The heads of the United States\u2019 CIA and the UK\u2019s foreign intelligence service, known as MI6, spoke at length about the key security issues plaguing the world in an unprecedented joint public appearance in London on Saturday, in a wide-ranging discussion that covered Russian aggression, the threat from China and the war in Gaza. <\/p>\n
The event \u2013 a discussion at the FT Weekend Festival chaired by the newspaper\u2019s editor Roula Khalaf \u2013 marked the first time the two men \u2013 Richard Moore of MI6 and CIA chief Bill Burns \u2013 have appeared on a public stage together. <\/p>\n
The two men spoke of the significance of the partnership between the US and the UK, particularly in the face of Russian aggression. Burns cited the run-up to the war in Ukraine, launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin in February 2022, as one of the best examples. <\/p>\n
\u201cGoing back to the fall of 2021, the two of us together, our services together, were able to provide credible, early, accurate warning of the invasion that was coming, which was not a small thing at the time, because almost all of the other services around the world, our intelligence counterparts, thought this was a bluff on Putin\u2019s part,\u201d the CIA chief said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think that good intelligence enabled our leaders, our political leaderships, to mobilize a very strong coalition to counter Putin\u2019s aggression.\u201d <\/p>\n
Burns said that this helped the Ukrainians to defend themselves. He also spoke of a \u201cnovel approach\u201d to declassify some secrets in that period as a way of denying Putin the chance to peddle false narratives. This put Putin in the \u201cunaccustomed and uncomfortable position of being on the wrong foot,\u201d Burns said. <\/p>\n
Speaking on the threat from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, Moore said there was a lot of \u201cpragmatic cooperation\u201d between these countries. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou can see it, of course, sadly, on the battlefield in Ukraine. You can see North Korea, North Korean weaponry. You can see Iranian drones. You can see the sort of help that the Chinese have provided through sort of dual-use type material. You see all of that playing out in our world.\u201d <\/p>\n
Adding to this, Burns said that there has not yet been any \u201cdirect evidence\u201d of China providing weapons and munitions to Russia for use in Ukraine. However, he said: \u201cWe see lots of things just short of that, as Richard said, in terms of dual-use items, the kind of things that have enabled Putin over the course of the last 18 months or so to significantly rebuild his defense industrial base and that poses a real danger.\u201d <\/p>\n
Asked about concerns over potential Russian escalation in response to the West\u2019s supply of weapons to Ukraine, Burns said: \u201cI think there was a moment in the fall of 2022 when there was a genuine risk of the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons. I have never thought, however, this is the view of my agency, that we should be unnecessarily intimidated by that. Putin\u2019s a bully and he is going to continue to saber-rattle from time to time.\u201d <\/p>\n
US President Joe Biden had sent him to speak with \u201cone of our Russian counterparts, Sergei Naryshkin, at the end of 2022 to make very clear what the consequences of that kind of escalation would be,\u201d Burns added. <\/p>\n
Speaking on Ukraine\u2019s surprise offensive into Russia\u2019s Kursk border region, Burns said that said that such developments help to counter Putin\u2019s \u201ccocky and smug attitude.\u201d <\/p>\n
According to Burns, Putin\u2019s approach to the war in Ukraine has been that it is \u201conly a matter of time before the Ukrainians are going to be ground down, and all of their supporters in the West are going to be worn down,\u201d allowing the Russian president then to dictate terms for a settlement. <\/p>\n
Developments such as Ukraine\u2019s Kursk offensive help to \u201cput a dent\u201d in that narrative and raise questions among the Russian elite about \u201cwhere all this is headed,\u201d Burns said. The offensive last month saw Ukrainian forces storm into Kursk in a cross-border incursion that caught even American officials by surprise. <\/p>\n
Burns described the Kursk offensive as a \u201csignificant tactical achievement\u201d that has served to boost Ukrainian morale as well as expose some of the vulnerabilities of Putin\u2019s Russia and his military. Last year\u2019s short-lived insurrection carried out by former Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin also helped to dent this narrative, Burns said. <\/p>\n
The CIA chief does not, however, see Putin\u2019s grip on power weakening. \u201cHe does one thing really well, and that\u2019s repress people at home.\u201d <\/p>\n
Speaking on the negotiations to secure a ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza, Burns said that the US was \u201cworking very hard\u201d with mediators Egypt and Qatar to refine a framework proposed by Biden in May and put it \u201cin a good enough proposal\u201d that both the Israeli and Hamas leaderships will see the value in moving ahead with it. <\/p>\n
He stressed that in his experience with Middle East negotiations, \u201cperfect is never on the menu,\u201d adding that he could not say for sure that \u201cwe\u2019re going to succeed in that,\u201d nor how close the US and mediators might be to a deal right now. <\/p>\n
A lot is at stake for Palestinians and Israelis, as well as strategically in the region, Burns said. But above all, what\u2019s at stake is \u201cin human terms,\u201d he said, pointing to the hostages taken by Hamas-led militants who are still alive and living in \u201chellish conditions,\u201d as well as the \u201ccountless mothers and fathers in Gaza who are dealing with their own terrible losses\u201d and the worsening humanitarian situation in the strip. <\/p>\n
Biden first announced the framework for a peace plan between Israel and Hamas on May 31 \u2013 to which he said Israel had agreed. The three-phase proposal paired the release of hostages with a \u201cfull and complete ceasefire.\u201d The plan envisioned the withdrawal of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops eastward from Gaza. <\/p>\n
Since then, both sides have pointed to what they see as glaring holes in the framework, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisting that Israel\u2019s forces will never leave the stretch along the Egypt-Gaza border known as the Philadelphi Corridor. <\/p>\n
The hostage release efforts gained new urgency earlier this month with the discovery of the bodies of six hostages in a tunnel beneath the southern Gaza city of Rafah, including the Israeli-American citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin. <\/p>\n
The conversation with Moore and Burns was preceded by a jointly-penned editorial in the Financial Times newspaper in which they stressed the international world order was \u201cunder threat in a way we haven\u2019t seen since the Cold War.\u201d <\/p>\n
This is a developing story and will be updated. <\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The heads of the United States\u2019 CIA and the UK\u2019s foreign intelligence service, known as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7648,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}