President Carter

Foreign and Domestic Issues

President Carter Elected• Page 40 timeline book• This election represents the last time to date that Texas,

Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina would vote Democratic, and the last time North Carolina would vote Democratic until 2008.

• A switch of 3,687 votes in Hawaii and 5,559 votes in Ohio from Carter to Ford would have resulted in Ford winning the election with 270 electoral votes.

• By percentage of the vote, the states that secured Carter's victory were Wisconsin (1.68% margin) and Ohio (.27% margin).

President Carter Elected

• This election is also the last election as of 2014 for a Democratic candidate to have won all the states in the Deep South. Carter carried every state in what had been the Confederacy except Virginia.

Carter Pardons Draft Evaders• Page 47 timeline book.• January 21, 1977.• Carter would pardon all convicted of violating the Military draft

between 1964 and 1973.• It was unconditional and wiped criminal records clean, but would

only apply to civilians.• Military personnel, ranging from 500,000 to 1 million, who went

AWOL (Absent Without Leave) or deserted the war would not be pardoned.

• Many supporters of Carter’s decision thought they too should be forgiven by the government in an effort to heal national wounds.

Three Mile Island

• A partial nuclear meltdown that occurred on March 28, 1979.

• One of the two Three Mile Island nuclear reactors in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, United States.

Effects of Three Mile Island

• The accident helped heighten anti-nuclear safety concerns among activists and the general public.

• It resulted in new regulations for the nuclear industry, and has been cited as a contributor to the decline of a new reactor construction program that was already underway in the 1970s.

Three Mile Island

• Cleanup started in August 1979, and officially ended in December 1993, with a total cleanup cost of about $1 billion.

Foreign Issues

Olympics 1976

• Page 40 timeline book.• Happened during President Carter’s campaign.• Most African, and a few other, nations

boycotted the Olympic games, when the International Olympic Committee would not support, the banning from competition of those countries whose athletes had participated in sporting events in South Africa as long as apartheid continued.

Future Boycotts

Nuclear Proliferation Pact

• Page 46 timeline books.• The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978 provided

several policies for the control and limitations of nuclear technology worldwide.

• The U.S. will work with developing nations to have a nuclear fuel supply that will prevent proliferation.

• The U.S. will cooperate with foreign nations to provide energy needs, in exchange for the non-proliferation of nuclear technology.

SALT II

• Page 57 timeline book.• It was a continuation of the SALT I talks and

was led by representatives from both countries. SALT II was the first nuclear arms treaty which assumed real reductions in strategic forces to 2,250 of all categories of delivery vehicles on both sides.

SALT II

• Six months after the signing, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and in September of the same year, the United States discovered that a Soviet combat brigade was stationed in Cuba

• In light of these developments, the treaty was never ratified by the United States Senate. Its terms were, nonetheless, honored by both sides until it expired.

Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

• Page 58 timeline book.• December 1979 to February 1989• Due to its length it has sometimes been

referred to as the "Soviet Union's Vietnam War“

• Thought to be a contributing factor to the fall of the Soviet Union.

Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

• The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was formed on April 27, 1978.

• The government had a socialistic agenda. • It had close relations with the Soviet Union.

On December 5, 1978, a friendship treaty was signed between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan

Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

• The Afghan government, having secured a treaty in December 1978 that allowed them to call on Soviet forces, repeatedly requested the introduction of troops in Afghanistan in the spring and summer of 1979. They requested Soviet troops to provide security and to assist in the fight against the mujahideen rebels.

Mujahideen

• Guerrilla type military outfits led by the Muslim Afghan warriors in the Soviet war in Afghanistan.

International Response

• Weapons supplies were made available through numerous countries

• The United States purchased all of Israel's captured Soviet weapons clandestinely, and then funnelled the weapons to the Mujahideen.

• Egypt upgraded their own army's weapons, and sent the older weapons to the militants.

Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

• President Jimmy Carter requested that the Senate postpone action on the SALT-II nuclear weapons treaty and recalled the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union.

• These actions indicated that the U.S.-Soviet relationship had been severely damaged by the Russian action in Afghanistan and that the age of detente had ended.

Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

• The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan marked a critical turning point in U.S.-Soviet relations. With the action, the age of détente and the closer diplomatic and economic relations that were established during the presidency of Richard Nixon came to an end.

• Carter lost the election of 1980 to Ronald Reagan, who promised—and delivered—an even more vigorous anticommunist foreign policy.

Result

• The early foundations of al-Qaeda were allegedly built in part on relationships and weaponry that came from the billions of dollars in U.S. support for the Afghan mujahideen during the war to expel Soviet forces from that country.

• On July 20, 1987, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the country was announced.

Senate Approves Canal Transfer

• Page 52 Timeline Book• The Panama Canal had been under U.S.

control since its creation.• The Carter administration had a strategy to

conclude debate over the Canal and to gain Senate ratification. In partnership with Colonel Omar Torrijos, who had gained power in Panama through a coup.

Senate Approves Canal Transfer

• Carter officials worked on selling the treaty to the public, holding hundreds of forums where policymakers explained the administration’s rationale for completing a treaty.

• Torrijos hosted U.S. Senators in Panama, where he stressed that he was neither an enemy of the United States nor a communist. Actor John Wayne, both a conservative and a friend of Torrijos, also endorsed the negotiations.

Senate Approves Canal Transfer• The negotiators decided that their best chance for ratification

was to submit two treaties to the U.S. Senate. • The first, called The Treaty Concerning the Permanent Neutrality

and Operation of the Panama Canal, or the Neutrality Treaty, stated that the United States could use its military to defend the Panama Canal against any threat to its neutrality, thus allowing perpetual U.S. usage of the Canal.

• The second, called The Panama Canal Treaty, stated that the Panama Canal Zone would cease to exist on October 1, 1979, and the Canal itself would be turned over to the Panamanians on December 31, 1999. These two treaties were signed on September 7, 1977.