http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9245-5595 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9245-5595
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Abstract
This paper reinterprets Jimmy Carter’s human rights policy from the perspective of North–South economic relations. It finds that the Carter Administration used the social and economic rights provisions of its human rights policy as a key stratagem in its efforts to reform US-Third World relations. It then shows how the Administration attempted to persuade Third World leaders to end their insistence in global negotiations for a radical ‘New International Economic Order’ in exchange for new forms of foreign aid targeting ‘basic human needs’, thus demonstrating the impact of global economic change on the 1970s global human rights revolution.
Notes
1 Jimmy Carter, Address at Commencement Exercises at the University of Notre Dame, 22 May 1977. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=7552 (accessed 10 May 2018).
2 ‘Of course [the price of oil] is going to rise,’ the Shah of Iran told the New York Times: ‘Certainly! And how! … However, it’s a solution that you in the West have wished upon yourselves. Or if you prefer, a solution wished on you by your ultracivilized industrial society. You’ve increased the price of wheat you sell us by 300 per cent, and the same for sugar and cement. You’ve sent petrochemical prices skyrocketing. You buy our crude oil and sell it back to us, refined as petrochemicals, at a hundred times the price you’ve paid us. You make us pay more, scandalously more, for everything, and it’s only fair that, from now on, you should pay more for oil’. ‘Price Quadruples for Iran Crude Oil,’ New York Times, 12 December 1973.
3 The concept of a ‘right to development’ was developed alongside and was complementary to the ‘right to self-determination’ in Third World activities at the UN during the 1950s. During the 1960s the ‘Group of 77’ developing countries sought to enshrine the right to development in international law, culminating in the NIEO Declaration in May 1974 and Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States in December. Daniel J. Whelan, ‘“Under the Aegis of Man”: The Right to Development and the Origins of the New International Economic Order,’ Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 6, no. 1 (2015): 93–108.
4 ‘A Letter from the President of Venezuela to the Chairman of the World Food Conference Meeting in Rome,’ Caracas, 5 November 1974.
5 See Daniel Sargent, A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), chapters 5 and 6.
6 Robert K. Olson, U.S. Foreign Policy and the New International Economic Order: Negotiating Global Problems, 1974–1981 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1981), 36, fn. 12.
7 Scholarship on Carter and the Third World is too large to list here, but some of the more influential works of the last 10 years all place the Cold War at the centre of the Carter-Third World narrative. See Scott Kaufman, Plans Unravelled: The Foreign Policy of the Carter Administration (DeKalb: Northern Illinois Press, 2009); Betty Glad, An Outsider in the White House: Jimmy Carter, His Advisors, and the Making of American Foreign Policy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009); and Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). As Nancy Mitchell writes in her well-received new book on Carter’s foreign policy in Africa, the President was ‘a Cold Warrior from day one’ Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016), 8.
8 Nils Gilman, ‘The New International Economic Order: A Reintroduction,’ Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 6, no. 1 (2015): 1. For other recent works addressing the NIEO, see Giuliano Garavini, After Empires: European Integration, Decolonization, and the Challenge from the Global South 1957–1986 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Daniel Sargent, A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); and Christopher Dietrich, ‘Oil Power and Economic Theologies: The United States and the Third World in the Wake of the Energy Crisis,’ Diplomatic History 40, no. 3 (2016). Both Garavini and Sargent stress the NIEO’s link to the global energy crisis, though Garavini’s analysis centres more on the NIEO’s catalysing effect on European integration than on its impact for US foreign policy. Like Sargent, Dietrich’s article emphasises the NIEO’s transformative role during the Ford Administration, especially for Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. In a recently published book, Dietrich does address the Carter Administration’s response to the North-South dialogue, including its ‘basic needs’ strategy, but this is not the book’s focus and comes in the conclusion. See Dietrich, Oil Revolution: Anticolonial Elites, Sovereign Rights, and the Economic Culture of Decolonization (New York: Cambridge University Press, 217), 307–10.
9 Jimmy Carter, Inaugural Address, 20 January 1977. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=6575 (accessed 10 May 2018).
10 Jimmy Carter Presidential Library (JCPL), ‘Presidential Review Memorandum/NSC-28: Human Rights,’ NLC-28–10-10–4-5, Remote Archives Capture (RA C), 15 August 1977.
11 JCPL, RAC, Ibid.
12 James P. Grant, ‘Growth From Below: A People-Oriented Development Strategy,’ ODC Development Paper, 16 December 1976, 5–6.
13 Collected Papers of Theodore Hesburgh (CPHS), ODC-Board of Directors Annual Meeting, 94/29, ‘The President’s Report: ODC Programme Highlights for 1976 and 1977,’ University of Notre Dame Archives (UNDA ), October 1976.
14 UNDA, CPHS, ODC-Congress and Foreign Affairs-1973, 93/21, ‘Statement of Father Theodore M. Hesburgh before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee,’ 27 June 1973.
15 UNDA, CPHS, ODC – Hesburgh on TV, 95/01, ‘Press Conference on Carter: Hesburgh Calls on U.S. to Consider New Strategies of Cooperation with the Developing Countries as Part of U.S. Foreign Policy,’ 18 March 1977.
16 Several others members of the Administration, including Brzezinki, Gardner, Richard Cooper, and Samuel Huntington had attended the ODC’s on-going series of development seminars, for ‘selected individuals who are not development specialists’. (UNDA, CPHS, ODC – Programmes and Projects – 1971, 93/01, ‘What is the ODC?’).
17 US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) 1977–1980, Vol. III, Foreign Economic Policy, doc. 271, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v03/d271 (accessed 10 May 2018).
18 FRUS 1977–1980, Vol. III, doc. 273, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v03/d273 (accessed 10 May 2018).
19 Christopher Dietrich, Oil Revolution: Anticolonial Elites, Sovereign Rights, and the Economic Culture of Decolonization (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 277–8. Somewhat confusingly, the CIEC was also referred to at the time as the ‘North-South dialogue’, since it was the first meeting between North and South after Henry Kissinger’s conciliatory speech at the 1975 UN Special Session. After the CIEC, the term came to refer to the range of North-South negotiations, primarily in the UN General Assembly, UNCTAD, and a few other UN conferences like the Law of the Sea and Science and Technology for Development.
20 Pérez held Pinochet responsible for the death of his friend, Salvador Allende. Following Pinochet’s seizure of power, Pérez ‘opened his country to a flood of [Chilean] exiles’, turning Caracas into ‘a central meeting place for UP [Unidad Popular] and Christian Democratic leaders, some of whom moved clandestinely back and forth from Chile’. John Dinges and Saul Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row (Open Road Media, 2016).
21 Robert Pastor, ‘The Carter Administration and Latin America’ (The Carter Centre, July 1992), 24. https://www.cartercenter.org/documents/1243.pdf (accessed May 10, 2018).
22 JCPL, RAC, NLC-7–35-2–4-0, Memorandum of Conversation, ‘President Carter’s First Meeting with the President of Venezuela during His State Visit,’ 28 June 1977.
23 JCPL, RAC, NLC-24–49-6–2-3, ‘Mrs. Carter’s Trip: The Western Hemisphere in Creative Flux,’ 23 May 1977.
24 JCPL, RAC, NLC-24–61-3–5-9, Memorandum for Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, ‘Follow-up to President Carter’s Pan-American Day Speech and Mrs. Carter’s Trip,’ 19 July 1977, 2–3.
25 JCPL, RAC, NLC-5–15-1–1-8, Memo, Christopher to Carter, ‘Visit by Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez,’ 23 June 1977.
26 Pastor, ‘The Carter Administration and Latin America,’ 24.
27 JCPL, RAC, NLC-24–63-8–2-5, ‘North/South Dialogue, Resource Transfer,’ undated.
28 Dietrich, Oil Revolution, 295.
29 Ann Crittendom, ‘Kissinger’s Trade-Off on Aid,’ New York Times, 7 May 1976.
30 JCPL, RAC, NLC-133–157-1–9-0, Department of State, ‘North/South Dialogue and CIEC Strategy,’ February 1977.
31 JCPL, RAC, NLC-24–59-2–2-7, ‘New Strains Ahead as North-South Dialogue Resumes?’ Undated.
32 JCPL, RAC, NLC-128–12-9–3, Christopher to Carter, Memorandum (Untitled), 4 June 1977.
33 JCPL, RAC, NLC-24–47-2–11-9, Memorandum of Conversation, President Carter and President Pérez of Venezuela, 29 March 1978.
34 JCPL, RAC, Ibid.
35 FRUS 1977–1980, Vol. III, doc. 315, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v03/d315 (accessed 10 May 2018). The North-South cluster’s Guy Erb described the Administration’s ‘defensive’ position another way: ‘containment’: ‘We seek to contain first those developed countries that wish to adopt more forthcoming approaches to negotiations with developing countries; and second, the leading developing countries, whose proposals are seen as a challenge to an economic system that has served our interests well and could also serve the interests of developing countries if given a chance’. (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v03/d295 [accessed 10 May 2018]).
36 FRUS 1977–1980, Vol. III, doc. 320, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v03/d320 (accessed 10 May 2018).
37 Stephen D. Cohen, The Making of United States International Economic Policy: Principles, Problems, and Proposals for Reform (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000), 87.
38 FRUS 1977–1980, Vol. III, doc. 315, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v03/d315 (accessed 10 May 2018).
39 FRUS 1977–1980, Vol. I, Foundations of Foreign Policy, doc. 115, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v01/d115 (accessed 10 May 2018).
40 Robert K. Olson, U.S. Foreign Policy and the New International Economic Order: Negotiating Global Problems, 1974–1981 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1981), 33, 36 (fn. 12).
41 Olson, U.S. Foreign Policy, 47, 65, 71.
42 Paul Hallwood and Stuart Sinclair, Oil, Debt, and Development: OPEC in the Third World (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981), 182–3.
43 Olson, U.S. Foreign Policy, 74–5.
44 ‘The benefits of technological progress are not shared equitably by all members of the international community. The developing countries, which constitute 70 per cent of the world's population, account for only 30 per cent of the world’s income.’ Thus, the NIEO called for ‘[g]iving to the developing countries access to the achievements of modern science and technology, and promoting the transfer of technology and the creation of indigenous technology for the benefit of the developing countries’. ‘Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order,’ 1 May 1974, http://www.un-documents.net/s6r3201.htm (accessed 10 May 2018).
45 The State Department summarised: ‘Truman’s Point Four programme offered to make “the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas”. He offered to make available our store of technological knowledge to “produce more food, more clothing, more materials for housing and more mechanical power to lighten their burdens” of the free peoples of the world. It represented the beginnings of our development-oriented foreign aid programme’. my emphasis, FRUS 1977–1980, Vol. III, doc. 315, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v03/d315 (accessed 10 May 2018).
46 UNDA, CPHS 108/02 - Folder - UNCSTD - Correspondence – 1977, Letter, James Grant to Jean Wilkowski, 11 October 1977.
47 Carter announced the ISTC in his 29 March 1978 speech to the Venezuelan Congress, shortly before his final meeting with Carlos Andrés Pérez. Concerning the ISTC’s bilateral nature, an article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists noted the ‘contrast’ with other donor countries’ ‘flexibility’ and ‘hands-off’ attitudes. ‘The conflict [between developed and developing countries]’, two scientists supportive of the ISTC explained, ‘is not really over helping the poor, but rather over the desire of developing countries to determine their own priorities’. William Colglazier and Paul Doty, ‘U.S. Debates a New Agency,’ Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, May 1980, 43.
48 Address by Henry Kissinger, ‘UNCTAD IV: Expanding Cooperation for Global Economic Development,’ Fourth Ministerial Meeting of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Nairobi, Kenya, 6 May 1976. (https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/dosb/1927.pdf#page=3 [accessed 10 May 2018]).
49 Dickson, New Politics, 192.
50 UNDA, CPHS 108/03 - Folder - UNCSTD - Correspondence – 1977, Report, JW to TMH, ‘Visiting Scientists’ Views on UNCSTD,’ 15 December 1977.
51 UNDA, CPHS 108/06 - Folder - UNCSTD - Correspondence – 1978, letter, Grant to Wilkowski, 17 July 1978.
52 https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v03/d331 (accessed 10 May 2018).
53 Those numbers gave the range of expected capitalisation by 1985 and 1990, respectively.
54 Dickson, New Politics, 198. UNCSTD documents actually put the Third World’s share of the global R&D budget at 3%.
55 FRUS 1977–1980, Vol. III, doc. 334, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v03/d334 (accessed 10 May 2018).
56 UNDA, CPHS 108/07 - Folder - UNCSTD - Correspondence – 1979, letter, Owen to Hesburgh, 30 January 1979.
57 UNDA, CPHS 108/12 - Folder - UNCSTD - Memoranda – 1978, Memcon, Hesburgh and Blumenthal, 17 October 1978.
58 Jimmy Carter, ‘Energy and the National Goals: A Crisis of Confidence,’ 15 July 1979. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jimmycartercrisisofconfidence.htm (accessed 10 May 2018).
59 UNDA, CPHS 108/14 - Folder - UNCSTD - Memoranda - 1979–1980, Memcon, Hesburgh and Vance, 14 August 1979.
60 UNDA, CPHS, Ibid.
61 Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977–1981 (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux), 432, 429, 444.
62 Tokyo Economic Summit Conference Declaration, 29 June 1979, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=32562 (accessed 10 May 2018).
63 Dickson, New Science, 199.
64 UNDA, CPHS 108/10 - Folder - UNCSTD - Correspondence – 1979, article, Anne C. Roark, ‘To Many, the United States Was the Biggest Culprit at the U.N.’s Conference on Science and Technology,’ Chronicle of Higher Education, 10 September 1979.
65 Eric Bourne, Christian Science Monitor, ‘Technology is still a ‘Have-Not’ for Third World,’ 31 August 1979.
66 FRUS 1977–1980, Vol. III, doc. 333, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v03/d333 (accessed 10 May 2018).
67 Roark, ‘U.N.’s Conference on Science and Technology,’ 10 September 1979.
68 Dickson, New Politics, 200.
69 Olson, U.S. Foreign Policy, 95.
70 FRUS 1977–1980, Vol. III, doc. 350, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v03/d350 (accessed 10 May 2018).
71 FRUS 1977–1980, Vol. III, doc. 354, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v03/d354 (accessed 10 May 2018).
72 JCPL, RAC, NLC-12–26-6–2-2, Memo, Brzezinski to Carter, 29 April 1977, ‘Foreign Policy Overview and the Summit.’
73 http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=7552 (accessed 10 May 2018).
74 For instance, in November 1979 Vance and Cooper convinced Congress to ‘eliminate outright or ease a number of constraints on our use of development and security assistance in areas where Soviet and Cuban activity is growing’, including several restrictions on the President’s ability to use peacekeeping and development funds for military aid. FRUS 1977–1980, Vol. III, doc. 336, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v03/d336 (accessed 10 May 2018).
75 JCPL, RAC, NLC-24–98-2–2-3, Memo, Thornton to North-South Meeting Group, ‘North-South Matters,’ 27 October 1978.
76 JCPL, RAC, NLC-24–101-8–3-1, Memo, Thornton to Brzezinski, ‘Annual Report,’ 8 December 1977.
77 UNDA, CPHS 108/11, UNCSTD – Memoranda – 1977, Stephen S. Rosenfeld, Washington Post, ‘Carter’s Grandest Idea,’ undated.
78 FRUS 1977–1980, Vol. III, doc. 321, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v03/d321 (accessed 10 May 2018).
79 Devash Kapur et al., The World Bank: Its First Half Century, vol. 1 (Brookings Institution Press: Washington, D.C., 1997), 345. The name change was made under President Alden Clausen, a former President and CEO of Bank of America who also oversaw the World Bank’s massive expansion of structural adjustment activities following the 1982 Latin American debt crisis and turn toward increased private sector funding via bond sales. ‘By avoiding an untimely appeal to welfare or to the language of equity and distribution,’ the authors explain, ‘the Bank in the 1980s opened the lending door for these services by emphasising their productive virtues.’