From the National Review:
<<October 11, 2002, 3:05 p.m.
Troubling Trophy
Jimmy Carter gets the Nobel Prize Prize.
By Peter Schweizer
n an announcement pregnant with political meaning and irony, the secretive, five-member Nobel committee awarded the Peace prize to former president Jimmy Carter for his "untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts [and] to advance democracy and human rights."
The announcement served a political purpose: The committee was rewarding Carter for his criticism of the Bush administration's policy toward Iraq. But the award also has a certain irony — because while Carter has championed laudable principles in public, some of his actions, both as a president and as a private citizen, raise troubling questions about his commitment to those very same principles.
It was as president that Carter made his reputation for advocating a foreign policy committed to human rights. He withdrew aid to American allies in the developing world and publicly criticized them for rights abuses. His human-rights commitments, however, extended only so far. In September 1977 he sat down for a private meeting in the White House with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. According to the Soviet transcript of the meeting, Carter never mentioned human-rights abuses in the Soviet Union. "We do not want to interfere in the domestic affairs of any state or put you in an awkward position," said the human-rights advocate. Above all, he was concerned about human rights "in our hemisphere," he told Gromyko — not in the Soviet bloc.
Indeed, Carter could be downright praiseworthy of dictatorial Communist regimes — in private. In December 1977, Polish Communist boss Edward Giereck was ushered into the Oval Office. According to the White House transcript of the meeting, Carter actually "expressed appreciation for Poland's support for the Helsinki Agreement and its commitment to human rights." He offered no criticism of the Polish government's human-rights record — despite the fact that, one month earlier, the Polish secret police had attacked thousands of workers protesting food price increases. Four people were killed in the melee; hundreds of others were arrested and savagely beaten in prison.
Carter was fully aware that human-rights abuses were more prevalent in the Soviet bloc than in authoritarian third-world countries. But he avoided criticism of Communist abuses because he didn't want the Kremlin to take it the wrong way. As he wrote in his personal diary: "It's important that he [Brezhnev] understand the commitment I have is to human rights first of all and that it is not an antagonistic attitude of mine toward the Soviet Union." What Carter failed to see — and perhaps still has not recognized — is that it was the very nature of the Soviet Union that was the problem. If you have a commitment to human rights, you should be antagonistic toward the most abusive ideology in human history.
Likewise, there is irony in the Nobel committee's championing Carter for his commitment to democratic principles. While the ex-president has laudably worked for free and open elections in the developing world, he has also at times encouraged foreign influence in American elections to defeat his political enemies.
On repeated occasions, according to numerous Soviet accounts, Carter encouraged Moscow to influence American politics for his benefit or for the detriment of his enemies. Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin recounts in his memoirs how, in the waning days of the 1980 campaign, the Carter White House dispatched Armand Hammer to the Soviet embassy. Explaining to the Soviet Ambassador that Carter was "clearly alarmed" at the prospect of losing to Reagan, Hammer asked for help: Could the Kremlin expand Jewish emigration to bolster Carter's standing in the polls? "Carter won't forget that service if he is elected," Hammer told Dobrynin.
According to Georgii Kornienko, first deputy foreign minister at the time, something similar took place in 1976, when Carter sent Averell Harriman to Moscow. Harriman sought to assure the Soviets that Carter would be easier to deal with than Ford, clearly inviting Moscow to do what it could through public diplomacy to help his campaign.
Even when he was out of office, Carter still tried bitterly to encourage Moscow to do damage to his enemies during an election. As Dobrynin recounts, in January 1984 the former president dropped by his residence for a private meeting. Carter was concerned about Reagan's defense build-up and went on to explain that Moscow would be better off with someone else in the White House. If Reagan won, he warned, "There would not be a single agreement on arms control, especially on nuclear arms, as long as Reagan remained in power."
While Carter's commitment to the principles of democracy, peace, and human rights is genuine, he has failed to grasp that good intentions are not enough. A commitment to championing human rights is no substitute for enacting policies that actually secure them — nor should it be an excuse for trying to manipulate an American election.
— Peter Schweizer is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of the soon-to-be-released Reagan's War where material from this article was drawn.
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