Jimmy Carter, out of office, had the courage to call out the “abominable oppression and persecution” and “strict segregation” of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in his 2006 book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” He dedicated himself to monitoring elections, including his controversial defense of the 2006 election of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and championed human rights around the globe. He lambasted the American political process as an “oligarchy” in which “unlimited political bribery” created “a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors.”
The Soviet Union was asked by the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan to intervene to help fight against the Afghan mujahideen that the US was arming: Soviet-Afghan War
Carter, Charter 77, and Solidarność (Solidarity):
How Jimmy Carter’s support for human rights helped win the Cold War
In 1978, a Polish cardinal, Karol Wojtyła, was elected pope John Paul II. In 1980, workers’ strikes at a shipyard in Gdańsk exploded into a national movement—Solidarity—that about ten million Poles joined within a year. Later that year, the Soviet Union, alarmed by Solidarity’s rise, started threatening to invade Poland, as it had Czechoslovakia in August 1968. At that time, the Lyndon Johnson administration, consumed with Vietnam, barely reacted. This time, the Carter administration warned the Soviets not to invade Poland. The United States under Carter was no longer ceding Central and Eastern Europe to the Soviets’ undisturbed control, as “their” sphere of influence.
Reagan’s support for Solidarity, the sanctions he imposed on communist Poland and the Soviet Union after Poland instituted martial law in December 1981, and his support for democracy around the world embodied in the new National Endowment for Democracy (of which, full disclosure, I am a board member) that he inspired have rightly been lauded since. However, these successes were built on a foundation that Carter laid down. Carter from the center-left and Reagan from the right brought together a consensus that US interests could be advanced through support for US values abroad. This was not the first time US presidents made the link between values and interests, but Carter reconnected that link after the cynical and defeated Vietnam era. He did so just in time to catch the wave of freedom that swelled and crested with the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989 and the Soviet Union itself in 1991.
Jimmy Carter Was a Foreign-Policy Visionary
This policy had an underappreciated impact on the Cold War. Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright who later became president of the Czech Republic, said Carter’s emphasis on human rights had inspired him in prison and undermined the Soviet bloc’s “self-confidence.” Several of Carter’s conservative critics, including former U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, later revised their critique of the policy and said his use of U.S. soft power was effective.
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In December 1980, shortly before leaving office, Carter championed Lech Walesa’s Solidarity movement in Poland, which set off a chain reaction of resistance to Soviet-backed authorities across Eastern Europe. Walesa later said that Carter’s warning to Moscow to not invade Poland was a critical moment in the struggle.
Document: Charter 77 and Solidarność (Solidarity) — they were backed by the CIA.
U.S. Wars and Hostile Actions (WW2 – 2014)
The US government funds election observers and exit polls for regime change
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 