FREE ESSAY ON JIMMY CARTER

JIMMY CARTER

The President of Peace
Jimmy Carter was born October 1, 1924, in the small farming town of Plains, Georgia, and
grew up in the nearby community of Archery. His father, James Earl Carter, Sr., was a
farmer and businessman; his mother, Lillian Gordy, a registered nurse. He was educated in
the Plains public schools, attended Georgia Southwestern College and the Georgia
Institute of Technology, and received a Bachelor of Science degree from the United States
Naval Academy in 1946. On July 7, 1946, he married Rosalynn Smith. When his father died
in 1953, he resigned a naval commission and returned to Plains. He became involved in the
affairs of the community, serving as chairman of the county school board and the first
president of the Georgia Planning Association. In 1962 he won election to the Georgia
Senate. He lost his first gubernatorial campaign in 1966, but won the next election,
becoming Georgia's 76th governor on January 12, 1971. He was the Democratic National
Committee campaign chairman for the 1974 congressional elections (Hochman html). After
only serving one term as governor of Georgia he announced his candidacy for president of
the United States on December 12, 1974. He won his party's nomination on the first ballot
at the 1976 Democratic National Convention, and was elected the 39th president of the
United States on November 2, 1976. During his presidency, Jimmy Carter made many
important foreign policy accomplishments, including the Panama Canal treaties, the
Diplomatic relations with China, and the Salt II treaty with the Soviet Union. 
Jimmy Carter's first foreign policy accomplishment, and by the United States citizens,
the most popular, were the Panama Canal treaties. After more than eighty years after the
first official ocean-to-ocean transit of the Panama Canal, the United States and Panama
embarked on a partnership for the management, operation and defense of the Panama Canal.
Under two treaties signed in a ceremony at the OAS headquarters in Washington, D.C., on
September 7, 1977, the canal would be operated by the United States until the turn of the
century under arrangements designed to strengthen the bonds of friendship and cooperation
between the two countries. The treaties were approved by Panama in a plebiscite on
October 23, 1977, and the United States Senate gave its advice and consent to their
ratification in March and April 1978. The new treaties went into effect October 1, 1979
(Yahoo.com).
The new treaties, passed under the Carter administration and Panama's head of state Omar
Torrijos would give Panama full control of the canal on December 31, 1999, at 12:00
midnight. All of the canal's assets would also be turned over to Panama (Lycos.com). 
The ratification of the Panama Canal treaties was an important step involving a decrease
in Third World hostility toward the United States (Dumbrell 212). Carter and his advisors
agreed even before the inauguration that the canal negotiations should be an immediate
priority. If the United States did not successfully complete negotiations, which had been
going on since the Johnson administration, the government of Panama might create conflict
in the zone that would require drastic American action (Hargrove 123).
Another of President Jimmy Carter's foreign policy accomplishments was his normalizing
relations with the People's Republic of China. Over the winter of 1977-1978 Carter
cultivated relations with Chinese officials in Washington, and solicited an official
invitation to visit China himself. However the president pulled back after his advisor
Mondale stated that it was too much to ask the senate to handle the Panama Canal treaties
and any new agreements with China at the same time. President Carter was thus told not to
be explicit about normalization, and that his visit to China was inconclusive. In the
Spring of 1978 president Carter decided that the Secretary of State Vance would visit
China. Vance would visit China but would not be authorized to negotiate about
normalization because Carter was afraid it might hurt developing relations with Russia
and Japan. The United States and the Soviet Union were beginning to negotiate a S.A.L.T.
(Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) treaty, and President Carter was determined not to
delay any SALT negotiations. Vance was not authorized to negotiate in China, but did a
good job of laying the groundwork for future agreements.
In the summer and Fall of 1978 president Carter negotiated the terms of normalization
directly with the Chinese through the United States ambassador to China, Leonard
Woodcock. Jimmy Carter believed that having better relations and stronger ties with China
would help bring negotiations with the Soviet Union to a successful end. Directly after
normalization terms concluded with China, president Carter pushed for a SALT treaty. By
January 1979, Vance had met with China's Andrei Gromyko in Geneva to put the finishing
touches to SALT (130, 131).
By the later part of Jimmy Carter's presidency, relations with the Soviet Union began to
arise. The United States and the Soviet Union were working together on general terms for
a SALT II treaty. Ceilings were set on the number of total strategic nuclear launch
vehicles along with a subceiling for vehicles with multiple warheads that each country
could hold. The Soviets could keep their total number of missiles and continue to add
multiple warheads to them. The United States could increase their number of missiles and
warheads up to the ceilings. The two unresolved issues were whether a new Soviet plane,
the Backfire, was an offensive bomber (if so it would be included in the agreement) and
whether the American Cruise missile, which was not mentioned to the Soviets for some
time, would be considered a missile in terms of the Vladivostok agreement.
Assuming the possibility of agreement on Backfire and the Cruise, a SALT II treaty based
on the Vladivostok meeting would have stabilized the arms race but not reduced weapons
arsenals. Limits were set on future development with the goal of parity. Soviet leader
Brezhnev made it clear that the Soviets wanted a quick SALT agreement based on
Vladivostok, with the Cruise missile included and the Backfire excluded. President Carter
in turn suggested that the SALT II could be concluded without Cruise or Backfire but that
it might be possible to move toward SALT III with deep reductions in existing forces. The
Soviet leaders were uneasy about President Carter's proposal to conclude SALT II, and
were also concerned about sharp reductions in their existing weapons. The Soviet Union
later accepted constraints on both Soviet Backfire and the American Cruise missile as
part of the SALT II agreement. Basic agreement between the two nations on SALT II
negotiations were achieved in April 1979, but an official SALT II treaty was never
ratified. Final differences rounded out at the Carter-Brezhnev summit meeting in June of
1979 (134, 135).
The Panama Canal treaties, the normalizing relations with China, and the SALT II treaty
with the Soviet Union were among Jimmy Carter's important foreign policy accomplishments
during his presidency. The two broad foreign policy perspectives Jimmy Carter brought to
his presidency was a determination to attack and resolve a number of difficult and
outstanding problems. Ratification of the Panama Canal treaties was an important step in
that direction. It signaled Jimmy Carter's willingness to take on issues that Eisenhower,
Johnson, Nixon, and Ford had considered too tricky (Dumbrell 212). Some saw losing the
canal as a major loss to the United States because estimated construction costs were
around $387 million and the United States had invested about $3 billion in the enterprise
since 1903. The majority of the United States citizens had overlooked the money spent on
the canal and saw it as a great opportunity to improve relations with Panama. The
relations president Carter set with China was also an important step in resolving world
peace matters. By giving China full diplomatic recognition, it gave the United States a
more neutral stance throughout the world. President Jimmy Carter's last great foreign
policy achievement before his presidency was over, were the Strategic Arms Limitation
negotiations with the Soviet Union. Despite failure of the SALT II treaty being ratified,
it set an agreement for the heavy cut back of nuclear weapons for both the United States
and the Soviet Union. This was a relief to the citizens of the United States in a sense
that the nuclear arms race was coming to a halt. Jimmy Carter was a man who made the most
of his opportunities and did what was best, in his mind, for the general public of all
United States. The puzzle about the Carter presidency which may never be fully answered
is why Jimmy Carter became so unpopular with the media, politicians and the general
public, and stayed unpopular during the presidency of his successor. With more political
skill, and a good bit more luck, Jimmy Carter might have been a second term president. 
Bibliography
Dumbrell, John. The Carter Presidency: A Re-Evaluation. 2nd ed. Manchester UP, 1995.
Hargrove, Erwin C. "Jimmy Carter as President": Leadership and the Politics of the Public
Good. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1998.
Hochman, Steven H. Metacrawler.com: October 1, 1997. .
Lycos.com: September 21, 1997. http:/www.simulations.com/panamacanal/index.htm>.
Yahoo.com: March 1, 1998. http:/www.pancanal.com/ctransition/>.