THREAD
@CIA director Bill Burns' visit to Moscow provides a glimpse into how Team Biden tries to stabilize relations with Russia. Bottomline: let's talk to hard men in the Kremlin who are the real players in 🇷🇺 foreign policy. Ambassador Burns is a perfect man for that mission.
@CIA director Bill Burns' visit to Moscow provides a glimpse into how Team Biden tries to stabilize relations with Russia. Bottomline: let's talk to hard men in the Kremlin who are the real players in 🇷🇺 foreign policy. Ambassador Burns is a perfect man for that mission.
2/ With an overall goal to stabilize the current confrontation with 🇷🇺 so that "Russia problem" wouldn't absorb too much time of @POTUS and his senior officials, Team U.S., among other things, seeks to establish multiple channels of communication to the Russian leadership.
3/ During Trump presidency, the only functional 🇺🇸🇷🇺 channel was mil-to-mil, with chief of @thejointstaff & General Valery Gerasimov playing a leading role. Thanks to their professionalism, we are still in a relatively safe place - given the bitterness of confrontation.
4/ Team Biden seeks to expand this network of channels with Russia. See this comprehensive report by @antontroian & @SangerNYT in the @nytimes for details and context: nytimes.com/2021/10/31/wor…
5/ First, @JoeBiden has agreed to have a summit with President Putin, and establish a channel at the highest level. 🇺🇸 President is well-advised to understand the top-down design of decision-making in Putin's Russia. No stabilization can happen without a nod of the big boss...
6/ And if a face-to-face summit is needed to get 🇷🇺attention - so be it. But since @POTUS doesn't have time to get personally involved in all of the thorny issues with Russia (and the realistic goal is to manage, not to fix problems), you need functioning channels down below.
7/ So now we have @DeputySecState talking strategic stability to 🇷🇺DFM Sergey Ryabkov, @UnderSecStateP talking to Ryabkov/Yuri Ushakov bilateral issues like work of embassies & 🇺🇦 to the Kremlin's Dmitry Kozak. So what could be the role of Bill Burns in that mix?
8/ Team 🇺🇸 is clear-eyed that in Putin's Russia, these are bigwigs of the intel/counterintel community that are running the show. They are not advisors and providers of intel. They ARE the real decision-makers on foreign policy - unlike talented diplomats at @mfa_russia.
9/ The new administration has spotted this early on, and established a channel between @jakejsullivan & Nikolay Patrushev, secretary of 🇷🇺 Security Council, Putin's longtime FSB director and a trusted ally very close to the Russian President. This channel is productive, but...
10/ ... the Russian colleagues are facing a typical "mirroring problem." Just because their agencies play such a crucial role in formulation and execution of 🇷🇺 foreign policy, they believe the same is happening in the U.S. - and ascribe magic powers to @CIA in particular.
11/ So establishing a channel between @CIA director and the most senior Russian siloviks close to Putin makes perfect sense. On top of that, of course, comes unique stature of Bill Burns with his experience as U.S. Ambassador to Russia, and genuine respect of 🇷🇺 interlocutors.
12/ By adding Bill Burns to the mix, @JoeBiden also learns from the mistakes of @BarackObama era, when 🇺🇸 talked more to the people it liked in the 🇷🇺 leadership like @MedvedevRussiaE, but didn't invest enough effort to build channels to the hard men in the Kremlin.
13/ We don't know what's been discussed, beyond a very brief statements on 🇷🇺 Security Council's and SVR's websites. It's clear that the Russians were happy to announce the fact of Burns' visit showing how much dialogue with Moscow is now a priority for 🇺🇸 scrf.gov.ru/news/allnews/3…
14/ The only (and rather predictable) detail is discussion on cyber and ransomeware, as reported by @m_tsvetkova & @zverev_live in @Reuters: reuters.com/business/cop/c…
15/ To understand Ambassador Burns' view on Putin's Russia, it's worth re-reading his @nytimes op-ed from 2017: nytimes.com/2017/01/07/opi…
16/ Here is the punchline on @CIA Director's approach of dealing with the Kremlin (in 2017 @nytopinion, when, of course, he was in a different role as president of @CarnegieEndow):
17/ Finally, it's not about China. As Burns put it, "we should be wary of superficially appealing notions like a common effort to “contain” China. Despite long-term concerns about a rising China, Mr. Putin has little inclination to sacrifice a relationship with Beijing." @nytimes
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