Foreign policy
From the onset of his presidency, Carter attempted to mediate the Arab–Israeli conflict. After a failed attempt to seek a comprehensive settlement in 1977 (through reconvening the 1973 Geneva conference), Carter invited the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin to the presidential lodge Camp David in September 1978, in hopes of creating a definitive peace. While the two sides could not agree on Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, the negotiations resulted in Egypt formally recognizing Israel, and the creation of an elected government in the West Bank and Gaza. This resulted in the Camp David Accords, which ended the war between Israel and Egypt.
The accords were a source of great domestic opposition in both Egypt and Israel. Historian Jørgen Jensehaugen argues that by the time Carter left office in January 1981, he was "in an odd position—he had attempted to break with traditional U.S. policy but ended up fulfilling the goals of that tradition, which had been to break up the Arab alliance, sideline the Palestinians, build an alliance with Egypt, weaken the Soviet Union and secure Israel."
In an address to the African officials at the United Nations on October 4, 1977, Carter stated the U.S.'s interest to "see a strong, vigorous, free, and prosperous Africa with as much of the control of government as possible in the hands of the residents of your countries" and pointed to their unified efforts on "the problem of how to resolve the Rhodesian, Zimbabwe question." At a news conference later that month, Carter said the U.S. wanted to "work harmoniously with South Africa in dealing with the threats to peace in Namibia and in Zimbabwe in particular", to do away with racial issues such as apartheid, and to work for equal opportunities in other facets of society in the region.
Despite human rights concerns, Carter continued U.S. support for Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire. Zaire received nearly half the foreign aid Carter allocated to sub-Saharan Africa. Under Carter an alliance with Liberia's Samuel Doe, who had come to power in a 1980 coup, was pursued.
Carter visited Nigeria from March 31 to April 3, 1978, to improve relations, the first U.S. president to do so. He reiterated interest in convening a peace conference on Rhodesia that involved all parties.
The elections of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister of the United Kingdom and Abel Muzorewa for Prime Minister of Zimbabwe Rhodesia, South Africa turning down a plan for South West Africa's independence, and domestic opposition in Congress were seen as a heavy blow to the Carter administration's policy toward South Africa. On May 16, 1979, the Senate voted in favor of lifting economic sanctions against Rhodesia, seen by some Rhodesians and South Africans as a potentially fatal blow to joint diplomacy efforts and any compromise between the Salisbury leaders and guerrillas. On December 3, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance promised Senator Jesse Helms that when the British governor arrived in Salisbury to implement an agreed Lancaster House settlement and the electoral process began, the President would take prompt action to lift sanctions against Zimbabwe Rhodesia.
Carter sought closer relations with the People's Republic of China (PRC), continuing the Nixon administration's drastic policy of rapprochement. The two countries increasingly collaborated against the Soviet Union, and the Carter administration tacitly consented to the Chinese invasion of Vietnam. In December 1978, he announced the United States' intention to formally recognize and establish full diplomatic relations with the PRC starting on January 1, 1979, while severing ties with Taiwan, including revoking a mutual defense treaty with the latter. In 1979, Carter extended formal diplomatic recognition to the PRC for the first time. This decision led to a boom in trade between the United States and the PRC, which was pursuing economic reforms under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping. Carter supported the China-allied Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia fighting the Soviet-backed Vietnamese invasion.
After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Carter allowed the sale of military supplies to China and began negotiations to share military intelligence. In January 1980, Carter unilaterally revoked the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty with the Republic of China (ROC). Conservative Republicans challenged Carter's abrogation of the treaty in court, but the Supreme Court ruled that the issue was a non-justiciable political question in Goldwater v. Carter. The U.S. continued to maintain quasi-diplomatic contacts with the ROC through the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act.
During Carter's presidency, the U.S. continued to support Indonesia under Suharto as a Cold War ally, despite human rights violations in East Timor. The violations followed Indonesia's December 1975 invasion of East Timor. Under Carter's administration military assistance to Indonesia increased, peaking in 1978. This was antithetical to Carter's stated policy of "not selling weapons if it would exacerbate a potential conflict in a region". In the Philippines, Carter supported the regime of President Ferdinand Marcos.
During a news conference on March 9, 1977, Carter reaffirmed his interest in having a gradual withdrawal of American troops from South Korea. On May 19, The Washington Post quoted Chief of Staff of U.S. forces in South Korea John K. Singlaub as criticizing Carter's withdrawal of troops from the Korean peninsula. Carter relieved Singlaub of his duties on May 21.
During a news conference on May 26, 1977, Carter said South Korea could defend itself with reduced American troops in case of conflict. From June 30 to July 1, 1979, Carter held meetings with president of South Korea Park Chung Hee for a discussion on relations between the U.S. and South Korea as well as Carter's interest in preserving his policy of worldwide tension reduction. On April 21, 1978, Carter announced a reduction in American troops in South Korea scheduled to be released by the end of the year by two-thirds, citing lack of action by Congress in regard to a compensatory aid package for the South Korean government. He supported South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan during the suppression of the Gwangju Uprising in May 1980. South Korean pro-democracy activist Kim Dae-jung was sentenced to death in September 1980, but his sentence was commuted after the intervention of presidents Carter and Reagan.
On November 15, 1977, Carter pledged that his administration would continue positive relations between the U.S. and Iran, calling its contemporary status "strong, stable and progressive". On December 31, 1977, he called Iran under the Shah an "island of stability". Carter praised the Shah's "great leadership" and spoke of "personal friendship" between them. American support for the unpopular Shah increased anti-American sentiment in Iran, which intensified after the Shah, who was dying of cancer, left Iran for the last time in January 1979 and Carter allowed him to be admitted to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York on October 22, 1979.
On November 4, 1979, a group of Iranian students took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. The students belonged to the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line and supported the Iranian revolution. Fifty-two American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for the next 444 days. They were freed immediately after Ronald Reagan succeeded Carter as president on January 20, 1981. During the crisis, Carter remained in isolation in the White House for more than 100 days.
A month into the affair, Carter announced his commitment to resolving the dispute without "any military action that would cause bloodshed or arouse the unstable captors of our hostages to attack them or to punish them". On April 7, 1980, he issued Executive Order 12205, imposing economic sanctions against Iran, and announced further government measures he deemed necessary to ensure a safe release.
On April 24, 1980, Carter ordered Operation Eagle Claw to try to free the hostages. The mission failed, leaving eight American servicemen dead and two aircraft destroyed. The failure led Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who had opposed the mission, to resign.
Released in 2017, a declassified memo produced by the CIA in 1980 concluded "Iranian hardliners—especially Ayatollah Khomeini" were "determined to exploit the hostage issue to bring about President Carter's defeat in the November elections." Additionally, Tehran in 1980 wanted "the world to believe that Imam Khomeini caused President Carter's downfall and disgrace."
On February 8, 1977, Carter said he had urged the Soviet Union to align with the U.S. in forming "a comprehensive test ban to stop all nuclear testing for at least an extended period of time", and that he was in favor of the Soviet Union ceasing deployment of the RSD-10 Pioneer. At a June 13 press conference, he announced that the U.S. would "work closely with the Soviet Union on a comprehensive test ban treaty to prohibit all testing of nuclear devices underground or in the atmosphere", and that Paul Warnke would negotiate demilitarization of the Indian Ocean with the Soviet Union.
At a December 30 news conference, Carter said that during "the last few months, the United States and the Soviet Union have made great progress in dealing with a long list of important issues, the most important of which is to control the deployment of strategic nuclear weapons", and that the two countries sought to conclude SALT II talks by the spring of the next year. The talk of a comprehensive test ban treaty materialized with the signing of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty II by Carter and Leonid Brezhnev on June 18, 1979.
In 1979, the Soviets intervened in the Second Yemenite War. The Soviet backing of South Yemen constituted a "smaller shock", in tandem with tensions that were rising due to the Iranian Revolution. This played a role in making Carter's stance on the Soviet Union more assertive, a shift that finalized with the impending Soviet-Afghan War.
In his 1980 State of the Union Address, Carter emphasized the significance of relations between the two regions: "Now, as during the last 3½ decades, the relationship between our country, the United States of America, and the Soviet Union is the most critical factor in determining whether the world will live at peace or be engulfed in global conflict."
Communists under the leadership of Nur Muhammad Taraki seized power in Afghanistan on April 27, 1978. Due to the regime's improvement of secular education and redistribution of land coinciding with mass executions and political oppression, Taraki was deposed by rival Hafizullah Amin in September. Amin was considered a "brutal psychopath" by foreign observers and had lost control of much of the country, prompting the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan on December 24, 1979, execute Amin, and install Babrak Karmal as president.
In the West, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was considered a threat to global security and the oil supplies of the Persian Gulf, as well as the existence of Pakistan. These concerns led Carter to expand collaboration between the CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which had begun in July 1979, when the CIA started providing $695,000 worth of non-lethal assistance to the Afghan mujahideen. The modest scope of this early collaboration was likely influenced by the understanding, later recounted by CIA official Robert Gates, "that a substantial U.S. covert aid program" might have "raise[d] the stakes", thereby causing "the Soviets to intervene more directly and vigorously than otherwise intended."
According to a 2020 review of declassified U.S. documents by Conor Tobin in the journal Diplomatic History: The primary significance of this small-scale aid was in creating constructive links with dissidents through Pakistan's ISI that could be utilized in the case of an overt Soviet intervention ... The small-scale covert program that developed in response to the increasing Soviet influence was part of a contingency plan if the Soviets did intervene militarily, as Washington would be in a better position to make it difficult for them to consolidate their position, but not designed to induce an intervention.
On December 28, 1979, Carter signed a presidential finding explicitly allowing the CIA to transfer "lethal military equipment either directly or through third countries to the Afghan opponents of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan" and to arrange "selective training, conducted outside of Afghanistan, in the use of such equipment either directly or via third country intermediation." His finding defined the CIA's mission as "harassment" of Soviet troops; at the time, "this was not a war the CIA expected to win outright on the battlefield," in the words of Steve Coll.
Carter was determined to respond harshly to what he considered a dangerous provocation. In a televised speech on January 23, 1980, he announced sanctions on the Soviet Union, promised renewed aid and registration to Pakistan and the Selective Service System, and committed the U.S. to the Persian Gulf's defense. Carter imposed an embargo on grain shipments to the USSR, tabled SALT II, requested a 5% annual increase in defense spending, and called for a boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, which was ultimately joined by 65 other nations.
In early 1980, Carter determined the thrust of U.S. policy for the duration of the war: he initiated a program to arm the mujahideen through Pakistan's ISI and secured a pledge from Saudi Arabia to match U.S. funding for this purpose. Despite huge expenditure, the Soviet Union was unable to quell the insurgency and withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. The routing of U.S. aid through Pakistan led to some controversy, as weapons sent to Karachi were frequently controlled by Pakistan, whose government influenced which rebels received assistance. Despite this, Carter has expressed no regret over his decision to support what he considered the Afghan freedom fighters.
Carter made twelve international trips to 25 countries as president. He was the first president to make a state visit to Sub-Saharan Africa when he went to Nigeria in 1978. He made several trips to the Middle East to broker peace negotiations. His visit to Iran from December 31, 1977, to January 1, 1978, took place less than a year before the overthrow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Carter gave his "Island of Stability" speech during this visit.
