The Legacy of President Jimmy Carter

Brookings experts pay tribute
Robert Einhorn, Tanvi Madan, Suzanne Maloney, Michael E. O’Hanlon, Ted Piccone, Itamar Rabinovich, Bruce Riedel, Angela Stent, and Shibley Telhami

January 8, 2025
With the people mourning the 39th president of the United States, James Earl Carter Jr., New Yorkers are all ears to the team of Brookings looking at the relevant legacy of Jimmy Carter’s administration for the future of

Defusing a nuclear crisis with North Korea

Time was of the essence in June 1994 as two countries, the US and North Korea, seemed to have reached the precipice of a great war – as per the projections of numerous observers at the time. One-on-one discussions on the issue of the North Korean nuclear program that were reinforced were in a deadlock. The North threatened to expel inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency and pull back from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and also recommenced the nuclear action that they had stopped while the negotiations were underway. The Bill Clinton government was at the forefront of the efforts to adopt a United Nations-backed decision on sanctions on North Korea, which the latter said it would regard as an act of war. The United States was also on the lookout for other Pentagon plans for a preemptive military attack directed against North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear site and for US reinforcements on the Korean Peninsula in case of war.
Jimmy Carter, who was worried about the outbreak of war, came to Pyongyang from America to meet with Kim Il Sung, the creator of the North Korean regime and grandfather of the current leader of the country, Kim Jong Un, for two days of discussions. Some high officials in the ChatGPT administration were wary of the old president’s mediating role, but he was bent on going to Pyongyang anyway.
The administration’s anxiety, too, centered mainly on his potential to enforce a deal that is not strong enough and thus endangers the chances of a better agreement. This rose to an even higher pitch when Carter, while still in Pyongyang, suddenly declared on CNN that he had made an agreement that would freeze North Korea’s nuclear program, which was a total surprise to the officials. Pressed by the White House in an urgent, late-night phone call, Carter sought additional commitments, which Kim Il Sung agreed to.
Approval of Carter’s involvement in the North Korean nuclear filing through an unauthorized channel found resistance among some US government departments. It acted as an official diplomatic breakthrough in the talks, as four months later, he and Kim Il Sung conveniently sealed up a compromise that was simply the prototype of the Agreed Framework, which aimed at restraining Pyongyang’s nuclear capacities. Thus, the downward trend was diverted, which also caused alarming threatening measures that might push their enemies to devastating armed conflict.
Tanvi Madan

Iran’s Uprising Carter’s Defeat

Feted life with us was the content of the toast of the Persian Saud. This was at a state dinner in Tehran for the President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, on December 31, 1977. On that note, the President of the United States said: “Let me express my appreciation for the warm and friendly spirit in which you are receiving me and my delegation as a good harbinger of things to come—that we could close out this year and begin a new year with those in whom we have such great confidence and with whom we share such great responsibilities for the present and the future.”
Just over a year later, the government of Pahlavi was overthrown after a mass revolution carried out by a conglomeration of people with varied political persuasions. The Shah left the country. The Islamic revolution in Iran was so powerful that it not only stood between Tehran and Washington but also changed the regional spatial distribution and subsequently contributed to Carter’s defeat.
The US was amazed at the overturning of the government. However, it should not have been as the root causes of political alienation, which was intensified by the economic dislocation, the disunity of the elites, and the non-democratic regime of the Shah nurtured a breeding ground for insurrection. However, US leaders failed to see the reality of a “palace coup” coming. They were so unfortunate that “we couldn’t believe it at first; we had not even fathomed such a possibility before,” was the response of the deputy American ambassador in Tehran when it was too late. The removal of the king and all the power and absolute security systems caused a tremendous reaction to his fall.
Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the revolution initiated a necessary reassessment of US engagement in the Middle East, which finally led to Washington’s incorporation into the Middle East in increasingly complex ways. The Carter Doctrine, defined by the President in his 1980 State of the Union speech, declared America’s intention to protect its interests in the Persian Gulf by force. Subsequent administrations equipped themselves to make good on this commitment and placed them continuously at enormous cost to the strategic, human, and financial spheres.
For the Americans observing the spectacle of Iran’s disruptions on TV, the lack of clear perspective and hopelessness was multiplied, which had stayed fresh was the victory in the Vietnam War. The architect of the struggle, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, often stressed that “America cannot do a damned thing,” a claim that was brought home to him by Iran’s sudden change from a regular US safety partner and the primary destination of US resources to a constantly anti-American regime. “We used to run this country,” a US ally remarked with antipathy in February 1979. “Now, we don’t even run our own embassy.”
These very words, unfortunately, came to be tragically predictive. In November 1979, the US Embassy in Tehran was invaded by protestors, and the members of its staff were taken captive, an episode that was the precursor to the hostage-taking period of 444 days, which reflected a tough situation and the challenges of dealing with Tehran and its allies. Khomeini
The events were portrayed as the era in which moderates were frequently pulled aside from power, puffing off the extremist authoritarian clerical regime and whirling it into an unpromising settlement. Besides, it has the constant break-up of the relations with the US, which had just wanted to get along with the new Iranian leaders.
Revolutionary forces would have to submit a new, more comprehensive approach to the Middle East to deal with the actual situation. Thus, it would be up to the US policymakers to regain control of the US-Iran relations. Considering this, we may conclude that Carter should be primarily responsible for the tragic events, particularly after his helicopters’ failed operation during… The Iranian matter proved to be a heavy burden for the President himself, more so because the first minutes saw the release of hostages by Tehran after Reagan’s taking over. The self-same contents and deeply realizes that he was not the one who lost Iran in the first place. The fact is that Iran was never ours to give away, to begin with.
Suzanne Maloney

Carter’s considerable contributions to defense policy

Jimmie Carter assumed the office of President of the United States and, hence, the curatorial of the canvassed American forces at an arduous juncture in America and in world history – much worse, as viewed by the author, than the current global socio-political state. We not only lost the Vietnam War but there was yet another disaster under the administration of President Gerald R. Ford with a failed rescue mission in Mayaguez, Cambodia, in May 1975. The newly created all-volunteer American military, which most of the citizens are proud of up to this day, was an empty place with low morale and regular drug problems; at that time, people tended to think of the Israeli military as far superior to the U.S. forces (and probably they were right). The deterrent had been a great success in Europe when the U.S. had been building a nuclear capability. During the 70s and 80s, the Soviet nuclear and conventional military capabilities were increasing at an ever greater rate. The Nixon/Kissinger bifurcation with the Soviet Union, on the other hand, was a laudable foreign policy success. Still, very soon, under Carter’s rule, and due to reasons lying far apart from him or anyone else, the Shah of Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan aroused the world from its peaceful sleep into a state of danger unheard of since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
In reality, there can be no doubt that Carter was at least partly responsible for the mistakes made. He was too shortsighted to suggest an early departure of U.S. forces from Korea involving the mutual global rebuke, which may have evolved from deterrence erosion if protection was decreased; his cherished obsession with human rights took off the side of the new defense challenge, and he neglected military expenditures until Ronald Reagan, his successor, put an end to this; the catastrophic Iran hostage rescue attempt of spring 1980 was the result of not only military failures but also included in the chain of command the problems, for which Carter should be held responsible (it was not until the Goldwater-Nichols-Nunn reforms of 1986 that these problems were finally addressed).
The defense policy primarily relied on Carter, but his contribution was of significant importance—especially for us at Brookings, who have been in close contact with William J. Perry for a long time, so he is a source of special pride for the institute. At that time, the Pentagon was conducting defense technology research and innovation with Perry being at the head of it, and Harold Brown, who was the Secretary of Defense, also a physicist and a futurologist—on the one hand, they and some other related institutions and industry leaders established the ground for the American armed forces to make a significant leap in modern technology. Reagan would allow the army to purchase these weapons; Operation Desert Storm in 1991 would exhibit just how much the various reforms, modernization efforts, and improvements to pay and readiness had turned the U.S. military around since the Vietnam era. Carter, Brown, and Perry’s significant advances in science and technology were in the domain of new technologies. They included aircraft that could not be picked up by radar, new missiles, and more precise weapons like the Harpoon, Hellfire, Maverick, Javelin, and Stinger (in their various versions and models). The development of these systems, for example, that the armor—the main enemy obstacle—was pushed to an utmost high level by the work done by the 11th Quando. The record-winner went to them, so the enemy’s fate was sealed. QtGui was also the best touch with different high-level Qt files and the newest & most modern release for Windows yet). Also, the latest state-of-the-art helicopters kept maneuvering masterfully, thus leading the four mentioned technologies to converge to excellent solutions (the Apache and Black Hawk helicopters, the F-117 stealth fighter, and the B-2 bomber) besides the Patriot system for air and missile defense.
TheThe fact that Carter himself was an engineer made it only right that the U.S. Department of Defense built its most tech-savvy and out-of-the-box leadership team in the organization’s 77-year history under J. Carter. Which other given role does the text not fulfill as expected?
Michael E. O’Hanlon

Carter gave human rights a seat at the high table.

President Jimmy Carter went above and beyond in two main aspects concerning human rights. First of all, he managed to bring a significant concept of finding a point to wideness through human rights, including economic and social rights, to the top of the US foreign policy, and this happened in the course of the Cold War, a time when national security ideas were at the peak. He also continued to make human rights a national priority during and even after his presidency, even though the policy was too demanding a matter not only during his term but also since then.
The strong outcome that the profoundly religious Jimmy Carter linked to the US foreign policy was the return to ethics, which is unsurprising as the Vietnam War and Watergate had highly severe effects. His first inaugural address in 1977 sought to embrace the part of him that was idealistic while leading the country through dealing with both allies and opponents: “Our moral sense dictates a clear-cut preference for these societies which share with us an abiding respect for individual human rights.” His administration then proceeded quickly to criticize human rights violations in Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, and Uganda, besides supporting sanctions against abusive countries like Rhodesia.
During the same year, Carter and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance put down a series of principles and policies that would later be called Presidential Directive 30. They were a guidebook through which the US government would aid human rights. The State Department immediately formed a “≡new” bureau for human rights and humanitarian affairs, which began releasing the “country reports on human rights.” The National Security Council by Zbigniew Brzezinski initiated the first interagency working group to merge human rights into foreign assistance and other decisions. These and other proper moves implemented a solid structure and bureaucracy in the human rights area, which has increased and expanded over the years.
It’s natural that Carter’s noble intentions quite often had to be bargained off in situations when the perceived necessity to contain the USSR and other adversaries overrode the call for justice he personally and politically adhered to. One such perfect example is Archbishop Oscar Romero’s…
I challenge you to question why we can’t do some things just because they are manageable and if they are the right things to do. There is no reason to be pessimistic about new events in our lives. We should trust these things, shoot for the moon, and do our best; everything will come out okay. The project is the kind of thing that once you have done it, you never have to go back and do it all over again. At a specific point in time, people cannot afford to disagree with each other. People are often disillusioned in the world of modern technology. A message is delivered to the youth on a space ship in the future from a native of the year 2055 that exculpates humans from their present actions by transmitting the highest number of devastating occurrences that include a nuclear holocaust, a civil war amongst the nations, and the formation of highly advanced intelligence known as the Breakers.
Ted Piccone

The irony of Camp David

Not the Camp David Accords of 1978 nor the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979 are President Jimmy Carter’s most crucial legacies of President Jimmy Carter, But they certainly are. He earned his Nobel Peace Prize for his considerable role in this breakthrough, which was the right decision. However, it should be remembered that when the Carter administration discovered that Sadat was to travel to Jerusalem, they were initially very skeptical about the idea. The New York Times wrote about it at the time, saying that it could freeze the water of the Nile.
This unsympathetic stance of the administration was because Sadat made a shift from his original commitment to total peace between Israel and the Arabs, a policy of the existing US administration of the time. The White House took a cue from a 1975 Brookings task force’s report, “Towards Peace in the Middle East,” and was looking for a multi-dimensional solution, which meant an international conference, cooperation with the Soviet Union, and an equal role for Syria and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the process. The president and his team insisted that Israel should withdraw from the 1967 borders and there should be a Palestinian nation. Israel would be a peaceful nation and gain diplomatic recognition in exchange for their agreement. However, this plan was seen as unacceptable by Israel’s prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and his successor, Menachem Begin. Sadat failed to realize that the United States supported the Soviet Union’s return to the Middle East and was not ready to give Syria and PLO the power to deny his policies. Washington’s controversial course of action was decisive in initiating cooperation between Sadat and Begin.
It can be said to his credit that Carter realized that if Egypt and Israel were determined to establish peace, he should support it rather than blame it. His contribution was crucial in overcoming many obstacles and in implementing it.
Itamar Rabinovich

A decent and honest man

Historically, the Camp David agreements are the most critical part of Jimmy Carter’sCarter’s diplomatic activity. Indeed, he had to conclude them two times: first, in September 1978, at the presidential resort in Maryland, and later by shuttling in the region when the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty seemed to be going down the drain in March 1979. The result of the President’sPresident’s unyielding attitude toward it turned this treaty into a reality. It was very much a personal achievement.

For the last 40 years, this treaty has averted a possible Arab-Israeli war; thus, consequently, neither was there a threat to the destruction of Israel in its most existential state. This had the effect of making Israel also consider the peace deal with the Palestinians. Carter delegated the remaining part of his term in office to the side of the Palestinians to promote their cause for self-rule; however, his attempts failed, probably because he was ashamed of the failure to conclude a complete peace in Jerusalem. He was often very critical of Israel. It is not well known that Carter’sCarter’s administration initiated the creation of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

Carter spent his presidency negotiating with the Panamanians to give back the Panama Canal to Panama despite the loud US opposition that right-wing Americans led, Ronald Reagan among them. This may very well have avoided a protracted guerrilla war that might have been all of Latin America against the US and tens of thousands of deaths. It is presently a forgotten high point of his considerable persistence in gaining the necessary support in the Senate to ratify the treaty, which Reagan did not question during his time as President.

Mr. Carter is the one national leader to have been a front and an early discoverer of the global warming issue. His government communicated several papers pointing at the peril of climate change. He increased the National Park system by a factor of two.

Above all, Carter was a man of good character and a strict and reliable one who faced the most challenging and unpopular spies and agents because he believed in the president’s work.

This excerpt from a piece found in Lawfare on January 14, 2021.

Bruce Riedel

Carter’s relations with the Soviet Union

The situation of Jimmy Carter with the Soviets is rather complex. He was elected to the presidency in 1977, when people were in a good mood, thanks to the détente between Nixon and Kissinger with Leonid Brezhnev, which focused on the two great men from the two great superpowers. They are called conservative because they did not engage in the discussion of civil rights with their Soviet counterparts.
The Carter government’s policy was significantly different. He was also, however, loyal to the issue of arms control. The difficulty of the agreement is exemplified by the fact that the Senate only approved it in 1979. Consequently, the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan was the reason why the Senate would not ratify it. “The failure to ratify was the most profound disappointment of my presidency,” Carter said.
That said, Carter and the men around him believed in the essential freedom of speech and the other human rights humans should have in the world, so those leaders endorsed the rights of all people. These governments were also willing to say that Soviet Union policies were wrong, which annoyed the Kremlin. In contrast to Kissinger, Carter was unflinching in exposing the violation of the human rights of the dissidents and the Jewish refuseniks, and in his memoirs, he says that Brezhnev got irate.
The two-sided matter of the Soviets produced itself through Carter’s selection of the highest security personnel. Zbigniew Brzezinski. His national security advisor was a hardliner on the anti-Soviet front. In contrast, Cyrus Vance was a follower of traditional diplomacy. Where Zeber wanted to deal with the Soviets head-on, Vance preferred to have conversations with and engage the country in dialogue.
The deterioration of U.S.-Soviet relations reached a high level by the time of the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. Carter characterized the invasion as “the most serious threat to the peace since the Second World War.” The grain embargo that his administration imposed on the USSR was lifted in 1981 by Ronald Reagan under pressure from American farmers. It also imposed technology sanctions. The mujaheddin, who were funded by the US and who fought the Soviets, subsequently provided fertile ground for the rise of al-Qaida due to their insurgency. During Carter’s administration, the US defense budget also began to grow to counter what he believed was a growing Soviet threat. This was when the Soviet leadership was an ailing gerontocracy; the United States would only have to wait until Gorbachev came to power to improve relations.
Angela Stent

Shibley Telhami

The bitterness of Carter in the Middle East
Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy track record as president always invoked the Camp David Accords as a centerpiece of his foreign policy. Although Carter’s role was vital, it was the culmination of those accords that led to the rearrangement of Middle Eastern politics and the US role in that region that is the most extraordinary, if not the most significant. However, three important facts about Carter’s role should be pointed out.
First, as I stated in a book on Camp David, Carter looked at the situation by prescribing a strategy in which Sadat would want to leave his position, and the Israelis would be worried about whether or not they could keep their bond with the superpower alive. Second, Carter, a pacifist on foreign policy, decided to use his knowledge on the subject to influence the others at Camp David. Thus, the attitude displayed was essential for the success of the agreement: it was from that point on that when Begin seemed like he was going to be a hindrance, Carter hinted that he would tell Americans that Begin was at fault for the collapse; when Sadat started to gather his things to leave the discussions, Carter did the same. Both persons remained in place and gave additional concessions. Third, following the agreement, Carter knew here>that Begin was abandoning the green line with Carter just as he did in a conversation with the leader of the latter, Mr. President. Carter believed that the commitment not to erect new Israeli settlements in the West Bank by Begin had been violated, which he saw as the most essential part of the agreement.
True, Egypt benefited from the recovery of the Sinai Peninsula and the established peace. However, in the case of Egypt, Israel was the biggest winner in the military context, Breathes, and also in most of the Arabs’ occupied territories. The effects were evident instantly: Imagine, for example, not Signing Peace with Egypt but ordering an invasion of Lebanon by Begin.
From the start, it is evident that Carter was a strong supporter of the Accords, which he expected to be helpful to the United States, Israel, and Egypt. However, it must be noted that he also noticed the part of the accords that referred to the Palestinians, which he considered a small step towards their freedom. However, he was anxious most of the time that these accords were losing their gravitas. In one of his interviews, he stated in 2018, on the 40th anniversary at Camp David: “I recognized my lasting regret … While Israeli-Egyptian peace was imperative, I used to think that the Palestinian matter was not just the root cause of any other conflict in the region but also the principle of Israel being the symbol among other democratic states.”
This feeling of being half-done and the anxiety about his most significant achievement being taken advantage of to keep the injustice levels intact may be part of the reasons why Carter took a controversial stand in defense of the rights of the Palestinians in the years that followed, risking a storm in 2006 by writing his book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.
Shibley Tel