![\"Joe](\"http:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Joe-Biden-and-Bill-Burns-300x164.jpg\")
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Current CIA Director William \u201cBill\u201d Burns was the former ambassador to Russia and Jordan.\u00a0 Bill Burns had a 33-year career at the State Department under both Republican and Democratic presidents and speaks fluent Russian. If the people in the background of Joe Biden wanted an intelligence operative to trigger a specific result from Russia, there\u2019s no one more strategically perfect for the job than CIA Director Bill Burns.<\/p>\n
The article by Beinart is mainly focused on pointing out the irreconcilable nature of Joe Biden implying Ukraine could join NATO, while his own CIA Director has a history of giving serious warnings emphasizing the \u201cbrightest of all red lines<\/em>\u201d about that specific point.<\/p>\n [\u2026]\u00a0 \u201cTwo years ago, Burns wrote a memoir entitled,\u00a0The Back Channel<\/a>. It directly contradicts the argument being proffered by the administration he now serves. In his book, Burns says over and over that Russians of all ideological stripes\u2014not just Putin\u2014loathed and feared NATO expansion. He quotes a memo he wrote while serving as counselor for political affairs at the US embassy in Moscow in 1995. \u2018Hostility to early NATO expansion,\u201d it declares, \u201cis almost universally felt across the domestic political spectrum here.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n On the question of extending NATO membership to Ukraine, Burns\u2019 warnings about the breadth of Russian opposition are even more emphatic. \u201cUkrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin)<\/strong>,\u201d he wrote in a 2008 memo to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. \u201cIn more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin\u2019s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Against this backdrop of Bill Burns, the details about the lead up to the Russia-Ukraine crisis gain quite a bit of clarity.<\/p>\n