Jimmy Carter: Failed President, first-rate humanitarian

By Christopher Schaefer, Executive Director, Pax Americana Institute

This month, James Earl Carter Jr., America’s thirty-ninth president eclipsed the century mark, making him the nation’s first centenarian president. Mr. Carter’s post-presidency—spanning more than forty years, the longest in American history serves as a model for all future chief executives. Eschewing the spotlight, Carter, following his loss to Ronald Reagan in 1980, returned to the modest home he and Rosalyn purchased in the 1960s—an abode in which he currently resides—to embark on the next chapter of his life.

Upon leaving office, Mr. Carter has devoted hundreds of thousands of hours to running the Carter Center at Emory University, a nonprofit organization devoted to advancing human rights and democracy which he founded in 1982; building homes with Habitat for Humanity; traveling the world in an effort to foster peace agreements in nations ravaged by war or territorial conflict; writing books, thirty-one of which were penned during his post-presidential years; and serving as a model of grace, humility, and courage. While this author was a vehement critic of President Carter’s foreign and domestic policies, he admires the thirty-ninth president’s decency, humility, courage, and unwavering commitment to public service. Jimmy Carter’s is unquestionably one of America’s most admired post-presidencies, as the thirty-ninth president achieved more in the diplomatic and humanitarian realms than many of his predecessors and successors achieved during their respective terms. Mr. Carter was, indeed, a failed president, but a first-rate humanitarian whose post-presidency serves as the loadstar for presidents present and future.

Faith, particularly an unwavering relationship with Jesus Christ, is the compass of Jimmy Carter’s life. Carter has repeatedly stated that his deeply personal relationship with Jesus Christ has allowed him to survive innumerable medical issues and make consequential decisions during his lone term as President of the United States. In his presidential memoirs, Carter wrote at length about praying before making major decisions, especially sending American troops into harm’s way.[1] Jimmy Carter’s was a relational faith. In describing his relationship with Jesus Christ, Carter wrote, “To me, Jesus Christ is not an object to be worshiped but a person and companion.”[2] This deeply personal relationship with his creator—one the former president has worked assiduously to instill in others through his service as a Sunday school instructor for more than seventy years—Carter posited, has given him a “pleasant feeling of responsibility to share with others.”[3]

Carter’s faith was the driving force behind many of the policy issues he championed as president, chief among them, homelessness, human rights, welfare reform and the war on poverty. Coincidently, Carter, a Southern Baptist, eschewed many of the issues of chief importance to the majority of evangelicals: abortion, school prayer, school choice/tuition tax credits, and same-sex marriage. Gary Scott Smith, in his tome exploring the role faith played in the American presidency, wrote of Carter’s Christianity, “Three major factors shaped Carter’s ideology: Southern evangelicalism, Baptists’ views of the separation of Church and State, and the Christian realism of Reinhold Niebuhr. In most ways, Carter’s personal faith was typical of Southern Baptists and most other evangelicals. He believed in the need to be born again, and the authority of the bible. Carter insisted that his faith should play an important role in his political decisions.”[4] During the Iran hostage crisis, for example, Carter prayed daily for the Americans held captive and evoked religious rhetoric in many of his speeches and press conferences. No modern president with perhaps the exception of George W. Bush, relied as heavily on faith when making consequential policy decisions.

Nineteen months ago when the thirty-ninth president entered hospice care, many believed the end of his extraordinary life was on the precipice. Through grace, humility, prayer, and an abiding faith in the Almighty, James Earl Carter was able to celebrate his one hundred birthday. In a moving tribute to the former president, The New York Times wrote of his extraordinary life, “The last chapter of Mr. Carter’s already remarkable life story is turning out to be one of astonishing resilience. The peanut farmer turned global statesman has over the years beaten brain cancer, bounced back from a broken hip, and outlived his political adversaries. And now he is setting a record for presidential durability that may be hard to break.”[5] The past forty-plus years of Jimmy Carter’s life have been devoted to the causes of greatest importance to him: The Carter Center, Habitat for Humanity, human rights, democracy promotion, eradicating disease, famine, poverty and war, and conflict resolution. According to Texas A&M University, “The Carter Center has worked to eliminate six preventable diseases: Guinea worm, river blindness, trachoma, schistosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis and malaria Hispaniola. Thanks to Carter’s efforts, guinea worm disease—a parasitic infection contracted when people drink water contaminated with Guinea worm with—could soon be eradicated.”[6]

In spite of the aforementioned, establishing peace in the Middle East, chiefly the creation of an independent Palestinian state has been a focal point of Jimmy Carter’s post-presidency. Unlike many of his predecessors and successors, Carter has been outspoken and steadfast in his endorsement of an independent Palestinian state, a position this author fervently rejects. Furthermore, Carter has blamed Israel, particularly Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for the ongoing imbroglio in the West Bank. In his controversial book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Carter argues that Israel’s “colonization” and unwillingness to recognize an independent Palestinian state have been the greatest obstacles to peace in the Middle East. In the book, Carter identifies two obstacles to permanent peace in the Middle East:

• “Some Israeli’s believe they have the right to confiscate and colonize Palestinian land and try to justify the sustained subjugation and persecution of increasingly hopeless and aggravated Palestinians; and
• Some Palestinians react by honoring suicide bombers as martyrs to be rewarded in heaven and consider the killing of Israeli’s as a victory.”[7]

What, then, according to Carter is the solution to peace in the Middle East? Carter identifies three steps to restore the Middle East peace process:

• The security of Israel must be guaranteed.
• The internal debate within Israel must be resolved in order to restore Israel’s permanent legal boundary.
• The sovereignty of all Middle East nations and sanctity of international borders must be honored.[8]

In recent years, Carter has been more outspoken in his opposition to Israel, blaming Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Likud party for tumult and instability in the Middle East. Carter’s unwavering support for the creation of an independent Palestinian state and use of the term “apartheid”—one for which he was resoundingly criticized by diplomats and political leaders on both sides of the aisle for being insensitive and anti-Semitic[9]–have contributed to unrest and tumult in Gaza. In fact, on October 1, 2024, the day of Carter’s one hundredth birthday, Iran launched more than one hundred and eighty missiles into Israel. The creation of a Palestinian state that is not democratic with all the protections of civil society would upend peace in the Middle East, pose an existential threat to Israeli security and legitimize the Palestine Liberation Organization, an anti-American terrorist regime. America must not and will not negotiate or legitimize terrorist organizations.

Was Jimmy Carter’s presidency a failure?

Jimmy Carter has been consistently ranked as an “average” or “below-average” president since leaving office in January 1981. Carter’s standing with presidential historians has witnessed a rehabilitation due largely to his post-presidential accolades. Judging any president’s successes based on accomplishments after leaving office is ineffectual, naïve, and counterproductive. Presidential rankings assess the accomplishments and/or failures of the chief executive during his time as guardian of the nation. Under that criteria, the author ranks Carter as one of the least successful presidents in American history, trailing only James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, John Tyler, Herbert Hoover, and Joseph Biden.[10] Carter’s shortcomings are myriad, ranging from the Iran Hostage Crisis to a record-high inflation.

 Yes, Jimmy Carter was indeed a failed president. His tenure was mired by infighting among his senior advisors, lack of a coherent vision for his administration, a reorienting of American foreign policy from hard power realism to preoccupation with soft power, human rights and toppling the regimes of right-wing dictators. The author concurs with Stephen Hess, a scholar at the Brookings Institute and professor at his graduate school alma mater, The George Washington University; correctly considers Carter as the quintessential process president. For those unfamiliar with the term, a process president refers to a chief executive who “places greater emphasis on methods, procedures and instruments for making policy than on the content of the policy itself.”[11] Jimmy Carter was an activist who possessed a grandiose vision about the proper role of government in a free society. Partially a result of Carter’s lack of a coherent vision and legislative experience, he was unsuccessful in coupling his vision of a world devoid of peace and conflict with a successful governing agenda. Stephen Hess is correct, “Process is only a tool for getting from here to there—it is not a substitute for substance. And good processes can produce conflicting, competing and confusing programs.”[12]

Jimmy Carter’s presidency lacked what George Herbert Walker Bush referred to as “the vision thing.” Carter’s administration was devoid of a consistent message, governing philosophy or vision for America. While human rights and democracy promotion abroad were the cornerstones of the national security doctrine that bore his name, Carter frequently deviated from those tenets as new crises emerged. Jimmy Carter’s was a programmatic, not an activist administration. On every major policy decision, it appeared as though Carter was robotic, lacking comprehension of the consequences his actions would have on a world in tumult. Stephen Hess also best summarized Carter’s presidency when he wrote, “What has produced an undistinguished presidency? Jimmy Carter’s failure to set consistent policy goals—or more grandly, a philosophy for government.”[13] Americans distrusted Carter due to his administration’s inability to develop and articulate a coherent vision for America. Accordingly, Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter resoundingly in 1980 by portraying the incumbent president as aloof, out-of-touch and devoid of a grandiose vision for moving America forward during one of the most tumultuous eras in the nation’s history.

Lack of a governing philosophy was not Carter’s only failure during his lone term as the nation’s chief executive. Inflation and unrest in the Middle East created insurmountable obstacles for him. Had Carter possessed a coherent governing philosophy and not made decisions on a whim, he could have weathered the storm, won reelection in 1980, and been regarded by historians as a transformational and historic president. Unfortunately, for Carter and the nation, the opposite occurred. Inflation reached record highs; gasoline rationing was widespread due to largely to the 1979 Arab Oil Embargo and Iranian Revolution. American hegemony waned because of the Iran Hostage Crisis and the Carter Doctrine’s accomodationist, pro-human rights tenets.

The Carter Doctrine’s obsession with appeasement, capitulation and soft power is chiefly responsible for tumult in the Middle East and Latin America. The Camp David Accords, arguably Carter’s foremost achievement as president, although a short-term success, failed to establish peace and stability in the Middle East. Iran’s recent bombing of Israel serves as another reminder that Carter’s passive approach to American-Iranian relations was an abject failure. Since Carter left office, Iran has become more virulently anti-American than at any point in its history.

 Future presidents can learn a valuable lesson from Jimmy Carter’s shortcomings: aggression, not appeasement is the only viable solution for defeating those who seek to destroy and pose an existential threat to American hegemony. Paul Miller is correct:

“The aftermath of Jimmy Carter’s Iran policy is still present today. The lives lost, because of his incompetence in dealing with Iran before, during and after the Islamic Revolution is far greater than the turmoil in Iraq. Considering the support insurgent groups in Iraq as well as terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah get from Iran, Carter’s mistakes as president are still costing lives all over the Middle East.”[14]

The Iranian Hostage Crisis was, without question, the seminal shortcoming of Jimmy Carter’s presidency. Western intrigue with Iran began in 1909, following the discovery of oil. Anglo-Dutch Shell, a British-based petroleum company, possessed near unilateral authority over Iran’s oil supply until 1951. In 1951, the Majilis (Parliament of Iran) elected Mohammed Mossadeq prime minister, by a vote of seventy-seven to twelve. Immediately following his election, Mossadeq expelled Anglo-Dutch Shell from the country, leading many in the United States government to believe collaboration or takeover by the Soviet Union was imminent.[15] According to Professor Robert Strong, the potential Soviet occupation of Iran led the United States Central Intelligence Agency to:

“Stage a coup that toppled the prime minister and restored to power the Pahlavi ruling dynasty, whose monarch at the time had been reduced to a figurehead under Mossadeq. This leader, Mohammed Reza Shaa Pahlava was allowed to govern once rights to eighty percent of oil were ceded (transferred) to American and British interests.”[16]

Civil unrest and discord became ubiquitous, because of the Shah’s deployment of secret police agencies to spy on Iranian citizens, the outlawing of rival political factions, and a host of egregious human rights violations. When Carter assumed the presidency in 1977, discontent and disorder precipitated a widespread distrust of the Iranian government. According to Richard Nixon, “The CIA and other allied intelligence agencies gave covert help to General Fazollah Zahredi in his successful effort to put down Mossadeq. Mossadeq was ousted and the Shah was restored securely through the throne; from then on, the Shah took personal control of Iran’s affairs.”[17] The Shah assumed power in 1941, following the death of his father, but deferred many of the day-to-day policy decisions to Prime Minister Mossadeq. The 1953 Iranian coup d’état resulted in the Shah retaking control of the government and ruling in a monarchical fashion.[18] The last King of Iran, Mohammed Pahlavi (the Shah), would remain in power until 1979, when he was overthrown by the Iranian Revolution. With the Iranian government on the brink of collapse, the Shah was deposed by a coterie of hardline Muslim traditionalists, and fled to Paris where he resided in exile for the next fifteen years. According to Dr. Robert Strong, by early 1979 the conservative Islamic movement had become so strong that the Shah was forced to flee Iran and turn over power to a new group of western-oriented technocrats.”[19] In 1979, the Shah, now residing in Mexico and dying of cancer, was invited by President Jimmy Carter to visit the United States, where he sought state-of-the-art medical treatment. In response to Carter’s action, a group of militant Iranian students loyal to Ayatollah Khomeini, seized the American embassy in Tehran, holding sixty-six Americans, including the charge d ’affairs, hostage. The militant students wanted the Shah returned to Iran to stand trial for his alleged violations of Sharia law. Robert Shaw, in discussing the aftermath of this decision, wrote, “The Ayatollah returned to his homeland soon afterward and was instantly installed by a million Iranians marching on the capital as the nation’s undisputed leader.”[20] In spite of attempts by President Carter to end the crisis by freezing billions of dollars in Iranian assets and imposing rigorous sanctions, American hostages were held for four hundred-forty-four days.

Americans’ discontent with Carter’s inability to free the hostages in a timely fashion fostered the perception that he was aimless, inept, and incapable of exuding American leadership abroad. Desperate for the hostages’ return, President Carter authorized Operation Eagle Claw, one of the first-ever Delta Forces missions. It resulted in eight helicopters being sent to Iran, with one crashing and eight American service members dying. According to Mark Bowden, the operation would have been deemed a success and continued had six of the eight helicopters been operational.[21] The mission was aborted on April 25, 1980, just one day following its launch. With his approval ratings hemorrhaging, Carter made a last ditch effort to rehabilitate his presidency and bolster the possibility of reelection: fostering a hostage release agreement with the Khomeini regime. The agreement, which became 1981 Executive Order 12283, unfroze billions of dollars in Iranian funds, established a tribunal at The Hague to settle financial claims, and prevented the United States government from interfering in internal Iranian affairs.[22] President Carter’s inability to get the American hostages released during his presidency—they were released immediately following Ronald Reagan’s inauguration—is largely a result of his administration’s lack of vision and its capitulation to the whims of adversaries, and obsession with soft power diplomacy.

Khomeini’s regime, recognizing dissent among Carter administration national security officials and the lack of a confrontational approach to dealing with the crisis, possessed the upper hand with respect to negotiations. The United States Department of State’s Office of the Historian described this tension:

“Carter initially favored Secretary Vance’s policy of negotiation, but by 1980 was more receptive to National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski’s more confrontational stance. Once again, the National Security Council and the Department of State were in open conflict. The issue came to a head when Secretary Vance opposed a mission to rescue the hostage in Iran—a move championed by Brzezinski. Vance had been correct—the 1980 mission was a debacle. But Vance was frustrated and he resigned in protested in April 1980.”[23]

While the Iranian Hostage Crisis proved to be Carter’s most prolific foreign policy failure, he also exacerbated the failed policy of détente with the Soviet Union and a hollowing out of America’s military. Détente, as this author defined it in his most recent analysis of Richard Nixon’s contributions to preserving Israeli independence, is the relaxation of strained tensions between geopolitical rivals. The Carter administration expanded upon détente by relying specifically on soft power tactics, modernization of the Third World, focus on human rights, and support of Marxist-inspired autocrats in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The first year of Carter’s presidency witnessed a Soviet military buildup, dramatic reduction in the number of active-duty American military personnel, and the expansion of Soviet influence in Africa, the Caribbean, and Afghanistan. Jeane Kirkpatrick best described Carter’s rebranding of détente, when she wrote:

“The pattern is familiar enough: an established autocracy with a record of friendship with the U.S. is attacked by insurgents, some of whose leaders have long tries to the Communist movement, and most of whose arms are of Soviet, Chinese, or Czechoslovak origin. The Marxist presence is ignored and/or minimized by American officials and by the elite media on the ground that U.S. support for the dictator gives the rebels little choice but to seek aid elsewhere.”[24]

President Carter and his advisers maintained that affording Marxist-inspired dictators with monetary resources and weapons would compel them to reject the Soviet Union and evolve into western-inspired democracies despite their analogous political ideology.

Few Marxist-Leninist governments run by anti-American autocrats have embraced democracy, the rule of law, or natural law. According to Kirkpatrick:

“Although there is no instance of a revolutionary ‘socialist’ or Communist society being democratized, right-wing autocracies do sometimes evolve into democracies—given time, propitious economic, social, and political circumstances, talented leaders, and a strong indigenous demand for representative government…But it seems clear that the architects of contemporary American foreign policy have little idea of how to go about encouraging the liberalization of an autocracy.”[25]

Iran and Nicaragua are two prominent examples of the failure of this approach to remaking the world that occurred under Carter’s auspices. In both instances, the Carter administration failed to comprehend that replacing autocratic rulers with “moderates” or those supportive of western ideals, would guarantee a profound ideological transformation or hasten support for democratic values. Kirkpatrick is correct: “Authority in traditional autocracies is transmitted through personal relations: from the ruler to his close associates and from them to people to whom the associates are related by personal ties resembling their own relation to the ruler.”[26] President Carter and his advisors’ reorientation of American foreign power from hard power realism to “rational humanism,” coupled with a belief the Cold War had subsided, proved calamitous and posed an existential threat to American hegemony.

Rational humanism was a foreign policy doctrine elucidated by Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s former secretary of state, in his book, Between Two Ages, in which a focus on national supremacy and political confrontation would be replaced by globalization and human issues. Brzezinski wrote of rationalism humanism, “Today, the old framework of international politics with their spheres of influence, military alliances between nation states, the fiction of sovereignty, doctrinal conflict arising from nineteenth century crisis—is no longer compatible with reality.”[27] In essence, rational humanism, obsessed over modernization of the third world. Concern for national interest and preserving the Pax Americana was replaced with Third World modernization. The “Modernization Paradigm”, as dubbed by esteemed political scientist, Dr. Samuel Huntington, focused on urbanization, literacy, social mobilization and economic growth—all of which the Carter administration, particularly Brzezinski argued were necessary for transforming Marxist-Leninist governments into Western-inspired democracies. Jeane Kirkpatrick, in describing Samuel Huntington’s full-fledged repudiation of the “Modernization Paradigm”, despite serving as a member of the National Security Council during Carter’s presidency, wrote:

“The modernization paradigm, Huntington has observed, postulates an ongoing process of change: complex because it involves all dimensions of human life in society; systemic, because its elements interact in predictable, necessary ways; global, because all societies will, necessarily, pass through the transition from traditional to modern; lengthy, because time is required to modernize economic and social organization, charter, and culture; phased, because each modernizing society must pass through essentially the same stages; homogenizing, because it tends towards the convergence and interdependence of societies; irreversible, because the direction of change is given in the relation of the elements of the process; progressive, in the sense that it is desirable, and in the long run provides significant benefits to the affiliated people.”[28]

In essence, the “Modernization Paradigm” rejected the “great man theory” which postulated that individual actions are the essence of decision-making. Instead, the “Modernization Paradigm” reasoned that events and external forces such as those outlined by Huntington were primarily responsible for global events. President Carter proclaimed that factors beyond his control triggered the Iranian revolution and turmoil that engulfed Southeast Asia. In a 1979 speech the Georgia Technological Institute, Carter articulated the “Modernist Paradigm” with respect to the Iranian Revolution when he said, “The revolution in Iran is a product of deep social, political, religious, and economic factors growing out of the history of Iran itself.”[29] Carter’s view is not only naïve, it precipitated the rise of fervently anti-American autocrats in third world countries, many of whom were armed and aided by the Soviet Union.

Jeane Kirkpatrick and Stephen Rosenfeld, a reporter with the Washington Post, most aptly described the essence of Carter’s failed modernization paradigm. According to Kirkpatrick, “…Carter’s doctrine of national interest and modernization encourages support for all change that takes places in the name of ‘the people,’ regardless of its ‘superficial Marxist or anti-American content.”[30] Stephen Rosenfeld provided a similar analysis, writing:

“The Carter administration came to power, after all, committed precisely to reducing the centrality of strategic competition with Moscow in American foreign policy, and to extending the United States’ association with what it was prepared to accept as legitimate wave-of-the-future popular movements around the world-first of all with the victorious movement in Vietnam…Indochina was supposed to be the state on which Americans could demonstrate their post-Vietnam intent to come to terms with the progressive popular element that Kissinger, the villain, had denied.”[31]

Jimmy Carter and his advisors rejected the hard power, balance-of-power politics of the Cold War Era and instead, embraced revolutionary uprisings, most often engineered by activists in third world countries. The Carter administration’s unwillingness to decimate these anti-American regimes emboldened and strengthened the Soviet Union’s grip on Latin America, Southeast Asian and the Middle East. Because of Jimmy Carter’s naivety and embrace of the modernist paradigm, anti-American sentiment remains pervasive in much of the world, particularly those regions he sought to remake in the image of America.

The final word on the Carter administration’s failures with respect to expansion of détente belongs to none other than Jeane Kirkpatrick:

“The foreign policy of the Carter administration fails not for lack of realism about the nature of traditional versus revolutionary autocracies and the relation of each to the American national interest. Only intellectual fashion and the tyranny of Right/Left thinking prevent intelligent men of good will from perceiving the facts that traditional authoritarian governments are less repressive than revolutionary autocracies, that they are more susceptible of liberalization, and that they are more compatible with U.S. interests.”[32]

As shown by his unwillingness to modernize America’s weapons systems or naval fleet, President Carter was no fan of the Department of Defense or United States military, despite having served in the United States Navy during World War II. Akin to many of his predecessors, Carter embraced the World War II, nation-state approach to combat; believing the United States military must be robust, and focused on defeating multiple adversaries simultaneously. Instead, he neglected what Donald Rumsfeld would later describe as the “light and lethal” approach to fighting, which recognizes that modern warfare will be dominated by new technology, fewer ground troops, and guerilla tactics.[33] Immediately following his inauguration, President Carter pardoned Vietnam War draft evaders and removed American ground troops from South Korea. Carter’s pardoning of more than one hundred thousand Vietnam War draft dodgers engendered ill will with both rank-and-file military personnel and top brass at the Pentagon. American personnel, as a result, lost faith in their commander-in-chief, believing he was more concerned about appeasing America’s enemies than projecting peace through strength. Steven Hayward argued that Jimmy Carter’s bellicosity at a time when the Soviet Union was strengthening its military arsenal adversely affected the United States’ ability to win future wars and undermined America’s claim to be the most powerful nation in the world.[34]

As president, Jimmy Carter opposed construction of the B-1 bomber to replace the outdated B-52, which had first been constructed in 1952 and used extensively by the United States during the Vietnam War. Carter’s opposition was precipitated by his supposition that the B-1 bomber would be cost-prohibitive and unnecessary for modern warfare. Despite overwhelmingly bipartisan support for construction of the B-1 bomber in both houses of Congress, Carter objected to its creation, opting instead for deployment of cruise missiles. Austin Scott, a reporter with the Washington Post wrote of this decision, “Pentagon sources said production of the cruise missile, a pilotless, winged aircraft that can hit targets with tremendous accuracy over a range potentially greater than two-thousand miles, will now be accelerated.”[35] President Carter argued that technological innovation with respect to missiles and the robust fleet of B-52s, despite being obsolete, justified opposition to the B-1 bomber. Construction and deployment of the B-1 bomber would become priorities of the Reagan, Bush and Clinton presidencies. In fact, the B-1 bomber would make its combat debut on December 18, 1998 during Operation Desert Fox in Bahrain.

In addition to the B-1 bomber, President Carter also significantly reduced the Navy’s shipbuilding program, believing it was too costly and unnecessary in the post-Vietnam era of warfare. In his first Department of Defense budget, President Carter slashed in half the number of new American ships to be built over a five-year period from the one hundred fifty-seven proposed by President Gerald Ford, to just seventy. Additionally, Carter’s first two defense budgets held naval funding constant, while the Soviet Union, by contrast, had exponentially increased spending on its navy, in an effort to finally obtain access to fresh water port. Francis West, in a 1979 issue of Proceedings, a magazine published by the United States Naval Institute, argued that the Carter administration cited inflation, the energy crisis, and a discounting of the Navy’s significance by many in the administration and Pentagon, particularly Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, as the impetus behind these reductions.[36] Mr. West wrote the disparity between US and Soviet naval funding, “Soviet military spending is increasing in real terms by four-to-five percent a year, compared to two percent in the United States. If this trend continues for the next decade as it has for the past decade, the in the 1990s the Soviets will be outspending us in research and development by ninety percent, and in personnel, by forty-five percent.[37] Fortunately, for the United States, Mr. West’s assessment failed to become a reality and the Berlin Wall would fall in 1989, ultimately bringing about the Soviet Union’s demise.

With respect to naval funding proposed by both the Department of Defense and recommended by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman, John Stennis (D-MS), President Carter rejected all of the following:

• $560 to reinstate the USS Oriskany and the battleship New Jersey, the latter of which would be mothballed in 1979, as a result of Carter’s inaction. Both the Oriskany and New Jersey, despite their respective ages, were suitable and equipped with the tools necessary to deploy cruise missiles—coincidently, the very weapons President Carter wanted to use instead of the B-1 bomber.
• President Carter, according to Robert Novak and Roland Evans, “Rejected $495 million for increasing the four new guided-missile frigates to six, considered a bare minimum by the Navy for anti-aircraft protection.”[38]
• $907 million for 6688-class nuclear submarines.
• Expansion of the F-18 aircraft production from the forty-eight to seventy-four planes recommended by the Department of the Navy. Carter argued that rejection of the Navy’s proposal would save $4 million per plane and allow the Department of Defense to support the United States’ existing naval fleet; a fleet that was obsolete and unbecoming of the world’s foremost superpower.

 President Carter’s outright rejection of the Department of Defense’s military equipment upgrade and funding requests was further evidence that he no longer believed American primacy was of paramount importance. No president since Carter has caused more harm to the United States military with respect to troop levels, weapons system upgrades, fleet numbers, and military readiness.

Jimmy Carter’s eclipsing of the century mark, despite being frail, on hospice care for nearly two months is a testament to his tenacity, courage, and will to live. Despite disagreeing with his policy agenda, and highlighting his innumerable foreign policy failures as president, this author and everyone at the Pax Americana Institute wish Jimmy Carter a happy one-hundredth birthday and thank him for his decades of service to the United States. Jimmy Carter is an honorable, God-fearing man who deserves admiration, praise and gratitude from every American, regardless of political affiliation.

His post-presidency transcended partisanship and placed issues such as human rights, global health, democracy, peace and compassion at the forefront of public policy discussions. Again, congratulations to Jimmy Carter on becoming the first presidential centenarian. Carter’s has been a life well lived, a model for every global citizen. Thank you, President Carter for your compassion, honesty, and decency, and for devoting your life to serving a cause greater than yourself.

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Rosenfeld, Stephen S. “Third World Policy: Better by Half.” Washington Post, The Washington Post, 30 Nov. 1979, http://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1979/11/30/third-world-policy-better-by-half/14dd6079-4204-47af-a16a-c4f64ca2ab51/. Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.

Rumsfeld, Donald. Known and Unknown: A Memoir. New York, NY: Sentinel, 2011.

Scott, Austin. “Carter Halts B-1 Bomber Production.” Washington Post, 1 July 1977, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1977/07/01/carter-halts-b-1-bomber-production/07fe7171-5bd5-4426-ad98-5d5b81946ebd/. Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.

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Strong, Robert. “Jimmy Carter: Foreign Affairs | Miller Center.” Miller Center, 4 Oct. 2016, millercenter.org/president/carter/foreign-affairs, https://millercenter.org/president/carter/foreign-affairs

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United States Department of State-Office of the Historian. “The Iranian Hostage Crisis – Short History – Department History – Office of the Historian.” State.gov, United States Department of State, 12 June 2019, https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/short-history/iraniancrises. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.

West, Jr., Francis J. “Panning for the Navy’s Future.” Proceedings, vol. 105, no. 120, Oct. 1979, pp. 46–60. United States Naval Institute, www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1979/october/planning-navys-future.  Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.

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[1] James Earl Carter, Jr., Keeping Faith: Memoirs of A President (New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1982).

[2] James Earl Carter, Jr., Faith: A Journey for All (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2018), p. 111.

[3] IBD, p. 112.

[4] Gary Scott Smith, Faith and the Presidency: From George Washington to George W. Bush (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 293.

[5] Rick Rojas and Peter Baker, “A Presidential Portrait of Uncommon Resilience.” The New York Times, October 1, 2024, p. 1; 20. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/30/us/politics/jimmy-carter-100th-birthday.html

[6] Caitlin Clark, “How Will We Remember Jimmy Carter?” Texas A&M College of Arts and Sciences, March 9, 2023. Retrieved from: https://artsci.tamu.edu/news/2023/03/how-will-we-remember-jimmy-carter.html

[7] James Earl Carter, Jr., Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006). P. 185. 

[8] IBID, p. 186.

[9] See: Michael Kinsey, “It is Not Apartheid,” The Washington Post, December 12, 2006. Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/11/AR2006121101225.html. Julie Bosman, “Carter Books Stir Fervor with view of Israel’s Apartheid,” The New York Times, December, 14, 2006. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/books/14cart.html; And, The Washington Times, “Carter Apologizes for ‘stupid’ book passage.” The Washington Times, January 25, 2007. Retrieved from: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2007/jan/25/20070125-112710-7481r/

[10] The author excludes William Henry Harrison and James Garfield from the list, due to the brevity of their respective presidencies.

[11] Stephen Hess, “Jimmy Carter: Why He Failed.” The Brookings Institute, January 21, 2000. Retrieved from: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/jimmy-carter-why-he-failed/ See also: Jack Knott and Aaron Widavsky, “Jimmy Carter’s Theory of Governing.” The Wilson Quarterly (Vol. 1, No, Winter 1977), pp. 49-67. Retrieved from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40255179 

[12] Hess, 2000, p. 2.

[13] Hess, 200, p. 3.

[14] Paul Miller, “Jimmy Carter Can Only Blame Himself.” The American Thinker, May 25, 2007. Retrieved from: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2007/05/jimmy_carter_can_only_blame_hi.html

[15] Robert A. Strong, “Jimmy Carter: Foreign Affairs.” The Miller Center at the University of Virginia, October 1, 2024. Retrieved from: https://millercenter.org/president/carter/foreign-affairs

[16] IBID, p. 5.

[17] Richard Milhous Nixon, The Real War (New York, NY: Grand Central Publishing, 1980), p. 168.

[18] Gholam Rezka Afkhami, The Life and Times of the Shah (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009).

[19] Strong, 2023, p. 5. Retried from: https://millercenter.org/president/carter/foreign-affairs

[20] IBID, p. 5.

[21] Mark Bowden, “The Desert One Debacle.” The Atlantic, May 2006. Retrieved from: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/05/the-desert-one-debacle/304803/

[22] Strong, 2023, p. 6. Retried from: https://millercenter.org/president/carter/foreign-affairs. See also: James Earl Carter, Jr., Executive Order 12283-United States-Iran Agreement on Release the American Hostages.” January 19, 1981. Retrieved from: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-12283-united-states-iran-agreement-release-the-american-hostages

[23] United States Department of State, Office of the Historian, “The Iranian Hostage Crisis, October 1, 2024. Retrieved from: https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/short-history/iraniancrises

[24] Jeane Kirkpatrick, “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” Commentary, November 1979, p. 5. Retrieved from: https://www.commentary.org/articles/jeane-kirkpatrick/dictatorships-double-standards/

[25] IBID, p. 11.

[26] IBID, p. 11.

[27] Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic World (New York, NY: Praeger, 1970), p. 113.

[28] Kirkpatrick, 1979, p. 16. See also: Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968).

[29] James Earl Carter, Jr., “Speech at Georgia Technological Institute on Foreign Policy and the Iranian Revolution.” February 20, 1979. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/1979/02/21/archives/text-of-speech-by-president-carter-at-georgia-tech-a-challenge-to.html

[30] Kirkpatrick, 1979, p. 26.

[31] Stephen Rosenfeld, “Third World Policy: Better by Half.” The Washington Post, November 29, 1979. Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1979/11/30/third-world-policy-better-by-half/14dd6079-4204-47af-a16a-c4f64ca2ab51/

[32] Kirkpatrick, 1979, p. 29.

[33] Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown: A Memoir (New York, New York: Sentinel, 2011).

[34] Steven F. Hayward, The Real Jimmy Carter: How our Worst Ex-President Undermines American Foreign Policy, Coddles Dictators, and Created the Party of Clinton and Kerry (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2004).

[35] Austin Scott, “Carter halts B-1 Bomber Production.” The Washington Post, June 30, 1977, Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1977/07/01/carter-halts-b-1-bomber-production/07fe7171-5bd5-4426-ad98-5d5b81946ebd/

[36] Francis J. West, Jr., “Planning for the Navy’s Future.” Proceedings, (vol. 105, no. 920, October 1979), p. 2. Retrieved from: https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1979/october/planning-navys-future

[37] IBID, page 15.

[38] Robert Novak and Roland Evans, “Sinking the Navy,” The Washington Post, May 20, 1990. Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1980/05/21/sinking-the-navy/de5849f5-d145-49a8-9d9f-27a95bae3bd1/