Biography of Jimmy Carter

A Biography of Jimmy Carter
Born October 1, 1924, Plains, Georgia, USA
Political party Democratic
Spouse Rosalynn Carter Alma mater United States Naval Academy Georgia Southwestern College Georgia Tech
Occupation Politician, peanut farmer Religion Baptist

James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr., was the thirty-ninth President of the United States from 1977 to 1981, & the Nobel Peace laureate of 2002. Prior to becoming president, Carter served two terms in the Georgia Senate, & was the 76th Governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975. Carter's presidency saw the creation of two cabinet-level departments: the Department of Energy & the Department of Education. He established a national energy policy, removed price controls from domestic petroleum production, & advocated for less American reliance on foreign oil sources. He bolstered the Social Security system by introducing a staggered increase in the payroll tax. In foreign affairs, Carter pursued the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal Treaties & the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). He explicitly identified the support of basic human rights as a critical component of American foreign policy. The final year of his term was dominated by the Iran hostage crisis, during which the United States struggled to rescue diplomats & American citizens held hostage in Tehran. Ted Kennedy challenged Carter for the Democratic Party nomination, which Carter won. Carter, however, lost the 1980 presidential election to Republican Ronald Reagan. After leaving office, Carter founded the Carter Center to promote global health, democracy & human rights. He has traveled extensively to monitor international elections, conduct peace negotiations & establish relief efforts. As of 2007, he is the earliest living president & the second-oldest living president.

Jimmy Carter descended from a family that had resided in Georgia for several generations. His great-grandfather Private L.B. Walker Carter (1832–1874) served in the Confederate States Army in the Sumter Flying Artillery, seeing considerable action at the Battle of Gettysburg. This site was written in July 2007.

Jimmy Carter, the first President born in a hospital, was the oldest of four children of James Earl & Lillian Gordy Carter. He was born & grew up in the tiny southwest Georgia hamlet of Plains near the larger town of Americus. Carter grew up in a family that did not have much money. However, he was a gifted student from an early age who always had a fondness for reading. By the time he attended Plains High School, he was also a star in basketball & football. He was greatly influenced by one of his high school teachers, Julia Coleman. Ms. Coleman was handicapped by polio. She had encouraged young Jimmy to read War & Peace; he was disappointed to find that there were no cowboys or Indians in the book. Carter mentioned his beloved teacher in his inaugural address as an example of someone who beat overwhelming odds. Carter had three younger siblings. His brother, Billy (1937–1988), caused some political problems for him during his administration. His sister, Gloria (1926–1990), was low-key & was famous for collecting & riding Harley-Davidson motorcycles. His other sister, Ruth (1929–1983), became a well-known Christian evangelist.

He attended Georgia Southwestern College & Georgia Institute of Technology & received a Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Naval Academy in 1946. Carter was a gifted student & finished 59th out of his Academy class of 820. Carter served on submarines in the Atlantic & Pacific fleets. He was later selected by Captain (later Admiral) Hyman G. Rickover for the U.S. Navy's fledgling nuclear submarine program, where he became a qualified command officer. Rickover was a demanding officer, & Carter was greatly influenced by him. Carter later said that next to his parents, Admiral Rickover had the greatest influence on him. There was a story he often told of being interviewed by the Admiral. He was asked about his rank in his class at the Naval Academy. Carter said "Sir, I graduated 59th out of a class of 820". Rickover only asked "Did you always do your best?" Carter was forced to admit he had not, & the Admiral asked why. Carter later used this as the theme of his presidential campaign, & as the title of his first book, "Why Not The Best?" Carter loved the Navy, & had planned to make it his career. His ultimate goal was to become Chief of Naval Operations. Carter did some post-graduate work, studying nuclear physics & reactor technology for several months at Union College starting in March 1953. He married Rosalynn Smith in 1946. They had three sons, (John William "Jack" Carter, born in 1947; James Earl "Chip" Carter III, born in 1950; & Donnel Jeffrey "Jeff" Carter, born in 1952), & a daughter (Amy Lynn Carter, in 1967). Upon the death of his father in July 1953, however, Lieutenant Carter immediately resigned his commission & was discharged from the Navy on October 9, 1953. This cut short his nuclear power training school & he was never able to command a nuclear submarine, as the first of the fleet was launched January 17, 1955, over a year after his discharge from the Navy.

He then took over & expanded his family's peanut farming business in Plains. There he was involved in a farming accident which left him with a permanently bent finger.

From a young age, Carter showed a deep commitment to Christianity, serving as a Sunday School teacher throughout his life. Even as President, Carter prayed several times a day, & professed that Jesus Christ was the driving force in his life. Carter had been greatly influenced by a sermon he had heard as a young man, called, "If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?"

Early political career State Senate
Jimmy Carter started his career by serving on various local boards, governing such entities as the schools, hospital, & library, among others. In the 1960s, he served two terms in the Georgia Senate from the fourteenth district of Georgia.

His 1962 election to the state Senate, which followed the end of Georgia's County Unit System (per the Supreme Court case of Gray v. Sanders), was chronicled in his book Turning Point: A Candidate, a State, & a Nation Come of Age. The election involved corruption led by Joe Hurst, the sheriff of Quitman County; system abuses included votes from deceased persons & tallies filled with people who supposedly voted in alphabetical order. It took a challenge of the fraudulent results for Carter to win the election. Carter was reelected in 1964, to serve a second two-year term.
Campaign for Governor In 1966, at the end of his career as a state senator, he flirted with the idea of running for the United States House of Representatives. His Republican opponent dropped out & decided to run for Governor of Georgia. Carter did not want to see a Republican Governor of his state, & , in turn, dropped out of the race for Congress & joined the race to become Governor. Carter lost the Democratic primary, but drew enough votes as a third place candidate to force the favorite, Ellis Arnall, into a runoff election, setting off a chain of events which resulted in the election of Lester Maddox.

For the next four years, Carter returned to his agriculture business & carefully planned for his next campaign for Governor in 1970, making over 1,800 speeches throughout the state.

During his 1970 campaign, he ran an uphill populist campaign in the Democratic primary against former Governor Carl Sanders, labeling his opponent "Cufflinks Carl". Carter was never a segregationist, & refused to join the segregationist White Citizens' Council, prompting a boycott of his peanut warehouse. He also had been one of only two families which voted to admit blacks to the Plains Baptist Church. However, he "said things the segregationists wanted to hear," according to historian E. Stanly Godbold. Also, Carter's campaign aides handed out photographs of his opponent Sanders joking with a black basketball player. Following his close victory over Sanders in the primary, he was elected Governor over Republican Hal Suit.

Governor of Georgia
Carter declared in his inaugural speech that the time of racial segregation was over, & that racial discrimination had no place in the future of the state. He was the first statewide office holder in the Deep South to say this in public. Afterwards, Carter appointed many African Americans to statewide boards & offices.

Carter made government efficient by merging about 300 state agencies into 30 agencies. One of his aides recalled that Governor Carter "was right there with us, working just as hard, digging just as deep into every little problem. It was his program & he worked on it as hard as anybody, & the final product was distinctly his." He also pushed reforms through the legislature, providing equal state aid to schools in the wealthy & poor areas of Georgia, set up community centers for mentally handicapped children, & increased educational programs for convicts. Carter took pride in a program he introduced for the appointment of judges & state government officials. Under this program, all such appointments were based on merit, rather than political influence.

In 1972, as U.S. Senator George McGovern of South Dakota was marching toward the Democratic nomination for President, Carter called a news conference in Atlanta to warn that McGovern was unelectable. Carter criticized McGovern as too liberal on both foreign & domestic policy, yet when McGovern's nomination became a foregone conclusion Carter lobbied to become his vice-presidential running mate. The remarks attracted little national attention, & after McGovern's huge loss in the general election, Carter's attitude was not held against him within the Democratic Party.

After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Georgia's death penalty law in 1972, Carter signed new legislation to authorize the death penalty for murder, rape & other offenses & to implement trial procedures which would conform to the newly-announced constitutional requirements. In 1976, the Supreme Court upheld Georgia's new death penalty for murder; the death penalty was subsequently held unconstitutional as applied to rape.

In 1973, while Governor of Georgia, Carter filed a report on his 1969 UFO sighting with the International UFO Bureau in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Carter made an appearance as the first guest of the evening on an episode of the game show What's My Line in 1974, signing in as "X", lest his name give away his occupation. After his job was identified on question seven of ten by Soupy Sales, he talked about having brought movie production to the state of Georgia, citing Deliverance, & the as-yet unreleased The Longest Yard, shot at Reidville Prison.

In 1974, Carter was chairman of the Democratic National Committee's congressional & gubernatorial campaigns.

United States presidential election, 1976
When Carter entered the Democratic Party presidential primaries in 1976, he was considered to have little chance against nationally better-known politicians. He had a name recognition of only 2 percent. When he told his family of his intention to run for President, he was asked by his mother, "President of what?" However, Nixon's Watergate scandal was still fresh in the voters' minds, & so his position as an outsider, distant from Washington, D.C., became an asset. The centerpiece of his campaign platform was government reorganization. He chose Senator Walter F. Mondale as his running mate. He attacked Washington in his speeches, & offered a religious salve for the nation's wounds, which was necessary following the Watergate scandal.

Carter became the front-runner early on by winning the Iowa caucuses & the New Hampshire primary. He used a two-prong strategy. In the South, which most had tacitly conceded to Alabama's George Wallace, Carter ran as a moderate favorite son. When Wallace proved to be a spent force, Carter swept the region. In the North, Carter appealed largely to conservative Christian & rural voters & had little chance of winning a majority in most states. But in a field crowded with liberals, he managed to win several Northern states by building the largest single bloc. Initially dismissed as a regional candidate, Carter proved to be the only Democrat with a truly national strategy, & he eventually clinched the nomination. The media discovered & promoted Carter. As Lawrence Shoup noted in his 1980 book The Carter Presidency & Beyond: "What Carter had that his opponents did not was the acceptance & support of elite sectors of the mass communications media. It was their favorable coverage of Carter & his campaign that gave him an edge, propelling him rocket-like to the top of the opinion polls. This helped Carter win key primary election victories, enabling him to rise from an obscure public figure to President-elect in the short space of 9 months."

As late as January 26, 1976, Carter was the first choice of only 4% of Democratic voters, according to the Gallup Poll. Yet "by mid-March 1976 Carter was not only far ahead of the active contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, he also led President Ford by a few percentage points," according to Shoup. Carter began the race with a sizable lead over Ford, who was able to narrow the gap over the course of the campaign, but was unable to prevent Carter from narrowly defeating him on November 2, 1976. Carter won the popular vote by 50.1% to 48.0% for Ford & received 297 electoral votes to Ford's 240. He became the first contender from the Deep South to be elected President since the 1848 election.

In his inaugural address he said: "We have learned that more is not necessarily better, that even our great nation has its recognized limits, & that we can neither answer all questions nor solve all problems." His first steps in the White House were to reduce the size of the staff by one third, & order cabinet members to drive their own cars.

Presidency (1977–1981)

President Carter - October 1980
Economic situation
Productivity growth in the United States had declined to an average annual rate of 1 percent, compared to 3.2 percent of the 1960s. There was also a growing federal budget deficit which increased to 66 billion dollars. The 1970s are described as a period of stagflation, meaning economic stagnation coupled with price inflation, as well as higher interest rates. Price inflation (a rise in the general level of prices) creates uncertainty in budgeting & planning & makes labor strikes for pay raises more likely. In 1973, during the Nixon Administration, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) agreed to reduce supplies of oil available to the world market. This sparked an oil crisis & forced oil prices to rise sharply, spurring price inflation throughout the economy, & slowing growth. Significant government borrowing for items such as the Vietnam War & the nuclear weapons stockpile helped keep interest rates high relative to inflation. Jawboning & price freezes had proved ineffective.

1979 Energy Crisis
When the energy market exploded — an occurrence Carter desperately tried to avoid during his term — he was planning on delivering his fifth major speech on energy. However, he felt that the American people were no longer listening. Instead, he went to Camp David & for ten days met with governors, mayors, religious leaders, scientists, economists & general citizens. He sat on the floor & took notes of their comments & especially wanted to hear criticism. His pollster told him that the American people simply faced a crisis of confidence because of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, & Watergate. On July 15, 1979, Carter gave a nationally-televised address in which he identified what he believed to be a "crisis of confidence" among the American people. This came to be known as his "malaise" speech, although the word never appeared in it:

I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.... I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power & military might.
The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart & soul & spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives & in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.
Carter's speech, written by Chris Matthews, was well-received by some. But the country was in the midst of a weak economy dominated by OPEC-influenced double-digit inflation, & many citizens were directly affected by this, causing concern about the federal government's response. Three days after the speech, Carter asked for the resignations of all of his Cabinet officers, & ultimately accepted five. Carter later admitted in his memoirs that he should simply have asked only those five members for their resignations. By asking the entire Cabinet, it gave the appearance that the White House was falling apart.

The economy suffered double-digit inflation, coupled with very high interest rates, oil shortages, high unemployment & slow economic growth. In 1977 Carter had convinced the Democratic Congress to create the United States Department of Energy. Now, promoting its recommendations to conserve energy, Carter wore sweaters, installed solar hot water panels on the roof of the White House, installed a wood stove in the living quarters, ordered the General Services Administration to turn off hot water in some facilities, & requested that Christmas decorations remain dark in 1979 & 1980. Nationwide controls were put on thermostats in government & commercial buildings to prevent people from raising temperatures in the winter (above 65 degrees Fahrenheit) or lowering them in the summer (below 78 degrees Fahrenheit).

Price inflation caused interest rates to rise to unprecedented levels (above 12% per year). The prime rate hit 21.5% in December 1980, the highest rate in U.S. history under any President. Investments in fixed income (both bonds & pensions being paid to retired people) were becoming less valuable. With the markets for U.S. government debt coming under pressure, Carter appointed Paul Volcker as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board; Volcker replaced G. William Miller who left to become Secretary of the Treasury. Volcker pursued a tight monetary policy to bring down inflation, which he considered his mandate. He succeeded, but only by first going through an unpleasant phase during which the economy slowed & unemployment rose, prior to any relief from inflation.

Domestic policies
Jimmy Carter's reorganization efforts separated the Department of Health, Education & Welfare into the Department of Education & the Department of Health & Human Services. Efforts were also made to reduce the number of government departments & employees as Carter had done when he was Governor of Georgia. He signed into law a major Civil Service Reform, the first in over a hundred years. Despite calling for a reform of the tax system in his presidential campaign, once in office he did very little to change it.

On Carter's first day in office, January 21, 1977, he fulfilled a campaign promise by issuing an Executive Order declaring unconditional amnesty for Vietnam-era war resisters & pacifists.

Initially, Carter was fairly successful in getting legislation through Congress, such as canceling the B-1 bomber program (mainly production of the B-1 Lancer), but then he met with opposition from the leadership of the Democratic Party when he characterized a rivers & harbors bill as "pork barrel" spending. In apparent retaliation, Congress refused to pass major provisions of his consumer protection bill & his labor reform package. Carter then vetoed a public works package calling it "inflationary", as it contained what he considered to be wasteful spending. Congressional leaders sensed that public support for his legislation was weak, & took advantage of it. After gutting his consumer protection bill, they transformed his tax plan into nothing more than spending for special interests, after which Carter referred to the congressional tax committees as "ravenous wolves."

Carter signed legislation greatly increasing the payroll tax for Social Security, & appointed record numbers of women, blacks, & Hispanics to government & judiciary jobs. He also initiated a comprehensive urban policy. His Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act created 103 million acres (417,000 km²) of national park land in Alaska. He was also somewhat successful in deregulating the trucking, rail, airline, communications, oil & finance industries.

Foreign policies
During his first month in office Carter cut the defense budget by $6 billion. One of his first acts was to order the unilateral removal of all nuclear weapons from South Korea & announce his intention to cut back the number of US troops stationed there. Other military men confined intense criticism of the withdrawal to private conversations or testimony before congressional committees, but in 1977 Major General John K. Singlaub, chief of staff of U.S. forces in South Korea, publicly criticized President Carter's decision to lower the U.S. troop level there. On March 21, 1977, Carter relieved him of duty, saying his publicly stated sentiments were "inconsistent with announced national security policy". Carter planned to remove all but 14,000 U.S. air force personnel & logistics specialists by 1982, but after cutting only 3,600 troops, he was forced to abandon the effort in 1978.

Arab-Israeli conflict
Carter's Secretary of State Cyrus Vance & National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski paid close attention to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Diplomatic communications between Israel & Egypt increased significantly after the Yom Kippur War & the Carter administration felt that the time was right for comprehensive solution to the conflict.

Camp David Accords
One of Carter's most important accomplishments as President were the Camp David Accords on September 17, 1978. They were a peace agreement between Israel & Egypt negotiated by President Carter, which followed up on earlier negotiations conducted in the Middle East. In these negotiations King Hassan II of Morocco acted as a negotiator between Arab interests & Israel, & Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania acted as go-between for Israel & the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO, the unofficial representative of the Palestinian people). Once initial negotiations had been completed, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat approached Carter for assistance. Carter then invited Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin & Sadat to Camp David to continue the negotiations. The Camp David Accords produced two frameworks for peace between Egypt & Israel, & a peace treaty was later signed on March 26, 1979.

On October 1, 1979, President Carter announced before a television audience the existence of the Rapid Deployment Forces (RDF), a mobile fighting force capable of responding to worldwide trouble spots, without drawing on forces committed to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The RDF was the forerunner of CENTCOM.

President Carter initially departed from the long-held policy of containment toward the Soviet Union. In its place Carter promoted a foreign policy that put human rights at the front. This was a break from the policies of several predecessors, in which human rights abuses were often overlooked if they were committed by a nation that was allied with the United States. The Carter Administration ended support to the historically U.S.-backed Somoza regime in Nicaragua & gave aid to the new Sandinista National Liberation Front government that assumed power after Somoza's overthrow. A effect which sees the left, human rights and liberal democracy stronger in Central America today than any earlier period. However, Carter ignored a plea from El Salvador's Archbishop Óscar Romero not to send military aid to that country. Romero was later assassinated for his criticism of El Salvador's violation of human rights.

Carter continued his predecessors' policies of imposing sanctions on Rhodesia, & , after Bishop Abel Muzorewa was elected Prime Minister, protested the exclusion of Robert Mugabe & Joshua Nkomo from participating in the elections. Strong pressure from the United States & the United Kingdom prompted new elections in what was then called Zimbabwe Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), which saw Robert Mugabe elected as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe; afterwards, sanctions were lifted, & diplomatic recognition was granted. Carter was also known for his criticism of Paraguay's Alfredo Stroessner, Augusto Pinochet (who was forced to grant Chile a constitution providing for a transition back into democracy), the Apartheid government of South Africa, Zaire (although Carter later changed course & supported Zaire, in response to alleged - albeit unproven - Cuban support of anti-Mobutu rebels) & other traditional allies.

People's Republic of China
Carter continued the policy of Richard Nixon to normalize relations with the People's Republic of China by granting full diplomatic & trade relations, thus ending official relations & the mutual defense pact with Taiwan (though the two nations continued to trade & the U.S. unofficially recognized Taiwan through the Taiwan Relations Act). In the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations dated January 1, 1979, the United States transferred diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing. The U.S. reiterated the Shanghai Communiqué's acknowledgment of the Chinese position that there is only one China & that Taiwan is a part of China; Beijing acknowledged that the American people would continue to carry on commercial, cultural, & other unofficial contacts with the people of Taiwan.

Panama Canal Treaties
One of the most controversial moves of President Carter's presidency was the final negotiation & signature of the Panama Canal Treaties in September 1977. Those treaties, which essentially would transfer control of the American-built Panama Canal to the nation of Panama, were bitterly opposed by a segment of the American public & by the Republican Party. A common argument against the treaties was that the United States was transferring an American asset of great strategic value to an unstable & corrupt country led by a brutal military dictator (Omar Torrijos). After the signature of the Canal treaties, in June 1978, Jimmy Carter visited Panama with his wife & twelve U.S. Senators, amid widespread student disturbances against the Torrijos dictatorship. Carter then began urging the Torrijos regime to soften its policies & move Panama towards gradual democratization. This treaty ultimately helped relations with Panama & Latin America.

Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT)
President Jimmy Carter & Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II) treaty, June 18, 1979, in ViennaA key foreign policy issue Carter worked laboriously on was the SALT II Treaty, which reduced the number of nuclear arms produced & /or maintained by both the United States & the Soviet Union. SALT is the common name for the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks, negotiations conducted between the US & the USSR. The work of Gerald Ford & Richard Nixon brought about the SALT I treaty, which had itself reduced the number of nuclear arms produced, but Carter wished to further this reduction. It was his main goal (as was stated in his Inaugural Address) that nuclear weaponry be completely vanished from the face of the Earth.

Carter & Leonid Brezhnev, the leader of the Soviet Union, reached an agreement to this end in 1979 — the SALT II Treaty, despite opposition in Congress to ratifying it, as many thought it weakened US defenses. Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan late in 1979 however, Carter withdrew the treaty from consideration by Congress & the treaty was never ratified (though it was signed by both Carter & Brezhnev). Even so, both sides honored the commitments laid out in the negotiations.

Intervention in Afghanistan
In December 1979, the USSR invaded Afghanistan, after the pro-Moscow Afghanistan government (put in power by a 1978 coup) was overthrown. Some believed the Soviets were attempting to expand their borders southward in order to gain a foothold in the region.

The Soviet Union had long lacked a warm water port, & their movement south seemed to position them for further expansion toward Pakistan & India in the East, & Iran to the West. American politicians, Republicans & Democrats alike, feared that the Soviets were positioning themselves for a takeover of Middle Eastern oil. Others believed that the Soviet Union was fearful that the Muslim uprising in Iran & Afghanistan would spread to the millions of Muslims still in the USSR. In a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted that the United States began sending aid to anti-Soviet Afghan Islamist factions on July 3, 1979, nearly six months before the Soviet invasion. Brzezinski told Le Nouvel Observateur that this secretly provoked war gave America "the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war". Full Text of Interview

After the invasion, Carter announced what became known as the Carter Doctrine: that the US would not allow any other outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf. He terminated the Russian Wheat Deal, which was intended to establish trade with USSR & lessen Cold War tensions. The grain exports had been beneficial to people employed in agriculture, & the Carter embargo marked the beginning of hardship for American farmers. He also prohibited Americans from participating in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, & reinstated registration for the draft for young males.

Carter & Brzezinski started a $40 billion covert program of training Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan & Afghanistan as a part of the efforts to foil the Soviets' apparent plans. On the surface as well, Carter's diplomatic policies towards Pakistan in particular changed drastically. The administration had cut off financial aid to the country in early 1979 when religious fundamentalists, encouraged by the prevailing Islamist military dictatorship over Pakistan, burnt down a US Embassy based there. The international stake in Pakistan, however, had greatly increased with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The then-President of Pakistan, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, was offered 400 million dollars to subsidize the anti-communist Mujahideen in Afghanistan by Carter. General Zia declined the offer as insufficient, famously declaring it to be "peanuts"; & the US was forced to step up aid to Pakistan.

Reagan would later expand this program greatly to combat Cold War concerns presented by Russia at the time. In retrospect, this contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Critics of this policy blame Carter & Reagan for the resulting instability of post-Soviet Afghan governments, which led to the rise of Islamic theocracy in the region, & also created many of the current problems with Islamic fundamentalism.

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