38 United States The Economist April 9th 2022
BillBurnsandthebear
E
arly last year Jordan’s security service uncovered a plot
against the kingdom’s ruler, Abdullah, involving his half
brother, Saudi Arabia and some Bedouin tribes. William Burns,
the ciadirector and a former ambassador to Jordan, recognised
the threat this represented to a crucial American ally. He hotfooted
it to the White House to brief Joe Biden—“the first customer”, in
ciaparlance—who immediately called King Abdullah to express
his strong support. Once the crisis had passed, the Jordanian be
came the first Arab leader to visit Mr Biden.
The incident, little noticed at the time, was a foretaste of the at
tributes Mr Burns has brought to Langley. Decisive, discreet and
experienced, the 66yearold former career diplomat—often de
scribed as the most accomplished envoy of his generation—com
bines expertise with influence. Fluent in Russian and Arabic, he
has served five presidents and had two postings in Moscow: the
first amid the chaos of Boris Yeltsin’s leadership, the second, as
ambassador, during Vladimir Putin’s early tenure, as America’s re
lations with Russia darkened. He knows the Russian leader well.
And few advisers are as trusted by Mr Biden, whom the spy chief
has briefed for almost three decades, including on the Iran nuclear
deal, which he negotiated for Barack Obama in 2015.America’s Putin-whisperer
He has duly taken a lead role in the Ukraine crisis. After American
and British spies uncovered Russia’s warplanning last October,
Mr Burns was dispatched to Moscow to warn Mr Putin that his in
tentions were clear and of the consequences they would invite.
Perhaps Mr Putin, stewing in his dacha over covid19 and his many
grievances, would have spoken to no other emissary. Doubly con
vinced that war was likely, Mr Burns then helped lead a successful
effort to convince sceptical European allies of Mr Putin’s plans by
making the AngloAmerican intelligence on them public. Rarely
has America’s intelligence community, a scapegoat, rightly or
wrongly, for many foreignpolicy blunders over the decades,
achieved such a clear win. It has been hailed as one of the most
creative and successful uses of intelligence in many years.
Ukraine remains a disaster, of course. Yet at a time when Amer
ican foreign policy is increasingly viewed through a distorting politicallens—aseither a great triumph or humiliating defeat—the
administration’s response to the crisis is a reminder that clever di
plomacy usually produces something in between. Diplomacy is an
exercise, in Henry Kissinger’s careful phrase, which Mr Burns
quotes admiringly, in “the patient accumulation of partial suc
cesses”. In the spy chief’s own contribution to that painstaking
task, three qualities stand out.
One is the indispensability of deep subject knowledge. Most re
cent foreignpolicy blunders—from the abrogation of the Iran deal
by Donald Trump to George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq—were made
in profound ignorance of the world that America was presuming
to shape. Mr Burns’s views on Russia, by contrast, are informed by
a deep appreciation of it as well as understanding. As ambassador,
he discussed Russian spirituality with Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
was grilled by the Duma foreignaffairs committee, spoke at the
funeral of a journalist murdered on Mr Putin’s birthday and trav
elled the Russian land mass relentlessly. A oneman repository of
America’s institutional knowledge of Russia, Mr Burns represents
a tradition of serious American diplomacy that has been under
appreciated by American policymakers. “There is simply no one
who knows Russia better,” says Jake Sullivan, the national security
adviser. It is no coincidence that one of Mr Burns’s first actions at
the ciawas to launch a drive to recruit more Mandarinspeakers.
He recognises that America, no longer the world’s policeman, can
not hope to shape a world it does not understand.
Another Burns attribute is his institutionalism. On Mr Trump’s
first day in office the president delivered an unhinged speech to
America’s spies while standing by the Memorial Wall in Langley
that lists theciamembers who have died in service. He also ig
nored the intelligence briefings the agency prepared for him. Even
if his spy chiefs, Mike Pompeo and Gina Haspel, had been more
competent and likeable they could not have prevented the demo
ralisation and attrition this caused. Mr Burns’s effort to fix the
damage has involved repurposing as well as reassuring the cia.
He has launched two new missioncentres, one covering China
and the other technology and transnational threats such as cli
mate change. The second, which is dedicated in part to keeping
abreast of technological developments in the private sector, illus
trates how rapid socioeconomic change is forcing intelligence
agencies to expand into areas beyond espionage. The administra
tion’s creative use of the intelligence on Ukraine is another exam
ple of that: it was informed by a desire to cut through the chaos of
opensource intelligence reports as well as by fear of Russian dis
information. Agency sources point to internal contentment with
that policy, notwithstanding the cia’s customary obsession with
secrecy, as proof of its confidence in Mr Burns.
The third quality is collegiality, which is a common feature of
Mr Biden’s foreignpolicy team. Mr Sullivan and Antony Blinken,
the secretary of state, seem similarly unencumbered by the petty
jealousies that usually plague the cabinet. Mr Burns’s current
prominence, including in roles that Mr Blinken might have been
expected to perform, appears to have ruffled no feathers among
his peers. It helps that he and they have worked together for years.
They also all appear to enjoy Mr Biden’s trust. Perhaps not since
William Casey, Ronald Reagan’s spy chief, has a ciadirector en
joyed such easy access to the president as the current one enjoys.
The only significant criticism Mr Burns faces (which his memoir
suggests he shares) is that it is in his careerist nature tobetooac
commodating to power. No one accuses Mr Burns of beingegocen
tric. At a bleak time, Mr Biden is lucky to have him to hand.nLexington
The ciadirector is at the heart of the administration’s capable Ukraine effort