however, yet again remained in place. But still, the dysfunction at the top was not over.

Dysfunction between Gerasimov/Shoigu and Top Commanding Generals

Some of Russia’s most experienced and successful generals had similar complaints against the Ministry of Defense and the commander of the armed forces. Instead of heeding the warnings of his combat generals, Putin stood passively by as Shoigu fired the commanding generals of the 58th Army, the 106th Airborne Division, and 7th Airborne Division. In total, eight generals have been fired by Gerasimov and Shoigu in recent days.

Meanwhile, back on the front, the Russian army, after spending between six and nine months building an elaborate and professionally designed system of defensive belts, has been performing admirably. Since June 5, the UAF has been throwing everything it has at the Russians — including hundreds of Western tanks, armored vehicles, and artillery systems — and thus far the Kremlin’s forces have held the line. If Gerasimov and Shoigu deserve blame for the chaos at the top, they also deserve credit for the things that have gone well.

But defense has always been the strongest form of war. Russia’s recent success in blunting Ukraine’s offensive owes as much to enduring fundamentals — and to egregious missteps by Ukrainian leaders that we will discuss in a future analysis — as it does to the plans made by the Kremlin’s leaders. It is what happens next that may determine the war’s outcome.

Russian tactical and operational troops and leaders (platoon through brigade) have accumulated considerable experience since the war began. Some of them have shown commendable capacity in adapting to the conditions of modern war, both offensively and defensively. The longer the war goes, the better many of the mid- to lower-level Russian fighters become. The same has thus far not been true of the highest Russian leaders, and that more than anything may determine the outcome of the war’s next phase.

Ramifications

The Ukrainian offensive currently underway will culminate soon, regardless of any territory Zelensky’s troops recover. The defensive doctrine the Russians have been using since January of this year is straight out of decades-old Soviet manuals. The intent of a Soviet-style defensive is to weaken an opponent’s offensive strength by conducting a mobile, flexible defense. Once the attackers reach a critical level of weakness, the Russians will doctrinally move to launch a major counteroffensive.

That will be the true test of Russia’s senior leaders, and of Putin himself. If Russia is unable to mount an offensive force that captures major cities or at least completes the seizure of all of the Donbas, it will place Putin in an alarming spot. He’s already seen his government suffer a failed rebellion because of problems with senior leaders that Putin put in place and has kept in place. If the plans Gerasimov and Shoigu craft, and Putin authorizes, fail to win the war, and the conflict degenerates into a protracted stalemate with little prospect for victory, Putin may suffer a loss of confidence in the eyes of his most effective field commanders, as well as rank-and-file soldiers. In that case, even Putin’s long-term security might not be assured.

Conclusion

Those who dislike Russia will see the evidence of “bad” and “ugly” in this and the previous publication and conclude that Russia cannot win and Ukraine will ultimately prevail. That is certainly the view of many in Kyiv. But it is too early to reach such conclusions, because mixed in with manifestations of the very ugly — open rebellion is almost as bad as it can get within a country — Russia has also demonstrated a modest amount of “good.”

The defense the Russians have built at the operational level, and have thus far been executing at the tactical level, has been exceptional by any historical military standard. What very much remains to be seen is whether Russia’s strategic leaders have learned enough lessons to translate that success into offensive effectiveness at the operational level. The skills needed to conduct wars on defense and on offense are different.

Yet it is probably not accurate to say that Russia will lose the war if its next offensive does not work. If Putin is able to maintain effective control of the political apparatus in Moscow and manage dissatisfaction among his generals and throughout the ranks, Russia is still likely to prevail in the long run. They have a vastly larger country, millions of military aged males, and an industry that is cranking up to higher and higher levels of production. It is unlikely that Ukraine will ever be able to match Russia’s natural and human resources over time — even with continued NATO contributions, which are not guaranteed.

Ultimately, war remains a chaotic, brutal, and unpredictable affair that is almost always determined by which side has the best leadership, the most resources, and the firmest political staying power. The pressures on each side come from their enemy as much as from their own domestic populations. Only time will tell how this conflict ends, but a cold, balanced assessment doesn’t bode well for Kyiv.

By Stephen Breyer, Asia Times, 8/14/23

Stephen Bryen is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and the Yorktown Institute.

It is still too early to say whether the direction of the Ukraine war has changed, but there is increasing evidence that Ukraine’s inability to penetrate Russian defenses along the southern line, and challenges in the directions of Kupyansk, Lyman and Bakhmut suggests the entire war could be reaching a decisive conclusion.

It is, for that reason, that the Biden administration is asking Congress for $20 billion for Ukraine. The idea seems to be to provide psychological support to both President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian army.

This time, however, Congress may not rubber stamp this outlandish money request. It is not clear why US$20 billion is needed, and sentiment in the US and Europe is starting to shift toward finding a solution to this costly and difficult war.

Concerns range from depleting US strategic reserves to prolonging a conflict that increasingly looks like it will end up badly in a Ukrainian defeat. While opposition is well short of a majority, further battlefield setbacks could lead Congress to change its mind on financial requests that break the bank.

One thing is certain: It is unlikely that any Washington politician can mobilize public support for the war.

Information about Russian operations, particularly in the Kupyansk direction, is hard to find. The Russians are not calling their operations an offensive, although unconfirmed reports say that Russia has mustered 100,000 or more troops for their operation in this area, and have moved in a lot of heavy equipment.

Most revealing was a convoy of BM-21 multiple rocket launchers, seen heading to the area. There also have been reports of Ukrainian units refusing to fight, and while information on such mutinies has been suppressed, it seems to have happened in the past few days.

Zelensky is hoping to retake Bakhmut, his key objective before he lost the city to Wagner forces. At the moment Bakhmut city is not threatened. Instead, the Ukrainians have been trying to take back settlements to the north and south of the city.

The latest information is that early Ukrainian advances in both directions have been repulsed, and that any hope Zelensky may have of creating a victory on the ashes of Bakhmut seems to have failed to materialize. 

The Bakhmut venture, once it is finally sorted out, could create a huge internal problem for Zelensky. He is about to fire his defense minister, the man who fronted for him in getting arms from Europe and the United States. Anticipated replacement candidates are, for the most part, inexperienced and unconnected to the war. 

Oleksiy Reznikov, the sitting defense minister, may be tipped to be sent to the UK as the Ukrainian ambassador. No one can say for sure whether Ukraine’s military still supports Zelensky, but as more and more cracks appear in Kiev, it is a good bet that they may take matters into their own hands. Should that happen, Zelensky will likely be deposed.

Ukraine has brought up reserve units, many NATO-trained, to try and head off any big Russian advance.

But committing these reserves leaves Ukraine with less trained brigades for the future, since Russia’s primary strategy has been to let them come in fairly close and then pound them with artillery, air strikes and aerial mines. It is now reported that Ukraine has ordered a mass evacuation, while at the same time mining bridges and roads to slow a Russian advance.

The Russians have been fairly clever in managing their war front. Few attacks have been made on Kiev, except one more than a month ago on Ukraine’s intelligence center in the city.

Little is said in the Russian press about the top Ukrainian commanders, Valerii Zaluzhny and Oleksandr Syrskyi, other than to note that the Ukrainian army operates professionally. This may suggest the Russian door is open to dialogue with Ukraine’s military.

Meanwhile, reports indicate that the Wagner troops in Belarus are starting to return to Russia. The immediate cause is that Belarus has refused to pay them, leaving them without salaries for their troops or money to purchase equipment.

It is possible that some of them will be shipped off to Africa. While Russia has not supported the coup in Niger, that disclaimer does not necessarily apply to Wagner. The recent decision of ECOWAS to agree to putting together a military operation to “restore democracy in Niger,” offers Russia and Wagner a significant opportunity.

ECOWAS troops are nearly as bad as Niger’s. They lack transport, communications and supplies. Any war there, without an outside stabilizing force, is likely to become a war of atrocities. No one knows whether Putin will tip his hat to Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and fly them into Niamey. 

Niger, of course, is a sideshow and Ukraine is the main event, with significant geopolitical implications. The Russians have been holding out instead of starting a big push to finish the war, trying to wear down the Ukrainians and split support for the war in Kiev.

But war planners in Moscow know how to count, and it could be they now see opportunities for a big offensive. If it materializes, keep an eye on Kupyansk.

Very disturbing that the most gung-ho are Millenials and Gen Zer’s. These are presumably the demographics more inclined to look at alternative media, yet they seem to have imbibed the establishment narrative on Ukraine the most. On the other hand, boomers appear to be the most opposed while Generation X (my generation – apparently the invisible generation) is not mentioned at all. – Natylie

By Ellie Cook, Newsweek, 8/2/23

Almost a third of Americans support U.S. troops being sent to war-torn Ukraine, according to a new poll.

A total of 31 percent of eligible voters in the U.S. support or strongly support American military forces heading to the battlefields of Ukraine, polling conducted exclusively for Newsweek by Redfield & Wilton Strategies has revealed.

A quarter of respondents neither supported nor opposed the idea of sending U.S. soldiers to Ukraine, with 34 percent against the suggestion. Just under one in ten respondents did not know.

The Pentagon said it had no comment to make when contacted by Newsweek about the results of the poll.

The U.S. is by far Ukraine’s biggest backer in terms of military aid. Since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, Washington has pledged more than $43 billion in security assistance to Kyiv. But the Biden administration has said since the early days of the conflict that U.S. soldiers will not be heading to the front lines in Ukraine.

A total of 1,500 people participated in the online poll, carried out between July 25 and July 26.

In the poll, those identified as “Millennial,” between 27 and 42 years old, were most likely to “strongly support” committing U.S. troops to Ukraine. However, more respondents born between 1997 and 2012 said they would support the measure overall, 47 percent saying they supported or strongly supported sending U.S. troops.

Nearly a third of respondents aged over 59 said they opposed pledging U.S. troops to Ukraine, with a further 25 percent “strongly” opposing the suggestion.

Just four percent of “Gen Z” respondents, aged between 18 and 26, said they felt strongly against sending U.S. troops.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden said U.S. military forces “are not and will not be engaged in a conflict with Russia in Ukraine.”

Biden said U.S. forces would be transferred to Europe, but they were not heading to the continent “to fight in Ukraine, but to defend our NATO allies and reassure those allies in the east.”

“As I made crystal clear, the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory with a full force of American power,” Biden said at the time.

However, Ukraine is not part of the alliance, despite loud calls from Kyiv to be allowed to join and promises from NATO that Kyiv could become a member state further down the line.

Under Article 5, NATO members are obligated to treat an attack on one state as an attack on all, and this is one of the reasons for the hesitancy about allowing Ukraine to become part of NATO while it is still at war with Russia.

In the polling for Newsweek, 47 percent of respondents said they either supported or strongly supported Ukraine being admitted into NATO, with just 15 percent saying they opposed Kyiv’s membership. A further 29 percent expressed neither support nor opposition, and 10 percent did not know.

Just over a quarter said NATO should admit Ukraine immediately, whereas 37 percent believed Ukraine should become a NATO state after the war with Russia has finished.

On July 13, Biden said he had authorized an additional 3,000 reserve troops to be sent to Europe.

“This reaffirms the unwavering support and commitment to the defense of NATO’s eastern flank in wake of Russia’s illegal and unprovoked war on Ukraine,” U.S. Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims told a Pentagon media briefing.

These soldiers “are not additional forces” but will “augment what we already have there,” he said, adding their activities will be decided by the U.S. European Command.

In mid-April, ABC News reported that a “small U.S. military special operations team” had been operating from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv since the early days of the war, but that they did not approach the front lines, citing a former and a current U.S. official.

On November 1, 2022, Pentagon Press Secretary, Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told media that U.S. forces were at the embassy, but Washington had “been very clear there are no combat forces in Ukraine, no U.S. forces conducting combat operations in Ukraine.”

“We have U.S. Marines at the embassy doing normal U.S. Marine-type guard duties,” Ryder said. “These are not combat squads that are going out.”

By Connor Echols, Responsible Statecraft, 8/2/23

In an unprecedented move, more than 100 leading medical journals from around the world called for the abolition of all nuclear weapons in an op-ed published Tuesday.

“The prevention of any use of nuclear weapons is […] an urgent public health priority and fundamental steps must also be taken to address the root cause of the problem — by abolishing nuclear weapons,” the editorial argues, adding that current non-proliferation efforts are “​​inadequate to protect the world’s population against the threat of nuclear war.” 

“As editors of health and medical journals worldwide, we call on health professionals to alert the public and our leaders to this major danger to public health and the essential life support systems of the planet — and urge action to prevent it,” they write. The co-authors include the editors-in-chief of the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine.

The piece, which was sponsored by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, notes that the risk of nuclear war has gone up in recent years due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and increased tensions on the Korean Peninsula. The authors slammed nuclear states for failing to pursue total denuclearization in good faith, a key provision of the Cold War-era Non-Proliferation Treaty, an agreement that limits which states have access to nuclear weapons.

The article’s release is set to coincide with the 78th anniversary of the American nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those strikes killed as many as 200,000 Japanese civilians, not including those who may have died from cancer and other radiation-related illnesses in later years.

As the editorial notes, the impact of nuclear war today would likely be far worse. Researchers have found that a war involving roughly two percent of the world’s nukes could kill 120 million people directly. And a full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia could lead to “nuclear winter,” in which the vast majority of humans would perish and civilization as we know it would cease to exist.

The call also comes as millions of people are flocking to theaters to watch ‘Oppenheimer,’ the new Christopher Nolan film about the scientist who led the program that created the atomic bomb. Notably, the movie has faced criticism for not portraying the aftermath of American attacks on Japan and the long-term health consequences of nuclear testing.

The editorial is unlikely to get a warm reception from U.S. officials, who have long argued that security considerations make denuclearization impossible in the near term. And some experts argue that full denuclearization would actually raise the risk of cataclysmic war between the world’s military powers, which have assiduously avoided direct clashes since acquiring the ultimate weapon.

“Nuclear weapons took great power war off the agenda of international politics,” Michael Desch of Notre Dame University told RS earlier this year. And, as Desch noted, the total number of nuclear weapons has dropped dramatically from its high of 65,000 warheads in the mid-1980s.

The Biden administration has so far paid little attention to nuclear negotiations of any sort, though it recently offered to restart nuclear talks with Russia and China “without preconditions.”

The op-ed, for its part, offers three concrete steps that could reduce nuclear risks short of full abolition. One suggestion is for states to adopt a “no first use” policy, meaning that they would only use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack on their territory. Another is to take nukes off “hair-trigger alert,” which would lengthen decision-making windows in case of an apparent attack. Finally, the physicians call on states at war to “pledge publicly and unequivocally that they will not use nuclear weapons in these conflicts.”

But, as the authors note, none of these steps would eliminate the risk of nuclear apocalypse.

“The danger is great and growing,” the medical experts argue. “The nuclear armed states must eliminate their nuclear arsenals before they eliminate us.”

By Melvin Goodman, Counterpunch, 7/28/23

Presidents typically announce controversial personnel and policy decisions on a Friday to ensure that the Saturday papers, which are not widely read, are charged with informing the general public.  This was the case this past Friday, when President Joe Biden appointed CIA director William Burns to the Cabinet.  President Harry S. Truman, who created the CIA in 1947, favored the depoliticization of the agency and its directors, which is why he initially chose professional military officers to be the director of central intelligence.  No CIA director was appointed to the cabinet until the Reagan administration several decades later.

It is ironic that Biden chose Burns for the cabinet because I believe Burns was appointed to CIA in part to depoliticize the role of the director in the wake of the failed stewardship of CIA directors Mike Pompeo and Gina Haspel in the Trump administration.  Too many CIA directors in the past were particularly bad choices because they were too close to partisan politics.  Such directors as George H.W. Bush (the Ford administration); William Casey (the Reagan administration); and Mike Pompeo (the Trump administration) were bad choices because of their partisan views.  As president, George H.W. Bush appointed Robert Gates to lead the CIA because Gates’ loyalty to the president (and the entire Bush family) could be assumed.  Barack Obama’s appointment of John Brennan was similarly flawed, and Brennan—like Gates—was more concerned with serving the White House than telling truth to power.

When George H.W. Bush was named director of the CIA in 1976, he asked President Gerald Ford to place him in the cabinet.  Ford rejected that request and, upon reflection, Bush agreed that it would have been an inappropriate move.  When Bush became president in 1989, he refused to give cabinet status to either William Webster or Bob Gates.

A strong and independent CIA director is essential to deal with White House pressures to ensure that intelligence assessments support policy.  The Carter administration scrutinized CIA director Stansfield Turner’s testimony on arms control because it wanted to make sure that Turner would tell the Congress that CIA’s monitoring of any strategic arms control agreement would be foolproof.  Vice President Dick Cheney made numerous trips to the CIA in the run-up to the Iraq War to make sure that CIA intelligence supported White House claims regarding Iraqi weapons of mass production.  Donald Trump relied on CIA director Pompeo to put pressure on the intelligence directorate to justify withdrawal from the Iran nuclear accord.

These are important considerations regarding the policy role of CIA directors, which is why it was disconcerting to observe the mishandling and misunderstanding of the issue by the mainstream media, particularly by the New York Times.  On Saturday, Michael Shear’s article in the Times was headlined ”Biden Makes CIA Director Member of the Cabinet Again,” which incorrectly assumed that the CIA director was traditionally a member of the cabinet.  But the CIA is not a policy making institution, and presidents initially did not appoint intelligence directors to their cabinets.

President Ronald Reagan broke this important tradition in 1981, when he made CIA director William Casey a cabinet member.  Casey believed that cabinet status gave him a platform for shaping national security policy.  He took advantage of this appointment to shape or politicize the intelligence of the CIA and to manage the Iran-Contra operation.  In his important memoir, Secretary of State George Shultz stressed that he was aware that Casey and his deputy, Bob Gates, were shaping intelligence on the Soviet Union, so he discounted it.

President Donald Trump placed CIA directors Pompeo and Haspel in his cabinet, and Pompeo reliably tried to politicize intelligence on such sensitive policy issues as Iran.  In view of Haspel’s role in the sadistic CIA program of torture and abuse, it was particularly inexorable to place her in such an important institution.

William Burns is far and away the best CIA director in recent memory,  perhaps in the 75 years of its history, and clearly the national security heavyweight in the Biden administration.  Burns repeatedly denies that he is engaged in the diplomacy of the Biden administration, but he has taken on a substantive and significant policy role.  His numerous trips to key capitals belie his denials regarding diplomatic activism.  It is difficult to believe that he has not taken part in policy discussions, particularly in view of the limited experience and knowledge of the Biden national security team (Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is traveling to Tonga this week to open the U.S. embassy there).

In view of Burns’ extensive experience in sensitive diplomatic matters, it is reasonable to assume that he will be asked to contribute to discussions on sensitive policy issues.  Burns repeatedly states that he is not engaged in diplomacy, but he traveled to Kyiv and Moscow with warnings of last year’s Russian invasion.  And Burns, who conducted secret diplomacy with Iran on behalf of the Obama administration, traveled to Beijing for Biden to open lines of communication.  It is up to Burns to ensure that he isn’t tempted to somehow shape intelligence analysis to a particular policy.

This should have been one of the major lessons of the CIA’s intelligence failures in the run-up to the Iraq War, when the British intelligence chief wrote a secret memorandum for the British Prime Minister, charging that the White House and CIA director George Tenet were shaping U.S. intelligence to U.S. policy regarding weapons of mass destruction.  When the Soviet Union was heading toward dissolution in the 1980s, CIA director Casey and his deputy, Gates, “shaped” U.S. intelligence to paint a picture of a threatening Soviet Union in order to justify increased defense spending.  Gates, who was a weather vane for all of Casey’s hard-line views, finally acknowledged in his memoir that he watched Casey “on issue after issue, sit in meetings and present intelligence framed in terms of the policy he wanted pursued.”

Burns has a well-deserved reputation for integrity, but he could be tested by the Biden administration, particularly in an election year.

Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University.  A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism. and A Whistleblower at the CIA. His most recent books are “American Carnage: The Wars of Donald Trump” (Opus Publishing, 2019) and “Containing the National Security State” (Opus Publishing, 2021). Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org.