CIA Director William Burns gave his first public speech since becoming his agency’s chief a little over a year ago at the Georgia Institute of Technology on Thursday. Among the various topics that he touched upon was his assessment of China’s role in Russia’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine. Burns described the People’s Republic as Moscow’s “silent partner’, which builds upon prior claims that it’s been secretly providing military aid to that country. This is a deliberately false portrayal of the Chinese-Russian Strategic Partnership, especially in the current context of the Ukrainian Conflict, but one that’s intended to advance the US’ self-interested geostrategic agenda.

The US-led Western Mainstream Media’s (MSM) weaponized information warfare narrative is to depict those two as the most destabilizing forces in the world even though their entente actually stabilizes International Relations amidst the global systemic transition to multipolarity. China does indeed serve as a valve from the US-led West’s unprecedented and preplanned pressure upon that Eurasian Great Power, though that’s not anything nefarious but is simply the outcome of Beijing’s practice of principled neutrality towards the Ukrainian Conflict. Like India, which is one of the US’ top military-strategic partners anywhere in the world, China doesn’t want Russia to be adversely affected by this pressure.

Deliberately misportraying this as a so-called “silent partnership” is disingenuous since it amounts to a perception management operation aimed at manipulating the minds of the CIA’s targeted audience, which in this case includes both Western and non-Western populations. The first are intended to have their already largely negative perceptions of China reaffirmed while the second are supposed to increasingly view it with suspicion ahead of the US’ attempts to pressure them to distance themselves from its Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) as a “sign of solidarity with the rules-based international order” though really in response to forthcoming “secondary sanctions” pressure.

Although the New Cold War’s Western Eurasian theater between Russia and the US/NATO in Europe is a lot hotter and more dynamic right now than the Eastern Eurasian one between the China and the US/AUKUS, it’s inevitable that Washington will eventually recalibrate its focus to restore some sense of balance towards its dual “containment” of both Great Powers with time. With a view to that end, Burns’ false portrayal of China’s role in the Ukrainian Conflict is intended to precondition that particular targeted audience to more openly support their governments’ collaboration with the US, specifically on the partial pretext of “punishing” China for violating the subjectively defined “rules-based order”.

The reality however is that the only objectively existing rules-based order is that which is enshrined in the UN Charter, which serves as the supreme basis upon which all international law is built. The US’ subjective interpretation of this concept is nothing more than the politically convenient implementation of double standards aimed at advancing its own interests. Nevertheless, it does indeed have somewhat of an appeal to indoctrinated masses who don’t know any better and have been misled to subconsciously support the discredited fascist-supremacist ideology of “American Exceptionalism” that propagates the US’ unique role as the judge, jury, and executioner of all supposed global standards.

There are indeed those among the targeted Asia-Pacific audience who sympathize with the CIA’s latest weaponized information warfare against China that’s predicated on misleading them about that country’s role in the Ukrainian Conflict. While everyone’s entitled to their own interpretation of events and associated opinions about any given actor’s role within them, they should nevertheless still be informed that this particular interpretation is being supported by American intelligence agencies in advance of their own interests. That might influence them to reconsider their views out of credible concern that they’re playing into the US’ anti-Chinese “containment” plans as “useful idiots”.