Harry Targ
I remember the Carter presidency as launching the Democratic Party’s version of the neoliberal model, support of the Shah of Iran, covertly supporting the Afghan rebels and stimulating the Begin/Sadat accords which perpetuated US/Israeli/Egyptian military aid. All bad.
But also, I remember Carter’s dramatic speech criticizing consumerism and the ravages of the climate. And of course, his post-presidential persona is unique for presidents in US history. All this to the point of addressing behavior within the context of economic and political institutions.
As President, Carter was an instrumentality of US capitalism and imperialism. Reading the political history of the time one discovers that the ruling classes and their politicians of both parties were attempting to save capitalism and imperialism in the early “post Golden Age” of Cold War capitalism.
Below from: https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2014/08/even-ruling-class-has-disagreements-on.html
The conflict between foreign policy elite factions today is reminiscent of similar conflicts in the Carter administration, 1976-1980. As historian Laurence Shoup wrote years ago, The Carter Presidency, and beyond: power and politics in the 1980s, Ramparts Books, 1980) Carter, a modestly “anti-establishment” candidate for president, ran on a campaign promising no more Vietnams. He promised that United States foreign policy would be governed by human rights. He also promised to respect the sovereignty of countries of the Global South. Some of the key foreign policy advisors he assembled lobbied for a less interventionist, more human rights oriented foreign policy.
During the first two years of Carter’s term, he tilted in their direction. But, largely as a result of the shocking revolution overthrowing the impregnable ally the Shah of Iran in January, 1979, Carter was convinced by other advisers, global militarists, to return to Cold War. The issue for them, of course, was not an alleged escalated Soviet threat but rather the loss of U.S. control of the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf.
President Carter, tilting toward the militarist wing of his administration, reintroduced draft registration, increased military aid to Egypt and Israel, increased funding for NATO, launched a research program to create a “neutron bomb,” and perhaps most significantly, began a covert funding program for rebels fighting against the pro-Soviet government of Afghanistan before the Soviets sent troops to that country. This funding of what would become the predecessors of the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and ISIS planted the seeds of the spreading global resistance to the West today.
In both the Carter and Obama administrations, the presidents sought to establish a set of policies that were a little less militaristic, more supportive of diplomacy, and modestly respectful of nations and peoples of the Global South. Both these presidents won the presidency because they positioned themselves against the more militaristic aspects of traditional U.S. imperialism. Peace movements influenced these two presidents to be more “realist” than many of their advisors.
However, both of these presidents encountered sectors of the foreign policy elite who, despite modest differences, favored war. Both these presidents had at least a vague sense that United States hegemony could not be reinstituted militarily.
The recognition that foreign policy factions exist does not negate the basic assumption that imperialism is the priority goal of foreign policy elites, including presidents. But factions differ as to tactics. They differ as to the amount of pain and suffering U.S. militarism causes in the world. And they differ as to the impacts such policies have on the working people of the United States itself. Therefore, whether United States foreign policy is defined and administered by neo-cons (the Reagan/Bush/Cheney group), liberal institutionalists (Clinton/Biden/ Council on Foreign Relations group), or realists (such as John Mearsheimer and the Quincy Institute in our own day) like Presidents Carter and Obama at the outset of their presidency, matter. If the realist presidents move away from their initial positions, they should be challenged and they should be defended when they do oppose neo-conservatives and liberal interventionists.
Habitat for Humanity
