The news of Jimmy Carter’s passing takes me back to 1976, a year that marked my own passage to adulthood. As the bicentennial year dawned, I took first notice of Carter upon his victory in the Iowa Caucuses. I followed his campaign through my high school graduation and into the summer, when I shuttled in my first car between my summer job at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida and New Smyrna Beach. I studied Carter’s campaign in my first college course on American politics that fall and proudly cast my first vote for Carter in November.
My enthusiasm for Carter was driven by many things – his comparative youth, his progressive brand of politics and his promise of honesty and integrity after the scandals of the Nixon years.
My interest in Carter endured. Enrolled in a Ph.D. program in political science a few years later, I proposed to write my dissertation on Carter’s foreign policy. Although my adviser initially gave thumbs down, he relented after I persisted in making my case that this was a worthy topic.
A one-term president who left office with low approval ratings, Carter’s presidential performance is often dismissed as a failure. The widespread admiration Carter gained over the years was associated with his post-presidency, which he devoted to fighting tropical disease, monitoring elections, promoting human rights and extolling the power of dialogue as a path to peace.
Yet as I argued in my book Reversing Course, Carter compiled an extraordinarily successful diplomatic record that was unjustly obscured by events, especially the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, over which Carter had little control.
With America’s global reputation in tatters following the Vietnam War and Watergate, Carter recognized the urgency of restoring a moral foundation for American foreign policy through the championing of human rights. He understood that a sense of moral purpose was not only essential to American leadership abroad but also necessary to gaining domestic support for an expansive U.S. role in the world.
Carter’s human rights policies also had significant practical consequences. Vocal U.S. support for human rights gave added legitimacy and weight to the growing human rights advocacy of non-governmental organizations and international organizations. Authoritarian governments came to realize that systemic human rights violations brought real costs. Arguably, the global diffusion of human rights norms contributed to the later fall of the Soviet-controlled communist bloc and to the spread of democracy in many countries around the world.
Even more impressively, Carter’s presidency illustrated the power of diplomacy. Carter employed diplomacy as a tool for both resolving insipient conflicts before they spun out of control and, where escalation had already taken place, finding a path toward peace and reconciliation.
This approach paid major dividends. The SALT II arms control agreement with the Soviet Union capped a dangerous and costly nuclear arms race (while never ratified by the Senate, both countries abided by the terms of the accord). The Panama Canal Treaties removed potential threats to the Canal’s security, while eliminating a constant irritant in U.S. relations with Latin America. Diplomatic recognition of China set the stage for China’s growing integration with the existing global political and economic order.
The Camp David Accords removed Egypt and Jordan as military threats to Israel’s security while the transition to majority black-rule in Zimbabwe, brokered by the United States and Great Britain, brought an end to the bloody civil war there. The successful conclusion of the Tokyo Round trade negotiations sustained progress toward a more open global economy. It is difficult to think of another president who used diplomacy to better effect in serving major American interests.
Carter’s record was not unblemished. As domestic political opponents unfairly painted Carter’s emphases on human rights and diplomacy as evidence of weakness, Carter increasingly and unwisely sought opportunities to prove his toughness, with little effect.
A foreign policy that prioritizes diplomacy and broadly-shared values cannot solve all problems. Nevertheless, at a moment in which the American Century faces unprecedented challenges at home and abroad, we as a nation would do well to seek lessons from Carter’s presidential and post-presidential records.
I was fortunate to finally meet and shake hands with Jimmy Carter a number of years ago when he and Rosalynn Carter spoke at Drake University. As Carter has for so long served as both a political inspiration and a scholarly subject for me down through these many years, I will miss his presence in our national life.
This piece originally appeared in Iowa Capital Dispatch, December 30, 2024.
The Internationalist 