Transcript Carter Foreign and Domestic Policy Issues PowerPoint

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 nonproliferation 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.