Carter, Jimmy, and National Policy

Thirty-ninth president of the United States (1977–81), who sought to make human rights issues a more important part of U.S. national security policy. James Earl “Jimmy” Carter (1924–) set the tone for his administration in his inaugural address on January 20, 1977: “We have already found a high degree of personal liberty, and we are now struggling to enhance equality of opportunity. Our commitment to human rights must be absolute, our laws fair, our natural beauty preserved; the powerful must not persecute the weak, and human dignity must be enhanced.” Human rights became a cornerstone of the Carter administration's national policy.

Foreign Policy and Defense

As a born-again Christian, President Carter believed that American foreign policy should reflect the nation's highest moral ideals. At a time when the United States was struggling with issues of race relations and human rights, Carter bluntly advocated a human rights policy that held other countries to the highest standards—standards by which, he believed, Americans would want themselves to be judged.

Throughout his single term of office, Carter worked to establish human rights as a guiding principle of American foreign policy. He frequently criticized nations that violated basic human rights. His pleas on behalf of Soviet dissidents angered the Soviet government, which viewed these statements as intervention in its internal affairs. Despite these differences, in June 1979, Carter and Soviet president Leonid Brezhnev signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II) in Vienna, which set limits on the number of Soviet and American nuclear weapons systems. In spite of Carter's vigorous promotion of the treaty, however, it was not ratified by the Senate and eventually was placed on indefinite hold after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The invasion also prompted the Carter administration to boycott the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.

Carter succeeded in concluding the long negotiations over the Panama Canal treaties by persuading the Senate to ratify them. Conservatives angrily criticized the treaties, believing that they abandoned vital American interests in Latin America. After Carter decided to inaugurate full diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China in 1979 and end formal American ties with the Nationalist Chinese government of Taiwan, conservatives again heatedly denounced that decision as a desertion of America's anticommunist policies.

The highlight of Carter's foreign policy came on March 26, 1979, with the signing of a peace treaty by Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat at Camp David, Maryland. The Camp David Accords represented the high point of the Carter presidency, and many observers believed it a milestone in American Middle East policy. The Camp David Accords laid a foundation for the Oslo Agreement of 1993 between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel, as well as the Jordanian peace treaty with Israel signed in 1994.

Ongoing questions of national defense were a major concern during Carter's term, and the president attempted to maintain the nation's defense in light of his commitment to human rights. He decided not to support the development of the B-1 bomber or the [Page 109]enhanced radiation neutron bomb, which was designed to kill enemy forces but leave most of the target area's buildings and infrastructure intact. Carter did, however, approve the development of the cruise missile as part of the nation's nuclear deterrent force. He also agreed to begin full-scale development of the MX mobile missile to counter the threat of the Soviet Union's capability to knock out U.S. land-based intercontinental missiles on a surprise first strike.

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