The CIA Chief’s Lie About Russia Being China’s “Economic Colony” Is Directed Towards India

Russia is already taking preemptive measures to make sure that Burns’ fearmongering political fantasy never materializes, which India is fully assisting it with due to their shared interest in this. It’s that country’s decisionmakers who are the targeted audience of his latest lie, however, since the CIA seemingly thinks that it’ll scare them enough into dumping Russia like the US has pressured India to do over the past year and thus voluntarily submit itself to becoming the West’s proxy against China.

CIA chief William Burns laundered the lie on Tuesday alleging that Russia is turning into China’s “economic colony”, which he intended to direct towards India for the purpose of manipulating its leadership’s perceptions of Russia’s long-term reliability as their country’s strategic partner. His claim was earlier debunked in this detailed analysis from last summer, which argues that Russia regards India as playing a pivotal role in preemptively averting its potentially disproportionate dependence on China.

This insight was vindicated in the months since as proven by India’s reported desire to scale its exports to Russia by a whopping factor of five, the recent Russia-India business forum which explored the pathways for doing so, and the fact that its energy exports to India are approximately the same as those to China. As explained in this recent analysis, the Russian-Indian Strategic Partnership is responsible for ensuring a degree of global systemic stability amidst the impending trifurcation of International Relations.

In layman’s terms, Russia is already taking preemptive measures to make sure that Burns’ fearmongering political fantasy never materializes, which India is fully assisting it with due to their shared interest in this. It’s that country’s decisionmakers who are the targeted audience of his latest lie, however, since the CIA seemingly thinks that it’ll scare them enough into dumping Russia like the US has pressured India to do over the past year and thus voluntarily submit itself to becoming the West’s proxy against China.

The problem with this latest information warfare provocation is that it reveals just how poorly the US’ Intelligence Community (IC) understands India, both in terms of its grand strategic interests in the New Cold War as well as the paradigm through which its decisionmakers are formulating policy. They envisage informally leading the Global South as a neutral pole of influence amidst the trifurcation of International Relations into this collection of countries, the US-led West’s Golden Billion, and the Sino-Russo Entente.

While sharing the US’ concerns about China’s rapid rise to superpower status, they also regard Russia as an indispensable component for comprehensively enhancing their deterrence capabilities, especially since preventing it from becoming Beijing’s “economic colony” would slow China’s aforesaid rise. Failing to stop that worst-case scenario would turbocharge China’s superpower trajectory, thus pressuring India to finally submit to becoming the US’ vassal out of desperation.

For this reason, India will never dump Russia, especially as a reaction to the CIA chief laundering the lie that their strategic partner is turning into China’s “economic colony” when Delhi’s decisionmakers themselves know that this isn’t true since they’re actively working to prevent that. The very fact that Burns would still try to mislead them anyhow shows that the US hasn’t given up on trying to manipulate that country’s perceptions of the Sino-Russo Entente.

There’s no excuse for this either since its IC should already know by now how impossible this is after India bravely defied their unprecedented pressure over the past year to distance itself from Russia, instead choosing to double down on their strategic partnership as was explained. The wishful thinking that continues to infect the US’ IC, whether regarding passing along ridiculous rumors of an anti-Putin Kremlin plot like the latest leaked documents reveal or trying to manipulate India, is a serious problem.

It's responsible for the promulgation of policies that are counterproductive from the perspective of the US’ objective national interests, which in this case concern the need for it to treat India as an equal partner with the respect that it’s always deserved instead of attempting to trick it into surrendering its sovereignty. By clinging to wishful thinking fantasies like the possibility of the latest-mentioned disinformation-driven plot succeeding, the US risks inadvertently worsening its ties with India.

From the Indian perspective, the US is an important partner in general and for managing China’s rise in particular, but its IC isn’t trusted whenever they share something – whether publicly or behind closed doors – regarding Russia and especially its relations with China. India knows better than any country in the world apart from Russia itself just how much Moscow is doing to preemptively avert the scenario of it becoming Beijing’s “economic colony”, hence why Burns’ lie won’t succeed in misleading Delhi.