trumpet sounds again next sunday morning. enjoy the rest of your weekend. ♪ i'm margaret brennan in washington. this week on "face the nation" -- as the war in ukraine officially enters its second year, divisions between the competing global alliances are getting even sharper. are we heading into a new cold war? we spoke exclusively with cia director bill burns at the cia on friday. former secretary of state condoleezza rice will give us her world view. we'll talk with the chairs of a new congressional committee created to investigate threats to the u.s. from the chinese communist party. it's all just ahead on "face the nation." ♪

good morning. welcome to "face the nation." it was a high stakes week on the foreign policy front. president biden took a trip to kyiv to mark one year in the war in ukraine. chinese president xi moved closer to russian president putin, while the u.s., nato, most of western europe doubled down in their support for ukraine. ob friday, we traveled to cia headquarters in langley, virginia, where we sat down with cia director bill burns. here's part of our conversation. on the cusp of russia's invasion, you flew to kyiv, and you told president zelenskyy, tell me if this is right, the russians are coming to kill you. was that the very first thing you said? >> it wasn't the very first thing i said to president zelenskyy, but president biden asked me to go to kyiv to lay out for president zelenskyy the most recent intelligence we had, which suggested that what

vladimir putin was planning was what he thought would be a lightning strike from the belarus border to seize kyiv in a matter of few days and sieve an airport northwest of kyiv called hostomel which he wanted to bring in airborne troops as a way of accelerating that lightening conquest of kyiv. >> you have said it was only a group of about three or four people around vladimir putin who knew that he was actually planning this invasion. >> no. i think that's true. putin had narrowed his circle of advisors, an it was a circle in which he prized loyalty over competence. it was a group of people who tended to tell him what he wanted to hear. that was one of the deepest flaws i think in russian decision making before the war, it was such a closed circle of people. reinforcing one another's

profoundly mistaken assumptions. >> does he take counsel from anyone these days? >> i think he's become increasingly convinced that he knows better than anyone else what's at stake for russia. i think his sense of destiny continued appetite for risk has increased in years as well. >> you went back to kyiv and met with president zelenskyy and three months ago, i understand you met with russia's top spy chief. is there any kind of opening you are finding here? any kind of opportunity? >> no. i mean, the conversation that i had with sergey naryshkin, ahead of russian's intelligence service, was dispiriting. my goal was not to talk about nesh yans. that's something the ukrainians need to take up with the russians when they see fit. it was to make clear to naryshkin and president putin the serious consequences should russia ever choose to use a nuclear weapon of any kind as well, and i think naryshkin understood the seriousness of

that issue and i think president putin has understood it as well. >> there's not a lot of contact with russia right now. >> there's not a great deal, you're right. >> you still have that line of communication with -- >> yeah. i think even in the most deeply adversarial relationships, that's what our relationship with russia is today, it's important to have those lines open. and the president believes that. >> what do you walk away from those conversations? you said it was disspirited, why? >> it was a defiant attitude on the part of mr. naryshkin as well a sense of cockiness and hubris, reflecting putin's own view, his own belief he can make time work for him, and he believes he can grind down the ukrainians and wear down our european allies, that political fatigue will eventually set in. in my view putin's view of americans we've tension deficit disorder and we'll move on to another issue eventually. putin in many ways, i think,

believes today that he cannot win for a while, but he can't ato lose. >> he doesn't seem to have that assessment. more than 97% of his ground forces in ukraine, it's a meat grinder. does he look at his population and say, i have enough young men i can continue to send off to die? i mean, what is the price that makes him change his mind? >> putin is not a sentimentalist about the loss of russian life or the huge losses he's taken in terms of russian armaments as well during the course of the war. but there's a lot of hubris that continues to be attached to putin and his view of the war right now and i think what's going to be critical is to puncture that hubris on putin's part and regain momentum on the battlefield. i don't think the russians are serious today, and i think, you know, it's only progress on the battlefield that will shape any improved prospects for

negotiations down the road. >> at what point does putin say i can't win? >> i think putin is, right now, entirely too confident of his ability to wear down ukraine, to grind away, and that's what he's giving every evidence he's determined to do right now. at some point he's going to have to face up to increasing costs as well in cough fins coming home to the poorest parts of russia. there's a cumulative economic damage to russia as well. huge reputational damage. it has not been a great advertisement for russian arms sales. this is going to build over time. right now the honest answer i think putin is quite determined. >> i want to ask you about what appears to be potentially a new line of ammunition weapons for russia. >> secretary blinken has said publicly, you know, we have begun to see, we have begun to collect intelligence suggesting that china is considering the provision of lethal equipment.

that's not to suggest they made a definitive conclusion about this. >> secretary blinken said the u.s. picked up information over the last couple of months. but picking up information over the last couple months to thinking they're actively considering it, i mean, how confident are you in the intelligence that this is something xi jinping himself may change his mind about? >> we're confident that the chinese leadership is considering the provision of lethal equipment. we also don't see a final decision has been made yet and don't see evidence of actual shipments of lethal equipment, and that's why i think secretary blinken and the president have thought it important to make very clear what the consequences of that would be. >> to deter it? >> to deter it. it would be a very risky and unwise bet. >> so why would beijing risk a tailspin in its relationship with the united states and with europe by crossing this line? >> that's a good question, and

that's why i hope very much they don't. >> do you think that beijing benefits from having the west distracted and involved in a prolonged conflict in europe? >> i mean, it's conceivable, but i think there's no foreign leader who has watched more carefully vladimir putin's experience in ukraine, the evolution of the war than xi jinpings. >> what are the consequences for the conflict in ukraine if this does happen? what does more ammunition and weapons mean? does this -- is it a game changer? >> we also have evidence that the iranians are providing, you know, lethal equipment and munitions that the north koreans are doing the same thing as well. so wherever that lethal assistance comes from, it prolongs a vicious war of aggression. >> how good is our visibility into xi jinping's thinking and his decision making process?

>> oh, it's always the hardest question for any intelligence service as well in an authoritarian system where power is consolidated so much in the hands of one man. >> but you had such exquist sit intelligence when it came to russia and vladimir putin and his inner circle. do we have that for xi jinping? >> we work very hard to develop that >> working on it? >> i think we work very hard to develop the very best intelligence we can. >>, but i wonder if when you're talking about his thinking and decision making if he suffers from the yes man culture you said vladimir putin does? because xi jinping got rid of a lot of people in his government. >> margaret, it's a concern in any authoritarian system. what we've seen in beijing is president xi consolidating power at a very rapid pace over the course of the more than a decade that he's been in power as well, and as we've seen where putin's

hubris has now gotten russia and the horrors that he's brought to the people of ukraine, in that kind of a system, very closed decision making system where nobody challenges, you know, the authority of their insights of an authoritarian leader, you can make some huge blunders as well. >> you've said xi jinping told his military to be prepared to invade taiwan by 2027. the intel community seems a little bit more am big gu was in its conclusions here. do you think it's an outright invasion or china is more likely to slowly strangle democracy in taiwan? >> we need to take very seriously xi's ambitions with regard to ultimately controlling taiwan. that doesn't, however, in our view mean that a military conflict is inevitable. we do know, as has been made public, that president xi has instructed the pla, the chinese military leadership, to be ready

by 2027 to invade taiwan, but that doesn't mean he's decided to invade in 2027 or any other year as well. >> right. >> i think our judgment at least, is that president xi and his military leadership have doubts today whether they could accomplish that invasion. i think as they've looked at putin's experience in ukraine, that's probably reinforced some of those doubts as well. >> i would be remiss if i didn't ask you when the intelligence community will have insight into what beijing was collecting that spy balloon over the u.s.? >> it was clearly an think we will be able to develop a clear picture of what its capabilities were. >> it will be a while, won't it? >> it takes some time, but my understanding is that we're managing to pull up quite a bit of evidence and material from that platform. >> do you think xi jinping knew that balloon was sent here? >> i don't know. >> you have an idea? >> well, i think the chinese leadership, obviously, understood that they had launch this capability, that it was an

intelligence platform. when and what the chinese leadership knew about the trajectory of this balloon, i honestly can't say. >> you've said in the past there's beginnings of a full-fledged defense partnership between russia and iran. exactly how far does the alliance go? >> it's moving at a pretty fast clip and dangerous direction right now in the sense that we know that the iranians have already provided hundreds of armed drones to the russians, which they're using to inflict pain on ukrainian civilians and ukrainian civilian infrastructure. we know that they have provided, you know, ammunition for artillery and tanks as well, and what we also see are signs that, you know, russia is proposing to help the iranians on their missile program and also at least considering the possibility of to provide fighter aircraft to iran as

well. it's a disturbing set of developments. >> have iran's leaders made a decision to pursue a nuclear weapon? >> to the best of our knowledge we don't believe that supreme leader in iran has yet made a decision to resume the weaponization program that we judge that they suspended or stopped at the end of 2003. but the other two legs of the stool, meaning enrichment programs, they've advanced very far -- >> 84% purity reportedly. >> they've advanced very far to the point it would only be a matter of weeks before they could enrich to 90% if they chose to cross that line, and also in terms of their missile systems, their ability to deliver a nuclear weapon once they developed it has also been advancing as well. the answer to your question is no well, don't see evidence that they made a decision to resume that weaponization program, but the other dimensions of this challenge, i think, are growing at a worrisome pace too. >> our full conversation with

director burns is on our website and youtube channel. "face the nation" will be back in one minute with former secretary of state condoleezza rice. don't go away. no. he's makine money moves with merrill. so no matter what the market's doing, he's ready. and that's... how you collect coins. your money never stops working for you with merrill, a bank of america company. dealdash.com the fair and honest bidding site. this kitchenaid mixer sold for less than $26. this i-pad sold for less than $43. and this playstation 5 sold for less than a dollar. go to dealdash.com right now and see how much you can save.

. we're back with president george w. bush's secretary of state condoleezza rice the current direct of the hoover instiot stanford university. good morning. >> good morning. >> good to have you here. >> it's good to be with you too. >> when you were secretary of state, bill burns, cia director, was u.s. ambassador to moscow. >> later on under secretary for policy at the state department. >> you worked together. >> yes. >> very closely and i was reading his book where he was talking about your head to heads with vladimir putin who didn't like you standing in high heels taller than he is, but on the serious matter, what do you make of the biden administration's policy, the choices it's making and how they're using the cia director as kind of the tip of the spear here?

>> in general in total the policy is in the right direction. you have to support ukraine, you have to do it as much as you can as part of a coalition. it's important that the europeans are on board. i've been impressed with what they've been able to achieve with the europeans in creating that unity. in a sense, nato has never been in better shape. i do think, and it's easier out here than it is in there, but i do think we sometimes need to be a little bit behind in what we provide to the ukrainians, so we were not going to provide air defenses and then we did. tanks and armor, and now we have, and so if i could say one thing, perhaps just to anticipate a little bit better what the ukrainians are going to need, because it takes a long time to supply and as to bill burns' role, he's unique. i think he's walking a very fine line and doing a good job of it. he's an intelligence chief at this point. but he has vast experience in russia. he knows the russians. they know him. and so i think the signaling and the sending him to moscow to

talk with naryshkin, for instance, or with zelenskyy in ukraine, makes perfectly good sense for this particular director of the cia. >> when you talk about delivering weapons to ukraine, you wrote a op-ed dee sec gth saying, haveticncn need tomorrow? is that the piece of weaponry you're focused on? >> we weren't talking about a specific set of weapons systems but the idea that you anticipate and start the training before it's going to be necessary to send that equipment. the one thing we know is that this war keeps evolving and you to try to evolve a little bit ahead of it. >> you think president biden is being too hesitant? >> i don't know internally. we have issues with our own defense capabilities because i don't think anybody expected to be fighting a land war in europe, and so i have some sympathy for that, but to the

degree that that can be accelerated, i think it will help. i think we have to get away from the phrase time is on ukrainians side. i would be careful about that. vladimir putin seems to believe that time is not on the ukrainian side. he believes that if he throws the russian way of war mass at the problem, poor boys from dagestan that are cannon fodder, he'll wear ukrainians down, he'll wear us down, he'll wear the europeans down. i don't think that's right. but we have to do everything that we can to convince him it is, indeed, wrong. >> russia invaded georgia in 2008. >> yes. >> at at time, and i was reading the cables, you and bill burns were going back and forth whether ukrainian joins nato and that crosses that red line for vladimir putin. do you think now after all these years of waiting ukraine should be allowed into nato? >> that's going to be a hard lift because of the article 5

and an attack on one is an attack on all of nato. i do think that what we've seen is that ukraine is de facto a very strong ally of nato and vice versa and i expect that's going to continue because i think some form of security arrangements with ukraine will be necessary in the future and it's probably good to start working on that now. what we do know is that the nato itself is protected. the piece of territory that was not protected was ukraine, and that tells you something about leaving a vacuum in the center of europe. whatever we do -- and i doubt it will be article 5 -- we need to make sure that vacuum isn't there in the future. >> at this early stage of the 2024 presidential race, foreign policy is already getting talked about a fair amount. former president trump criticized the amount of u.s. funding for ukraine.

florida's governor ron desantis widely expected to run, said the u.s. cannot provide ukraine an open-ended blank check. they reject your point of view in many ways by saying, the u.s. needs to kind of pull back here. >> i'm not going to put word in the mouths of future presidential candidates. we'll see where they end up -- >> ron desantis? >> i will say this, it is really important whoever runs for president of the united states, understand the essence of this conflict, the fact that we are defending not just ukrainian independent, but defending a rules-based system that says might doesn't make right, you can't just extinguish your neighbor. for those who say we ought to be concentrating on the indo-pacific because china is really our adver sair are you, xi jinping is telling you what he thinks about that. he is not only watching what is going on in ukraine, according to our intelligence apparently, he's even considering getting in on the side of the russians.

>> why do you think he would make that judgment? why is it in his interest to extend the war? >> we have to recognize that chinese-russian relationship is mo strateg thally is a tionship that is aimt theeartf u.s power in the world, and that would say then, these two are not die visible. if you want to say concentrate on the indo-pacific that's not going to work. many of our allies, australia, japan, fundamentally understand that, so i would say to those who are going to run for office, be careful what you say. i would just make one other point, if the american people see a world in which vladimir putin and xi jinping have won this engagement, this first volley, if you will, in the largest strategic picture, and they see that ukrainian independence has been extinguished and know that united states could have done

something about it, i don't think that's going to be a very good message for a future to the have to deliver. >> because that problem will come to his desk? >> that problem wil come to his desk. >> or her desk. >> or her desk. just remember dates. 1914, 1941, 2001. these conflicts always come hom republican party need new leadship ngeneraon. ou h lder in mind? u.n. ambassador nikki haley, for example? >> i think the republican party has a lot of very good prospects. when i say we need leadership, new leadership, i'm not coming back either. so i think it's really time for us to look at those who can look at an american future and there are a lot of very good candidates out there. let's let everybody make their case and see where we end up. >> to that question, i asked you

earlier about why it would be in xi jinping's interest to have destabilization in europe do you think it is ultimately a long game for taiwan? tie up the west in europe so he can exp i i inks llnimerica power i dot think he would have chosen for vladimir putin to invade ukraine. >> his intelligence didn't know? >> it's become quite a mess as well and your relationship without limits is with somebody causing all kinds of problems. i think we have to convince the chinese of, this is first of all not in their interest because his primary interest is to grow the chinese economy against head winds that include a demographic disaster that they are having. and strengthen taiwan so that it's not an easy target. it is not inevitable that the chinese win this battle. i will bet on american democracy, american innovation,

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♪♪ a new partnership house select committee is putting a focus on the geopolitical threat from the chinese chunist party. republican mike gallagher serves as the president and raja krishnamoorthi is a ranking member. we will talk with them both when we come back. stay with us. restick. choose from dozens of sizes, frames and styles. go to mixtiles.com, upload pictures, pick a fancy frame and voila! buy 10 and get 10 for free.

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