Jimmy Carter’s complex relationship with the world

By *Jomo Sanga Thomas

(“Plain Talk” Jan. 10, 2025)

“American presidents are monsters. It is undoubtedly a central requirement for the job.” — Australian journalist Caitlin Johnstone.

Jimmy Carter, America’s 39th president, died on Dec. 29, 2024, at the ripe age of 100. Cater left the White House under the cloud of the Iran Embassy hostage debacle. He will long be remembered for his humanitarian work. Importantly, we need to ask why American presidents tend to make their mark after leaving work. 

In the years following his presidency, Carter courageously lamented the “abominable oppression and persecution” of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. He was one of the earliest mainstream politicians to call out Israeli apartheid. Before him, Ronald Reagan demanded that Menachem Begin, the Israeli Prime Minister, “stop the Holocaust” following that country’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Carter also dedicated himself to monitoring elections, famously labelling the Venezuelan election process as one of the most fool proof in the world. He also championed human rights around the globe and spoke about the corrupting influence of dark money on the American political process.

However, we must not allow the mainstream media to brainwash and colour our thinking about these politicians. We must never allow ourselves to be consumed by a single story; one polished and shined so as to blind us to Carter’s duplicity and hypocrisy.  

When analysed through the lens of the fight for a new international economic and information order, the struggles for African liberation, and racial oppression, President Carter is no better than any other American president. Behind the broad, bold smile is an American leader who aggressively pursued America’s economic and political interests.

Carter hired Bigznewn Brizenski as his national security advisors and from the onset of his presidency in 1976, they undertook to ravage countries in the southern hemisphere. Fresh of the regime change successes in 1973 in Chile, which resulted in the assassination and overthrow of the democratically elected Salvador Allende, Carter’s security set its eyes on the Caribbean. 

Their immediate plan was to take down Jamaica’s People’s National Party government led by democratic socialist Michael Manley. Between 1976 and 1980, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operations in Jamaica were beefed up. They decided to create mayhem, supplied guns and paid operatives to engage in mass murder. They pressured the economy and used the International Monetary Fund to implement its structural adjustment programmes. As they did in Chile, they intended to make the economy scream. The mass murders created alarm, and the professional class flew to Miami, Philadelphia, London and other cities across the United States and Europe.

The proliferation of guns and gangs and the high murder rate in Jamaica have their genesis in the Carter administration’s assault on the democratically elected Manley government. Hundreds of innocent Jamaicans lost their lives and livelihoods. Manley was voted out of power in 1980, and the conservative Edward Seaga was elected.

In Cuba, Jimmy Carter did his best to pressure and overthrow the Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro. When Angola declared independence in 1975, the Carter administration opposed the Popular Movement for the Independence of Angola. It supported an invasion of Angola by the fascistic apartheid regime in South Africa. It was the blood and sacrifice of the Cuban revolutionaries who saved Angola from being controlled by South Africa. 

Part of the opposition to the Cuban revolution was the introduction of agricultural blight that sabotaged the Cuban tobacco crop and swine flu that caused the Cubans to slaughter millions of pigs. Pork was then a staple of the Cuban diet. Compounding these devilish policies, President Carter encouraged Cubans to risk their lives on rickety boats to leave Cuba as a way of embarrassing the Cuban revolutionary leadership. The Cubans responded with the Mariel Boatlift that allowed over 200,000 Cubans to migrate safely from Cuba to the United States.

Carter directed the CIA to back opposition groups and political parties to bring down the Sandinista government in Nicaragua following the triumph of the revolution in 1979, leading under the Reagan administration to the formation of the Contras and a bloody and senseless U.S.-backed insurgency. He provided military aid to the dictatorship in El Salvador, ignoring an appeal from Archbishop Oscar Romero — later assassinated — to cease U.S. arms shipments.

The story is the same on the African continent, where Carter opposed the efforts of the anti-apartheid movement to isolate South Africa through sanctions and boycotts. In 1976 the Soweto uprising brought thousands of South African youths to the streets in righteous indignation. Hundreds were murdered, and countless others were beaten and dumped into apartheid dungeons.  Rather than condemn and forcefully isolate apartheid, Carter instituted the policy of “Constructive engagement” with the apartheid regime. He argued then that sanctions were counterproductive, yet he aggressively imposed them on Cuba and Nicaragua, which the Sandinistas then led.

In Mozambique, Carter made geopolitical choices that hampered the consolidation of independence. Following an armed struggle led by the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), Mozambique won independence in 1975. Immediately after the country’s sovereignty was reclaimed, Carter’s CIA joined with Portugal, the former colonial power, to foment a counterrevolutionary insurgency which took the lives of tens of thousands of Mozambicans.

History may record President Carter as a complex character. Still, his complexity emerged after he left the White House, where he presided over a murderous reign across much of the world.

Goodbye, but no celebration.

*Jomo Sanga Thomas is a lawyer, journalist, social commentator and a former Speaker of the House of Assembly in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

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