Jimmy Carter  Back

Foreign policies

Celebrating the signing of the Camp David Accords (1978): Menachem Begin, Jimmy Carter, Anwar SadatOne of Carter's first acts in office was to order the unilateral removal of all nuclear weapons from South Korea. He also announced his intention to remove all US troops from South Korea. During his first month in office he cut the defense budget by $6 Billion.

Carter's Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski paid close attention to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Diplomatic relations between both Israel and Egypt were significantly increased after the Yom Kippur War and the Carter administration felt that the time was right for comprehensive solution to the conflict.

On October 1, 1979, President Carter announced before a television audience the existence of the Rapid Deployment Forces (RDF), a mobile fighting force capable of responding to worldwide trouble spots, without drawing on forces committed to NATO. The RDF was the forerunner of CENTCOM.

President Carter initially departed from the long-held policy of containment toward the Soviet Union. In its place Carter promoted a foreign policy that placed human rights at the forefront. This was a break from the policies of several predecessors, in which human rights abuses were often overlooked if they were committed by a nation that was allied with the United States. The Carter Administration ended support to the historically U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, and gave millions of dollars in aid to the nation's new Sandinista regime after it rose to power by a revolution.

Carter continued his predecessors' policies of imposing sanctions on Rhodesia, and, after Bishop Abel Muzorewa was elected Prime Minister, protested that the Marxists Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo were excluded from the elections. Strong pressure from the United States and the United Kingdom prompted new elections in what was then called Zimbabwe Rhodesia. Carter was also known for his criticism of Alfredo Stroessner, Augusto Pinochet, the apartheid government of South Africa, and other traditional allies.

Carter continued the policy of Richard Nixon to "normalize" relations with the People's Republic of China by granting full diplomatic and trade relations, thus ending official relations with the Republic of China (though the two nations continued to trade and the U.S. unofficially recognized Taiwan through the Taiwan Relations Act). Carter also succeeded in having the Senate ratify the Panama Canal Treaties, which handed over the canal to Panama. This treaty helped relations with Panama.


Panama Canal Treaties
One of the most controversial achievements of President Carter was the final negotiation and signature of the Panama Canal Treaties in September 1977. Those treaties, which essentially would transfer control of the American-built Panama Canal to the nation of Panama, were bitterly opposed by a segment of the American public and by the Republican party. A common argument against the treaties was that the United States was transferring an American asset of great strategic value to an unstable and corrupt country led by a brutal military dictator (Omar Torrijos). After the signature of the Canal treaties, in June 1978, Jimmy Carter visited Panama with his wife and twelve U. S. Senators, amid widespread student disturbances against the Torrijos dictatorship. Carter then began urging the Torrijos regime to soften its policies and move Panama towards gradual democratization.


Camp David Accords

Anwar Sadat, Jimmy Carter, and Menachem Begin meet on the Aspen Lodge patio on September 6, 1978.One of Carter's most important accomplishments as President was the Camp David Accords. The Camp David Accords were a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, which were negotiated by President Carter, following up on earlier negotiations which had been conducted in the middle east. In these negotiations King Hassan II of Morocco acted as a negotiator between Arab interests and Israel, and Nicolae Ceauşescu of Romania acted as go-between for Israel and the PLO. Once initial negotiations had been completed Egyptian President Anwar Sadat approached Carter for assistance. Carter then invited Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Sadat to Camp David to continue the negotiations. The Camp David accords produced peace between Egypt and Israel that has lasted to the present. (2006)


Strategic Arms Limitations Talks
A key foreign policy issue Carter worked laboriously on was the SALT II Treaty. SALT stood for the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks and were negotiations being conducted between the United States and the Soviet Union. The work of Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon brought about the SALT I treaty, but Carter wished to further the reduction of nuclear arms. It was his main goal, as was stated in his Inaugural Address, that nuclear weaponry be completely banished from the face of the Earth. Carter and Leonid Brezhnev, the leader of the Soviet Union, reached an agreement and held a signing ceremony. There was much opposition in Congress to ratifying the treaty, as many thought that it weakened US defenses. Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan late in 1979, Carter withdrew the treaty from consideration by Congress and the treaty was never ratified. Even so, both sides honored their commitments laid out in the negotiations.


President Jimmy Carter and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II) treaty, June 18, 1979, in Vienna.In December 1979, USSR invaded Afghanistan, after the pro-Moscow Afghanistan government placed by a 1978 coup was overthrown. There are many theories as to why the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Some believed the Soviets were attempting to expand their borders southward in order to gain a foothold in the region. The Soviet Union had long lacked a warm water port, and their movement south seemed to position them for further expansion toward Pakistan and India in the East, and Iran to the West. The Carter Administration, and many Republicans and Democrats alike, feared that the Soviets were positioning themselves for a takeover of Middle Eastern oil. Others believed that the Soviet Union was fearful that the Muslim uprising would spread from Iran and Afghanistan to the millions of Muslims in the USSR.

After the invasion, Carter announced the Carter Doctrine: that the US would not allow any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf. Carter terminated the Russian Wheat Deal to establish trade with USSR and lessen Cold War tensions. The grain exports had been beneficial to people employed in agriculture, and the Carter embargo marked the beginning of hardship for American farmers. He also prohibited Americans from participating in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, and reinstated registration for the draft for young males. Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski started a $40 billion covert program of training Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Reagan would later expand this program greatly to combat Cold War concerns presented by Russia at the time. In retrospect, this contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Critics of this policy blame Carter and Reagan for the resulting instability of post-Soviet Afghani governments, which led to the rise of Islamic theocracy in the region, and also created much of the current problems with Islamic fundamentalism.


The Iranian Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi meeting with Arthur Atherton, William H. Sullivan, Cyrus Vance, President Jimmy Carter, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, 1977[edit]
Hostage crisis
The main conflict between human rights and U.S. interests came in Carter's dealings with the Shah of Iran. The Shah had been a strong ally of America since World War II and was one of the "twin pillars" upon which U.S. strategic policy in the Middle East was built. However, his rule was strongly autocratic, and he went along with the plan of the Eisenhower Administration to depose Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. Though Carter praised the Shah as a wise and valuable leader, when a popular uprising against the monarchy broke out in Iran, the U.S. did not intervene. The Shah was subsequently deposed and exiled.

On October 22, 1979, Carter out of humanitarian concerns allowed the deposed Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi into the United States for political asylum and medical treatment; the Shah left for Panama on December 15, 1979. In response to the Shah's entry into the U.S., Iranian militants seized the American embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage. The Iranians demanded (1) the return of the Shah to Iran for trial, (2) the return of the Shah's wealth to the Iranian people, (3) an admission of guilt by the United States for its past actions in Iran, plus an apology, and (4) a promise from the United States not to interfere in Iran's affairs in the future. Though later that year the Shah left the U.S. and died in Egypt, the hostage crisis continued and dominated the last year of Carter's presidency, even though almost half of the hostages were released. The subsequent responses to the crisis—from a "Rose Garden strategy" of staying inside the White House, to the unsuccessful attempt to rescue the hostages—were largely seen as contributing to defeat in the 1980 election.

In 1982, a small book by James B. Stewart, esquire, appeared that gave insight into the timing of these events. The Partners: Inside America’s Most Powerful Law Firms begins with Stewart’s insider description of the negotiation process for the release of the hostages. Though short, the chapter laid out clearly what had happened behind the scenes. After the hostages were taken, President Carter issued, on November 14, 1979, Executive Order 12170 - Blocking Iranian Government property [4], which was used to freeze the bank accounts of the Iranian government in US banks, totaling about $8 billion US at the time. This was to be used as a bargaining chip for the release of the hostages.

The Iranians then changed their demand to return of the Shah and the release of the Iranian money. Through informal channels the Iranian government started negotiations with the banks holding the money. The banks took over negotiations for the release of the hostages, not the U.S. State Department. When the Shah died of cancer in the summer of 1980, the Iranians wanted no more to do with the hostages and changed their demands to just the release of the hostages in exchange for the return of their money. Why the deal was not struck at that point is never explained, since it was the same deal that the Iranians received in January 1981. The hostages were finally released with the signing of Executive Orders 12277 through 12285, releasing all assets belonging to the Iranian government and all assets belonging to the Shah found within the United States and the guarantee that the hostages would have no legal claim against the Iranian government that would be heard in U.S. courts [5]. Shortly after the publication of The Partners, accusations of an "October Surprise" were leveled against the Reagan Administration. No witnesses were ever found who had anything to report, but Congress investigated the matter and showed the story was based on a hoax. (The hoax depended on William Casey being in Madrid on a day he was in London, so the entire set of allegations fell apart.)