A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety (26 page)

It may be hard to believe now, but until my third year in office, I had never heard of the “religious right.” In early 1979 I asked Bob Maddox, a Baptist minister from Georgia, to join our staff and act as liaison with the many religious groups that were demanding my attention on federal aid to religious schools and prohibition of prayer in public schools. In January 1980 he arranged a breakfast meeting for me with about a dozen prominent evangelical leaders from around the nation. The group included critics, such as Jerry Falwell. They asked me questions, including many about my own religious background. The meeting was interesting and relatively uneventful, but a few weeks later we heard that Falwell was making critical remarks about me and had contrived a conversation that never occurred. Maddox had recorded our meeting, and he shared the transcript with several religious magazines to show that Falwell was untruthful. I understand that this was when Falwell was promoting the Moral Majority, which was founded in 1979.

Several Democratic candidates had been defeated in the 1978
midterm elections where the abortion issue was important, and subsequently conservative Christians collectively decided to adopt this as an important campaign topic and combine it with the tax-exempt status of “segregation academies” and religious colleges, especially Bob Jones University and Falwell’s Lynchburg Christian Academy. They aligned themselves almost completely with the Republican Party as the 1980 election approached. The religious right supported Ronald Reagan, despite his previous incompatibility with their basic principles. For instance, Reagan had never been affiliated with any particular Christian group and had supported a law as governor that was more permissive of unlimited abortions than any other in the United States, while I had done everything possible to minimize abortions, except for cases when the mother’s health was endangered or when the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. Now, however, I refused to support a constitutional amendment to prevent any abortions, while my opponent endorsed the entire agenda of the religious right. In addition, they hammered away at my normalizing relations with “Red China,” failing to attack Iran militarily, letting Panama have the canal, and refusing to endorse unlimited prayer in public schools or tax exemptions for religious colleges. The melding of the religious right with the Republican Party has been permanent since then.

Perhaps the most persistent altercation I had with the Congress involved water projects. All over America young members of Congress would propose damming up a free-flowing river in their districts and the Army Corps of Engineers would supposedly assess the benefits and costs. By one means or another, the exaggerated benefits would always seem to exceed the minimized expenditures. As the congressmen gained seniority, their projects would rise on the priority list and eventually be approved automatically as a courtesy from their peers, with all funding coming from the federal government. Many of our wild rivers and streams are dammed unnecessarily. The Corps of Engineers was complicit in this
ongoing scheme because this process had become one of the prime reasons for their popularity with appropriations committees.

As reported in the lead story in
Reader’s Digest
in August 1974, I was deeply involved in this issue as governor, when I learned firsthand how precious a federally funded dam could be to a senior congressman, and what a waste of funds many of them were by the time they were approved. I vetoed a congressionally approved plan to build a dam on the Flint River and eventually prevailed after a highly publicized political and legal altercation. As president, I decided to give close scrutiny to each proposed project and to veto those where costs would actually exceed benefits.

This decision caused a continuing furor, and every possible pressure was exerted by committee chairmen, prominent Americans, and my own staff members to change my policy, but I persisted. There is no doubt that it cost me some friends in Congress, but I had strong support from environmentalists, and most members in Congress finally agreed with me, tightening the criteria and requiring some state and local financial contribution to the cost of approved projects.

While I was in office our most serious economic competition was with Japan. The manufacture of most clothing and shoes had already moved to Asia and other regions where labor was less expensive. We were now contending for the manufacture of more advanced items, such as televisions and radios, automobiles, tires, steel, and other finished metal products. There were corporate accusations back and forth about improper trade practices, and our friendly diplomatic relationships were endangered. I talked this over with Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda, and he and I agreed to establish a panel of “wise men” to advise us. Each of us chose three distinguished scholars or former diplomats who were familiar with both countries, and they began meeting regularly in Tokyo, Washington, or Hawaii. They addressed the difficult issues in private and gave us
confidential recommendations on how they might be resolved most successfully. By the time Masayoshi Ohira became prime minister, we rarely had troubles between us. I believe it would be a good idea for a similar small group of knowledgeable leaders to be formed to address some of the disputes that now threaten the friendly relations between China and the United States created when Deng Xiaoping and I established diplomatic relations in 1979.

I wanted to do something about Cuba, because our economic embargo hurt their citizens and strengthened the Communist regime of Fidel Castro, and because restraints on American travel to Cuba were a deprivation of our own citizens’ basic rights. A month after becoming president, I wrote:

“My inclination is to alleviate tension around the world, including disharmonies between our country and those with whom we have no official diplomatic relationships, like China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Cuba, and I’ll be moving in this direction. I think the country’s ready for it, although in some instances like Cuba it’s going to be quite controversial to do so. If I get an equivalent response from these countries, then I would be glad to meet them more than halfway.”

In March 1977, journalist Bill Moyers gave me a report on his extensive discussion with Castro, who wanted to end our trade embargo without conceding anything. I wanted Cuba to release several thousand political prisoners, reduce deployment of troops in Ethiopia and other African nations, and refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of countries in this hemisphere. Although Castro was unwilling to go that far, we did make some progress. We removed travel restrictions on U.S. citizens, signed a fisheries agreement and a maritime agreement, and each of us established “interest sections” in the other’s capital. (The U.S. interest section in Havana has continued and expanded. In 2011 I spoke to about three hundred American diplomats and Cuban employees in the same
building that had housed our embassy before diplomatic relations were broken in 1961.) Unfortunately, Cuban involvement in Africa prevented further improvement of relations. Because of White House staff member Robert Pastor’s persistence and later travels to Cuba, I was able to induce Castro to release 3,600 political prisoners in 1978. Representatives of our Justice Department screened them, and we brought about one thousand of the acceptable ones to America. There was no real change in this situation until the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, in December 1979. After that, Castro sent word to me that he wanted to have substantive talks, and I sent Bob Pastor and Peter Tarnoff from the State Department to Havana. My diary, on January 18, 1980, outlined how, during an eleven-hour discussion, Castro “described without any equivocation his problems with the Soviet Union, his loss of leadership position in the NAM [nonaligned movement] because of his subservience to the Soviets; his desire to pull out of Ethiopia now and Angola later; his involvement in the revolutionary movements in Central America but his aversion to sending weapons or military capability to the Caribbean countries; and so forth. He’s very deeply hurt by our embargo and wants better relations with us, but can’t abandon the Soviets, who have supported his revolution unequivocally.”

Whatever Castro’s inclinations, he prevented better relations with the United States when from April to October 1980 he enabled what became known as the Mariel Boatlift. This included numerous criminals among legitimate refugees coming to our shores. Further progress was stymied by Cuba’s additional troop deployments to Ethiopia and continued promotion of communism in some countries in this hemisphere.

I have no doubt that the best way to encourage democracy and human rights in Cuba is for the United States to restore a policy of free travel to and from the island, lift the economic embargo, and let Cubans see the advantages of a free society. President Obama’s decision in December 2014 to reestablish diplomatic relations is a long-overdue step in the right direction, but the right to make other decisions concerning Cuba was transferred from the White House to the Congress when President Clinton signed the Helms-Burton bill into law in March 1996.

The imposition of sanctions or embargoes on unsavory regimes is most often ineffective and can be counterproductive. In Cuba, where the news media are controlled by the government, many people are convinced that their economic plight is caused by America and that they are defended by the actions of their Communist leaders, who are strengthened in power. I have visited the homes of both Castro brothers and some of the top officials, and it is obvious to me that their living conditions have not suffered. Many Cuban families are deprived of good income, certain foods, cell phones, access to the Internet, and basic freedoms, but they have access to good education and health care and live in a tropical environment where the soil is productive and many houses are surrounded by fruit trees. In addition, Cubans receive about $2.5 billion annually in remittances from their friends and relatives in the United States.

The situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is more tragic. The U.S. embargo, imposed on North Korea sixty-five years ago, at the beginning of the Korean War, is being strictly implemented, with every effort being made to restrict and damage the economy as much as possible. During my visits to Pyongyang I have had long talks with government officials and surprisingly outspoken women’s groups who emphasized the plight of people who were starving. When I checked with the UN World Food Program, they estimated that at least 600 grams of cereal per day was needed for a “survival ration,” and that the daily food distribution in North Korea had at times been as low as 128 grams. Congressional staffers who visited the country in 1998 reported “a range of 300,000 to 800,000 dying each year from starvation.” The Carter Center arranged for North Korean agriculture leaders to go to Mexico in 2002 to help them increase production of their indigenous crops, and the U.S. contribution of grain rose to 589,000 tons after I went to North Korea in 1994 and relations improved between our two countries with an agreement under President Clinton. However, U.S. food aid was drastically reduced under President George W. Bush and terminated completely by President Obama in 2010.

I visited the State Department at that time and was told that the North Korean government would not permit any supervision of food deliveries, which was the main problem. In April 2011 I returned to North Korea, accompanied by former president Martti Ahtisaari of Finland, former president Mary Robinson of Ireland, and former prime minister of Norway Gro Brundtland, who was a physician and had been director of the World Health Organization. We stopped first in Beijing for briefings from World Food Program officials, who said there were no restraints on monitoring food deliveries to families. They followed us to Pyongyang and accompanied us to rural areas where food was being distributed. The government sent an official guarantee that all such food deliveries could be monitored by America and other donors. I reported to Washington that one-third of children in North Korea were malnourished and stunted in their growth and that daily food intake was between 700 and 1,400 calories, compared to a normal American’s of 2,000 to 2,500, but our government took no action.

There is no excuse for oppression by a dictatorial regime, but it is likely that the degree of harsh treatment is dependent on the dissatisfaction of the citizens. Hungry people are more inclined to demand relief from their plight, and more likely to be imprisoned or executed. As in Cuba, the political elite in North Korea do not suffer, and the leaders’ all-pervasive propaganda places blame on the United States, not themselves.

The primary objective of dictators is to stay in office, and we help them achieve this goal by punishing their already suffering subjects and letting the oppressors claim to be saviors. When nonmilitary pressure on a government is considered necessary, economic sanctions should be focused on travel, foreign bank accounts, and other special privileges of government officials who make decisions, not on destroying the economy that determines the living conditions of oppressed people.

An urgent challenge for me as president was to establish a clear national policy on the handling of nuclear materials and how to set an example. I consulted with Admiral Rickover, Secretaries Harold Brown and Jim Schlesinger, and other experts.

In April 1977, I announced that we were terminating our prospects for reprocessing spent nuclear fuels, shifting from a heavy dependence on plutonium as an energy source, and attempting to cooperate closely with other nations to achieve the same goals. I had adverse feedback especially from France, Germany, and Japan, who were enjoying the economic benefits of trading technology and nuclear fuel to other countries.

The Nonproliferation Treaty of 1970 had been adopted by all nations except Israel, India, and Pakistan (North Korea withdrew in 2003, and the new nation of South Sudan has not acted). A key provision was that the major powers make every effort to reduce our arsenals and lead the way to prevent the spread of nuclear materials or equipment, even without close supervision by the International Atomic Energy Agency. I rejected intense pressure from Pakistan and India to provide assistance to them, and my immediate successors maintained this policy. However, the two countries were helped with fuel and technology by Canada, Great Britain, China, and others, and they developed atomic weapons in the late 1980s. President George W. Bush signed an agreement in 2008 to provide India with nuclear fuel and technology despite Indian leaders’ refusal to comply with the Nonproliferation Treaty, and President Obama has confirmed and expanded this agreement.