1050 ★ CHAPTER 26 The Triumph of Conservatism
previous American administrations had turned a blind eye to human rights
abuses by Cold War allies. By the end of his presidency, the phrase “human
rights” had acquired political potency. Its very vagueness was both a weakness
and a strength. It was difficult to define exactly what rights should and should
not be considered universally applicable, but various groups could and did
unite under the umbrella of global human rights.
Carter believed that in the post- Vietnam era, American foreign policy
should de- emphasize Cold War thinking. Combating poverty in the Third
World, preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, and promoting human
rights should take priority over what he called “the inordinate fear of commu-
nism that once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in that fear.” In one
of his first acts as president, he offered an unconditional pardon to Vietnam- era
draft resisters.
Carter’s emphasis on pursuing peaceful solutions to international problems
and his willingness to think outside the Cold War framework yielded import-
ant results. In 1979, he brought the leaders of Egypt and Israel to the presiden-
tial retreat at Camp David and brokered a historic peace agreement, the Camp
David Accords, between the two countries. He improved American relations
with Latin America by agreeing to a treaty, ratified by the Senate in 1978, that
provided for the transfer of the Panama Canal to local control by the year 2000. In
1979, he resisted calls for intervention when a popular revolution led by the left-
wing Sandinista movement overthrew Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza,
a longtime ally of the United States. Carter attempted to curb the murderous
violence of death squads allied to the right- wing government of El Salvador, and
in 1980 he suspended military aid after the murder of four American nuns by
members of the country’s army. He signed the SALT II agreement with the Sovi-
ets, which reduced the number of missiles, bombers, and nuclear warheads.
Both conservative Cold Warriors and foreign policy “realists” severely crit-
icized Carter’s emphasis on human rights. He himself found it impossible to
translate rhetoric into action. He criticized American arms sales to the rest
of the world. But with thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in corporate
profits at stake, he did nothing to curtail them. The United States continued
its support of allies with records of serious human rights violations such as
the governments of Guatemala, the Philippines, South Korea, and Iran. Indeed,
the American connection with the shah of Iran, whose secret police regularly
jailed and tortured political opponents, proved to be Carter’s undoing.
The Iran Crisis and Afghanistan
Occupying a strategic location on the southern border of the Soviet Union, Iran
was a major supplier of oil and an importer of American military equipment. At