As you may know by now, there has been quite a storm brewing over President Obama’s appointment of Charles W. “Chas” Freeman, Jr. to head the National Intelligence Council, which is responsible for producing the often important but sometimes off-the-mark National Intelligence Estimates.  This is an important debate, and I want to weigh in on it.

But for those of my readers unfamiliar with the NIC and NIEs, let’s start with some background.   On its website, the NIE describes itself as

a center of strategic thinking within the US Government, reporting to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and providing the President and senior policymakers with analyses of foreign policy issues that have been reviewed and coordinated throughout the Intelligence Community.

Our work ranges from brief analyses of current issues to “over the horizon” estimates of broader trends at work in the world. Although most of our work is for internal government use, we also produce or commission unclassified reports.

And here’s a pretty good summary of NIEs, via Wikipedia:

National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) are United States federal government documents that are the authoritative assessment of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) on intelligence related to a particular national security issue. NIEs are produced by the National Intelligence Council and express the coordinated judgments of the United States Intelligence Community, the group of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. NIEs are classified documents prepared for policymakers.

From time to time, the NIC pops up in the news.  In 2007, the Bush Administration released the unclassified sections of an NIE of Iran’s nuclear capabilities.  The estimate concluded that Iran had ceased its development of a nuclear weapons program in 2003 and as of the time of the estimate, had not restarted it.  The Estimate became a political football, with critics of the Bush Administration noting the contrast between Administration officials’ statments on Iran’s nuclear capabilities and the NIC’s analysis.

These days, the NIC the focus of attention not because of what it has said, but rather who is slated to lead it.  Freeman has come under fire for his often critical views on Israel, his sympathetic attitude towards the Saudis, and his opinion that the Chinese should have cracked down earlier on the Tiananmen protests.  Freeman is a hyper-realist, believing that the use and conservation of hard power should trump any and all other considerations.  He clearly is an unconventional thinker, and his views have often placed himself outside the mainstream of conventional foreign policy views.

Freeman brings to mind another famous free-thinker on foreign policy, John Bolton.  Like Bolton, Freeman has made provocative statements that are now coming back to haunt his appointment.  Like Bolton, Freeman is suspicious of the manner in which foreign policy decisions often are made.  Like Bolton, he favors American power over idealistic or romantic views of how the world should work.  And like Bolton, he often has exaggerated his views for effect.

So stylistically, the two men are quite simliar.  But in terms of policy positions, they couldn’t be more different.  Although both believe in American power, Bolton sees it as something to project while Freeman regards it as something that should be conserved.  Bolton views certain American allies, particularly Israel, as so indispensible that they should be forgiven for any and all transgressions, while Freeman, as the current controversy demonstrates, believes that Israel has made significant mistakes and should be held to account.  Interestingly, the two switch sides when it comes to China, with Bolton far more critical of the current regime and Freeman more likely to tolerate its excesses.

As those who know my work before this blog can attest, I played a central role in opposing John Bolton’s nomination to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.  So you might conclude that I also oppose Freeman.

I don’t.  But I don’t really support him either.  I find his remarks on China to be particularly infuriating, but then again, I’m not happy with the views of many political appointees, both in this Administration and in the last one.  Personal opinions should be important only if they have a direct impact on the person’s ability to take on the job, or if they fall so far outside the mainstream as to be unacceptable.  No matter how controversial Freeman’s past statements may be, neither of those would be an acccurate description of the issue now at hand.

Am I inconsistent?  Perhaps.  But I see three fundamental differences between the cases of Bolton and Freeman.

First, Obama has appointed Freeman to a position that does not require Senate confirmation.  As a result, his opponents have no real channel to prevent his taking the position.  Bolton, on the other hand, had to get Senate approval (and in fact never did).  You can argue that the NIC position should rise to the level of Senate confirmation — and this controversy may lead to such a change — but right now it doesn’t, and those critical of Freeman have no hope other than to generate enough controversy so as to convince Obama to withdraw the appointment.

Second, Freeman’s views are not in opposition to the institution he is to lead.  Freeman has never suggested abolishing the NIC, or knocking off its top ten stories.  Bolton, of course, did say such things about the UN.  Although the analogy is imperfect — Bolton was not appointed to head the UN, but rather to represent the US at the UN — the reality is that Freeman’s views are tangential to his appointment rather than directly relevant.

Third, there’s a fundamental difference between leading an intelligence body and serving as a U.S. diplomat.  As Joe Klein has noted, an unconvential thinker is exactly what you want as Chair of the National Intelligence Council — which is, after all, the body responsible for the 2002 NIE that the Bush Administration used to justify the war in Iraq.  A diplomat, in contrast, is supposed to calm the waters, not make waves.

Nonetheless, I find no small irony in the fact that a few of those who so vocally opposed Bolton are now supporting Freeman, in large part because they believe that a few of his past statements should not prevent him from getting the job.  They may not remember, but those of us who opposed Bolton rejected similar arguments made in his favor, asserting that his remarks on the UN reflected the man’s actual positions, and that he therefore could not be trusted with such an important position.

As I noted above, I think there are serious and important differences between the Bolton nomination and the Freeman appointment, enough so that I have less of a quarrel with those who support Freeman than I do with those who oppose him.  But I think it is at best inconsistent and at worst intellectually disingenuous to suggest that Freeman’s past statements are irrelevant if you also were one of those who argued that Bolton’s past statements were damning.

Related posts

• Wonk’d: Why the UN Human Rights Council Blows
• Twenty Questions for the Debate Tonight
• The Best Laid Plans
• Thabo Mbeki Is So Bad….
• Sarah Palin and Henry Kissinger: Blech.