by Jimmy Carter
Cuba
I wanted to do something about Cuba, because our economic embargo hurt their citizens and strengthened the Communist regime of Fidel Castro, and because restraints on American travel to Cuba were a deprivation of our own citizens’ basic rights. A month after becoming president, I wrote:
“My inclination is to alleviate tension around the world, including disharmonies between our country and those with whom we have no official diplomatic relationships, like China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Cuba, and I’ll be moving in this direction. I think the country’s ready for it, although in some instances like Cuba it’s going to be quite controversial to do so. If I get an equivalent response from these countries, then I would be glad to meet them more than halfway.”
In March 1977, journalist Bill Moyers gave me a report on his extensive discussion with Castro, who wanted to end our trade embargo without conceding anything. I wanted Cuba to release several thousand political prisoners, reduce deployment of troops in Ethiopia and other African nations, and refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of countries in this hemisphere. Although Castro was unwilling to go that far, we did make some progress. We removed travel restrictions on U.S. citizens, signed a fisheries agreement and a maritime agreement, and each of us established “interest sections” in the other’s capital. (The U.S. interest section in Havana has continued and expanded. In 2011 I spoke to about three hundred American diplomats and Cuban employees in the same building that had housed our embassy before diplomatic relations were broken in 1961.) Unfortunately, Cuban involvement in Africa prevented further improvement of relations. Because of White House staff member Robert Pastor’s persistence and later travels to Cuba, I was able to induce Castro to release 3,600 political prisoners in 1978. Representatives of our Justice Department screened them, and we brought about one thousand of the acceptable ones to America. There was no real change in this situation until the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, in December 1979. After that, Castro sent word to me that he wanted to have substantive talks, and I sent Bob Pastor and Peter Tarnoff from the State Department to Havana. My diary, on January 18, 1980, outlined how, during an eleven-hour discussion, Castro “described without any equivocation his problems with the Soviet Union, his loss of leadership position in the NAM [nonaligned movement] because of his subservience to the Soviets; his desire to pull out of Ethiopia now and Angola later; his involvement in the revolutionary movements in Central America but his aversion to sending weapons or military capability to the Caribbean countries; and so forth. He’s very deeply hurt by our embargo and wants better relations with us, but can’t abandon the Soviets, who have supported his revolution unequivocally.”
Whatever Castro’s inclinations, he prevented better relations with the United States when from April to October 1980 he enabled what became known as the Mariel Boatlift. This included numerous criminals among legitimate refugees coming to our shores. Further progress was stymied by Cuba’s additional troop deployments to Ethiopia and continued promotion of communism in some countries in this hemisphere.
I have no doubt that the best way to encourage democracy and human rights in Cuba is for the United States to restore a policy of free travel to and from the island, lift the economic embargo, and let Cubans see the advantages of a free society. President Obama’s decision in December 2014 to reestablish diplomatic relations is a long-overdue step in the right direction, but the right to make other decisions concerning Cuba was transferred from the White House to the Congress when President Clinton signed the Helms-Burton bill into law in March 1996.
Economic Embargoes
The imposition of sanctions or embargoes on unsavory regimes is most often ineffective and can be counterproductive. In Cuba, where the news media are controlled by the government, many people are convinced that their economic plight is caused by America and that they are defended by the actions of their Communist leaders, who are strengthened in power. I have visited the homes of both Castro brothers and some of the top officials, and it is obvious to me that their living conditions have not suffered. Many Cuban families are deprived of good income, certain foods, cell phones, access to the Internet, and basic freedoms, but they have access to good education and health care and live in a tropical environment where the soil is productive and many houses are surrounded by fruit trees. In addition, Cubans receive about $2.5 billion annually in remittances from their friends and relatives in the United States.
The situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is more tragic. The U.S. embargo, imposed on North Korea sixty-five years ago, at the beginning of the Korean War, is being strictly implemented, with every effort being made to restrict and damage the economy as much as possible. During my visits to Pyongyang I have had long talks with government officials and surprisingly outspoken women’s groups who emphasized the plight of people who were starving. When I checked with the UN World Food Program, they estimated that at least 600 grams of cereal per day was needed for a “survival ration,” and that the daily food distribution in North Korea had at times been as low as 128 grams. Congressional staffers who visited the country in 1998 reported “a range of 300,000 to 800,000 dying each year from starvation.” The Carter Center arranged for North Korean agriculture leaders to go to Mexico in 2002 to help them increase production of their indigenous crops, and the U.S. contribution of grain rose to 589,000 tons after I went to North Korea in 1994 and relations improved between our two countries with an agreement under President Clinton. However, U.S. food aid was drastically reduced under President George W. Bush and terminated completely by President Obama in 2010.
I visited the State Department at that time and was told that the North Korean government would not permit any supervision of food deliveries, which was the main problem. In April 2011 I returned to North Korea, accompanied by former president Martti Ahtisaari of Finland, former president Mary Robinson of Ireland, and former prime minister of Norway Gro Brundtland, who was a physician and had been director of the World Health Organization. We stopped first in Beijing for briefings from World Food Program officials, who said there were no restraints on monitoring food deliveries to families. They followed us to Pyongyang and accompanied us to rural areas where food was being distributed. The government sent an official guarantee that all such food deliveries could be monitored by America and other donors. I reported to Washington that one-third of children in North Korea were malnourished and stunted in their growth and that daily food intake was between 700 and 1,400 calories, compared to a normal American’s of 2,000 to 2,500, but our government took no action.
There is no excuse for oppression by a dictatorial regime, but it is likely that the degree of harsh treatment is dependent on the dissatisfaction of the citizens. Hungry people are more inclined to demand relief from their plight, and more likely to be imprisoned or executed. As in Cuba, the political elite in North Korea do not suffer, and the leaders’ all-pervasive propaganda places blame on the United States, not themselves.
The primary objective of dictators is to stay in office, and we help them achieve this goal by punishing their already suffering subjects and letting the oppressors claim to be saviors. When nonmilitary pressure on a government is considered necessary, economic sanctions should be focused on travel, foreign bank accounts, and other special privileges of government officials who make decisions, not on destroying the economy that determines the living conditions of oppressed people.
Nonproliferation
An urgent challenge for me as president was to establish a clear national policy on the handling of nuclear materials and how to set an example. I consulted with Admiral Rickover, Secretaries Harold Brown and Jim Schlesinger, and other experts.
In April 1977, I announced that we were terminating our prospects for reprocessing spent nuclear fuels, shifting from a heavy dependence on plutonium as an energy source, and attempting to cooperate closely with other nations to achieve the same goals. I had adverse feedback especially fr
om France, Germany, and Japan, who were enjoying the economic benefits of trading technology and nuclear fuel to other countries.
The Nonproliferation Treaty of 1970 had been adopted by all nations except Israel, India, and Pakistan (North Korea withdrew in 2003, and the new nation of South Sudan has not acted). A key provision was that the major powers make every effort to reduce our arsenals and lead the way to prevent the spread of nuclear materials or equipment, even without close supervision by the International Atomic Energy Agency. I rejected intense pressure from Pakistan and India to provide assistance to them, and my immediate successors maintained this policy. However, the two countries were helped with fuel and technology by Canada, Great Britain, China, and others, and they developed atomic weapons in the late 1980s. President George W. Bush signed an agreement in 2008 to provide India with nuclear fuel and technology despite Indian leaders’ refusal to comply with the Nonproliferation Treaty, and President Obama has confirmed and expanded this agreement.
No More Voters
One of my biggest disappointments was the reluctance of both Democratic and Republican legislators to expand the ability of our citizens to vote. As governor, I had sponsored a law that authorized all high school principals to be deputy voter registrars, and I had a contest each year to see which schools registered more upcoming eighteen-year-olds. At the national level, when I proposed this or other moves toward more universal registration, there was a persistent opposition that I didn’t understand. House Speaker Tip O’Neill finally explained to me that few incumbent congressmen wanted the voters’ lists expanded because they were satisfied with those who had put them in office.
More intense efforts by Republicans to restrict registration of students, minorities, and elderly voters by imposing identification requirements have been (unsuccessfully) criticized and legally challenged, especially in the South after the voting rights legislation was weakened by Congress in 2013. The conservative Supreme Court has refused to take action to guarantee the right of Americans to vote, or to end the gerrymandering of congressional districts to favor whichever political party dominates a state government.
The Koreas
Progress on the Korean Peninsula was frustrated by reluctance among both the Koreans and some of my own military leaders. As a submariner during the Korean War, I had felt frustrated when it ended with an arbitrary line drawn between North and South Korea plus merely a cease-fire and not a permanent peace treaty. When I was president, South Korea was still governed by a dictator, General Park Chung-hee, but was making notable economic progress with massive assistance from the United States and other nations. Communist dictator Kim Il Sung ruled the North with an iron hand, and this region was isolated and suffering from strict economic sanctions, with many people starving. Both leaders paid lip service to reunification. We had about thirty thousand American troops in South Korea, and these and the Korean forces were commanded by an American general. With Secretary Harold Brown and other advisers, we decided it was time to begin reducing our military presence. The South was affluent and technologically capable of defending itself. The American major general John Singlaub made a public statement in Seoul condemning the plan, and I summoned him to the White House. I described that meeting in my diary:
“5/21/77 I met with Major General Singlaub about his statement that if we withdrew troops from South Korea a war would result. He denied making the statement. He said he was just quoting from Korean officials. Then he said that the reporter was not given authority to quote him. I don’t think he was telling the truth, but I felt sorry for him. He emphasized over and over that he was not disloyal, that he’d meant no insubordination. So instead of reprimanding him I just told him that we would transfer him out of Korea.”
Amazingly, the next Defense Department intelligence estimate of North Korea’s military capability was abruptly twice as great as ever before! I was deeply skeptical, but the assessment was shared with congressional leaders and I had no way to disprove it. I decided to back down on my decision to withdraw U.S. troops but to remove nuclear weapons. Under President George W. Bush a reduced number of military bases were concentrated farther south, but about the same number of American troops are still there. North Korea has retained its army strength and now has a threatening arsenal of nuclear weapons. There were six-power talks under President George W. Bush involving the United States, North and South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia designed to promote peace and restrict development of nuclear arsenals, but these have not been continued by President Obama.
Nuclear Questions, and Rickover
I was delighted when Admiral Rickover and I established a close friendship from the beginning of my presidency. He told me that he would never mention to me anything that related to budget allocations or priorities for any ship in the nuclear navy. He insisted that I throw the switch that started operation of a prototype “breeder reactor” at Shippingport, Pennsylvania. It operated for five years, generated about twenty-five megawatts of power and, as planned, produced more fissile material than it consumed.
Secretary Schlesinger, Admiral Rickover, and I decided that it was not necessary to launch a program of producing electric power from large breeder reactors, although I realized that the technology might be needed in the distant future, when uranium became scarce and the advantage of “breeding” fuel would be more important. There was a strong move in the Congress to continue the effort, initiated under President Nixon, to build a full-scale model alongside the Clinch River in Tennessee. Originally estimated to cost $400 million, the projected price for completion had increased eightfold by the time I made my decision to cancel the project. Although I was familiar with its prospective use of liquid sodium as a cooling agent from my submarine days and believed the design to be safe, I was concerned about the by-product from breeder reactors being massive quantities of plutonium that could be used by us or others for nuclear explosives. A group of senators, led by those from the region, were successful in appropriating enough money to maintain a caretaker staff, and President Reagan attempted to restart the project. By that time the Congress had adopted my position and finally withheld all funding for breeder reactors in 1983.
In May 1977 Rosalynn and I flew down to Cape Canaveral and spent the day with Rickover on the nuclear submarine USS Los Angeles. He and the captain put the new ship through extreme maneuvers, and he pointed out that all the U.S. atomic-powered ships would stretch for more than ten miles if lined up stem to stern and that there had never been a nuclear incident that caused any damage or injured a person. I was surprised when I asked him how he would react to a total elimination of nuclear weapons—and nuclear power production—from the earth. He said it would be one of the greatest things that could happen.
With Admiral Rickover alongside the USS Los Angeles, May 27, 1977.
Three Mile Island
Despite the financial loss and frightful scare of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in March 1979, there were no injuries. I was informed immediately and sent highly qualified people to the island to monitor and control the situation. Luckily, I was familiar with the technology and could understand the briefings and make reasonable decisions. The coolant system had failed because of human error, and the reactor core melted, causing the overheating of cooling water and a buildup of high-pressure steam in the reactor container. Radioactive gases were within the steam that had to be released into the atmosphere to reduce pressure. All this was done under carefully controlled conditions, but I advised the governor to remove some children and pregnant women from the vicinity. Although the governor and scientific experts explained the facts, The Washington Post and a few other news media presented the situation as horrific, a threat to the lives and safety of millions of people. I called the Post executives to correct their mistake, but they were undeterred in their crusade to frighten as many people as possible. Rosalynn and I decided to go to the site personally; there we received a briefing and then went into the plant’s control room adjacent
to the reactor, with the highest possible live media coverage. This calmed most of the public fear.
Pressure in the reactor was soon returned to normal levels, and I appointed a panel of experts, on which Admiral Rickover helped, to put in place some safety measures patterned after those he maintained in navy ships. The Nuclear Regulatory Agency made them mandatory for all power companies that operated reactors in America. This was the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, and the financial costs were substantial. I had seen the damaged reactor at Chalk River, Canada, and now this incident in Pennsylvania—with no injury to people—but I remain convinced of the efficacy of nuclear power generation, especially as an alternative to the extremely threatening prospect of global warming caused by excessive consumption of coal, oil, and other fossil fuels. There will have to be an emphasis on simplicity and safety of design and highly trained personnel to operate the reactors.
Space
The primary project of NASA during my presidency was to develop four space shuttles, the most complex aircraft ever built. The first one, Columbia, was delivered to its launch site at Kennedy Space Center in March 1979 and launched in April 1981. Later, two of the shuttles were lost in flight, the Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003.