Jimmy Carter’s Disastrous Foreign Policy

Jimmy Carter’s Foreign Policy was
Disastrous for the Persecuted Church
By Dr. Peter Hammond

Eulogising a Failed Presidency
The passing away of President Jimmy Carter has led many to consider his “presidential legacy.” Joe Biden claimed that President Carter was a “Role Model!” Others declared that Jimmy Carter was “a Champion of peace, human rights and justice!”

Jimmy Carter’s Foreign Policy was Disastrous for the Persecuted Church
The Carter Catastrophe 1977–1981

And that he “globalized the human rights movement.” President Ronald Reagan pointed out that Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy was Hypocritical, as he targeted American allies who were accused of being authoritarian and in-fringing on human rights (in their fight to protect their countries from communist aggression) while Carter’s ad-ministration maintained friendly relations and channelled vast amounts of US aid to the most totalitarian state on earth, the Soviet Union—where there was no respect for human rights at all!


Angola’s Agony
In Africa we do not see Jimmy Carter as a force for peace, human rights or justice at all. Referring to President Carter, Jonas Savimbi, the leader of UNITA in Angola commented: “It is better to be America’s enemy, than to be America’s friend. If you are America’s enemy, you will probably be bought. If you are America’s friend you will certainly be sold!” Jonas Savimbi spoke from personal experience. The pro-western Christian Angolans cer-tainly were betrayed by Carter’s US State Department and by the CIA.


The Betrayal of the Shah of Iran
The Shah of Iran also testified of the treachery of Jimmy Carter’s State Department, as detailed in Erfan Fard’s insightful article about Carter’s central role in the Iranian Revolution of 1978 and 1979, as summarised below:1
After a 37-year alliance with the US, the Shah of Iran was undermined by Carter and his advisors’ deceitful and misguided policies. The Shah, through his US assisted “White Revolution” programme (starting in 1963) was ag-gressively modernising and Westernising Iran, thereby raising the ire of conservative and leftist forces, most out-spoken of whom was cleric Ayatollah Khomeini. Carter pressured the Shah by supplying opposition forces in Iran, Carter sent General Haig to incapacitate the Iranian military, the US ambassador was a pro-Mossadeq sym-pathizer—ultimately, the US backed the political uprising against the Shah which led to his downfall and plunged Iran into chaos—an event that President Reagan called “a historical stain in American history”. All the while Carter’s administration chastised the Shah about human rights issues. Later the Shah admitted “that his gravest mistake was following U.S. advice, which led to the release of murderous terrorists who later orchestrated more violence.” On top of this, Carter’s treatment of the Shah during his illness (lymphatic cancer) was described as “inhumane” (after going into exile on 16 Jan. 1979, the Shah shuttled from country to country, only being al-lowed into the USA on 22 Oct. 1979 for medical treatment, departing the US on 15 Dec. 1979, succumbing to his illness in Egypt on 27 July 1980.)
The incoherent and vacillating actions and policies of Carter, his administration and his intelligence services dur-ing the Iran crisis prompted the Shah to ask, “Why is the CIA so intensively active against me?” This upheaval also raises the question of why did the CIA fail to predict the rise of the mullahs and the 1979 turmoil? With Carter quick to praise Khomeini as a “sacred” figure—a religious and moderate leader—it became apparent that there had been ties between the two before 1979.
In the climactic act, the US hostage crisis (beginning 4 Nov. 1979), Carter first wrote a pleading letter to Khomei-ni and then resorted to prayer. Eventually Carter authorized a rescue mission, but it ended in disastrous failure (25 Apr. 1980). This was in stark contrast to the German GSG 9’s successful rescue of all their hostages in Somalia and the Israeli’s success in rescuing their hostages in Entebbe, Uganda.
Regrettably, Carter’s policies regarding the Islamic Republic “live on in what can be described as ‘Carter 2’ (Obama) and ‘Carter 3’ (Biden) ... Perhaps his death will mark the end of these misguided policies and their dark legacy. Yet, the world first faced the rise of Islamic radicalism during Carter’s era, and the failed battle against terrorism continues to this day.”1
Interestingly, in his book Our Endangered Values Jimmy Carter criticizes President George Bush’s disastrous wars in the Middle East, wars that were actually following the Carter Doctrine, the policy Carter established in 1980, which deems the Persian Gulf a vital US interest requiring military intervention to maintain the status quo!


Covert Support for Genocide in East Timor
Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, beginning a twenty-four year occupation marked by genocide and other human rights abuses. The Indonesian invasion was launched during Gerald Ford’s presidency, with US fore-knowledge, support and equipment.2 Carter continued the United States’ secret support for the occupation, in-creasing supplies of military equipment to Indonesia in late 1977: “In 1977–1978 while Indonesia engaged in wholesale destruction in the form of massive bombardment … the Carter Administration extended the military and diplomatic support necessary to make it all possible.”3 Indonesia was using US-supplied OV-10 Bronco air-craft for their incendiary bombing campaign.


Ideas Have Consequences
US Foreign Policy often affects Christians in Africa and the Middle East: some eulogies for Jimmy Carter claimed that even small acts can change the world and that Jimmy Carter’s actions touched many lives. Of course that is true and in Jimmy Carter’s case disastrously so. His intentions may have been good, but the consequences have been consistently catastrophic. It was Jimmy Carter’s government meddling in Afghanistan, early in 1979, that provoked the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in Christmas of that year. Ever since, American in-volvement in Afghanistan has been increasingly counterproductive and disastrous, especially for the local popula-tion.


Giving away The Panama Canal
It was Jimmy Carter who decided to give away the Panama Canal, which the United States had built (1904–1914) at the cost of many lives and which America had paid a fortune for many times over. And continues to pay a for-tune for in shipping fees while communist China moved in to seize control over this vital and strategic naval ship-ping chokepoint. Hutchison Port Holdings, owned by the Hong Kong-based Li family had “a concession to oper-ate two ports near the ends of the canal—the Balboa port on the Pacific side and the Cristóbal port on the Atlantic side—neither these ports nor the company controlled access to the canal.” The Li family succumbed to growing pressure from the Trump administration—on 4 March 2025, Larry Fink’s American investment company BlackRock announced that it, alongside a group of investors, were buying all 40 of the ports outside of China and Hong Kong owned by CK Hutchinson for nearly $23 billion.4 The Chinese government was infuriated, saying that the deal “betrayed and sold out all Chinese people” and has stalled the deal by launching an antitrust investi-gation.5

A Trail of Betrayal
During the four years of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, thirteen countries fell to communism. Including Nicaragua where Carter’s administration betrayed the longtime American ally Somoza. In most cases, these nations did not just fall to communism, but were actually betrayed into the hands of communist revolutionaries as a result of Carter’s treacherous and inconsistent globalising of human rights campaign. It was a top foreign policy goal of Jimmy Carter’s presidency to force the people of Rhodesia to hand over to Robert Mugabe’s Red Chinese trained and armed ZANU terrorists: “ ‘Carter told me that he spent more time on Rhodesia than he did on the entire Mid-dle East. And when you go into the archives and look at the administration, there is indeed more on Southern Af-rica than the Middle East,’ historian and author Nancy Mitchell said.” 6 As Ian Smith of Rhodesia declared: “We were never beaten by our enemies, we were betrayed by our friends!”

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Frontline Fellowship · The Real Story of Jimmy Carter’s Disastrous Foreign Policy Legacy

A Legacy of Oppression
Americans removed Jimmy Carter from the presidency over forty four years ago. However, the long suffering people of Zimbabwe are still stuck with Carter’s legacy in the form of Robert Mugabe’s murderous Marxist ZANU dictatorship. Just as the long-suffering people of Iran are still oppressed by the ayatollahs.


A Legacy of Liberty
No countries fell to communism during the eight years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. In fact countries started to be freed from communist oppression. Ronald Reagan put freedom on the offensive, supported resistance move-ments in communist countries and helped win the Cold War that brought down the Berlin Wall and the Iron Cur-tain. The collapse of communism throughout Eastern Europe, in 1989, brought about a new era of religious free-dom and Missionary activity that had previously been inconceivable.


Strength and Weakness
As Winston Churchill observed: “There is nothing they despise more than weakness; there is nothing they respect more than strength!” America was plainly despised in the days of Jimmy Carter. However, America was respect-ed under Ronald Reagan.

Persecution Increases
During the Clinton era (1993–2001), we witnessed and experienced a steady increase of violent persecution of Christians in the Muslim world. It was in the 1990s that radical Islamic regimes, such as the National Islamic Front in Sudan, began systematic terror bombing campaigns of churches, hospitals and schools. It was at that time that I experienced artillery and aerial bombardments while ministering in churches in Sudan.


A Dramatic Decline of Bombings
However, as America began fighting back after the terror attacks of September 11th, 2001, toppling the radical Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the bombing of churches in Northern Nigeria and South Sudan stopped. We en-joyed a period of relative peace and stability as radical Muslim regimes went on the defensive.


An Explosion of Persecution
However, after Obama became president of the USA (2009), there was an unmistakable escalation of violent at-tacks on Christians worldwide, particularly in the Muslim Middle East. Literally hundreds of churches were bombed and burned throughout Northern Nigeria, Egypt, Sudan and Iraq in the four years of his presidency. Just in Northern Nigeria alone, there were over 1,000 attacks on churches (with 17,000 Christians killed) by Boko Haram Jihadist terrorists, just in a five year period from 2010 to 2015.


Worst President of All Time Competition
At a Biblical Worldview Conference in Colorado in 2010, one of the speakers claimed that Barack Hussein Obama was the worst president in American history. During discussion time I ventured to challenge this, point-ing out that it may turn out to be so, but Obama had only been in power for less than two years. Had he considered the trail of treachery of President Jimmy Carter? While I was cataloguing some of Carter’s foreign policy catas-trophes, Dr David Noebel walked up and put his hand on my shoulder: “Peter, you are wrong! When it comes to damage done, no president was worse than Franklin Delano Roosevelt: At Yalta, he betrayed the whole of East-ern Europe and ultimately one-third of the world’s population under the most oppressive dictatorship in history, the Soviet Union!” From the back of the hall a loud voice rang out: “And it all began with Abraham Lincoln!” Another person suggested that Woodrow Wilson should also be considered as a serious candidate for one of the worst presidents in American history, as he introduced federal income tax, the Federal Reserve Bank, dragged America into the First World War and played a leading role in launching the League of Nations! Another sug-gested that LBJ was the worst.


Sowing the Seeds of Civil War in South Sudan
On the 9th of July 2011, the youngest country in the world was born, South Sudan. This was a major answer to an extraordinary campaign of prayer and action which I was intimately involved in. This included writing and pub-lishing three editions of Faith Under Fire in Sudan, taking in several film crews who produced films such as Su-dan: the Hidden Holocaust, Terrorism and Persecution and Three Days in Sudan. I also conducted over 1,200 meetings within Sudan and more than 1,000 public meetings and radio and TV interviews internationally to pro-mote the independence of South Sudan. Everyone expected the newly independent South Sudan to be declared a Christian country, however, ex-president Jimmy Carter managed to persuade the new president of South Sudan to resist all calls from his own citizens to include Christian amendments to the constitution and prayer in parliament. Carter used his elder statesman status to insist that South Sudan be constituted as a secular state!


Worse than that he sowed the seeds for the civil war in South Sudan by demanding that President Salva Kiir in-clude his arch-rival Riek Machar in his government as his vice president. But Machar was much more than a rival, he was a surrogate for the National Islamic Front government of Sudan. Machar and his SSIM army had been supplied by the Sudan Armed Forces of dictator Omar Al Bashir. Machar’s SSIM actually killed more of the South Sudanese civilians, committed more atrocities and slaughtered more of the cattle, caused more scorched earth devastation than even the National Islamic Front regime of the Sharia law enforcing Sudan government! At the first anniversary of independence in South Sudan, President Kiir reported that 5 billion Sudanese pounds were missing from the public treasury! He demanded that these embezzled funds be returned. The next year he could only report on 200 million pounds being returned, so he fired his government. Civil war broke out as Vice Presi-
dent Machar was plainly the guilty party, as he controlled the oil revenues which made up most of the income of South Sudan. Incredibly, after a ceasefire was negotiated, the US government again insisted that the kleptomaniac embezzler be reinstated as vice president! This inevitably led to another outbreak of civil war. So we cannot even say that Carter’s disastrous foreign policies ended in 1980 with his electoral defeat. He continued to meddle in international affairs to an unprecedented extent for any previous president.


American Foreign Policy Affects Lives
Most Americans probably do not think foreign policy when they vote for their president. However, Christians in Africa and the Middle East earnestly entreat our brethren in America to seriously consider the foreign policy im-plications of their votes. Lives are at stake.


Doomed by Carter’s State Department
There is no doubt that millions of people died throughout Africa, Asia and the Middle East because of the foreign policies of Jimmy Carter. Tens-of-millions continue to suffer to this day as a result of Carter’s foreign policy leg-acy, including the people in Iran. It needs to be remembered that the Shah of Iran was one of America’s closest allies in the Middle East when Jimmy Carter’s State Department actively worked to betray their ally and push Iran over to the ayatollahs. The end result of that has yet to be seen as Iran continues to be a volatile part of the ex-tremely violent Middle East.

USAID Funded the Arab Spring and ISIS
The devastating so-called Arab Spring (Dec. 2010–Dec. 2012) launched by the US State Department of Barack Hussein Obama toppled stable governments in the Middle East and initiated a wave of destructive riots, revolu-tions and terrorism that brought the number of Christians in the Middle East down from 15 million in 2010 to less than 10 million by 2020! Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the Muslim Brotherhood as a force for peace and moderation in the Middle East. This despite the Muslim Brotherhood having been responsible for the very public assassination, in 1981, of president Anwar Sadat of Egypt (who by the way was the real archi-tect of the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, which Jimmy Carter received credit for). On just one weekend, the Muslim Brotherhood mobilized mobs that burned down over seventy churches in Egypt. Founded and funded by the CIA, ISIS beheaded countless Christians and blew up historic monuments, including the tombs of Daniel and Jonah.

Obama was Even Worse than Carter
During Obama’s disastrous presidency a billboard appeared in America with a smiling picture of President Jimmy Carter declaring: “At least I can’t be called America’s worst president anymore!”


Delivered
However, as I wrote in my article: “Ronald Reagan Saved Lives in Angola”, there are many millions of people alive, and free, today, because of the far-sighted and courageous foreign policies of President Ronald Reagan.7


An Urgent Call to Prayer and Action
What we sow, we reap. There are consequences for every action. We continue to pray that our Christian brethren in the United States will be in much prayer and seek the wisdom of God when they approach future elections.


Back to the Bible for Reformation and Revival
May we all be Faithful to God’s Word and effective in His service as we seek to reclaim our countries for Christ, laying solid Biblical foundations for Reformation and earnestly praying for Spiritual Revival. We need to Make Africa Safe Again.


Ronald Reagan Saved Lives in Angola
As an African, I will always be grateful for the role Ronald Reagan played in saving lives in Angola. In the 1980s, I made multiple missions into war-torn Angola. At the time, there were over 50,000 Cuban troops in the country. The communists had attacked and destroyed many churches. MiG-23s and Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunships were terrorising villagers in Angola. I documented numerous of these atrocities, including the strafing of villages, schools and churches.
In 1986 I remember hearing Ronald Reagan’s speech—carried on the BBC Africa service: “We are going to send
stinger missiles to the UNITA Freedom Fighters in Angola!” Those of us listening to the short wave radio looked at one another in stunned amazement. After a long silence as we wondered if our ears had actually heard what we thought we’d heard, one of us said: “That would be nice!”


We scarcely dared believe that it would happen. But it did. Not long afterwards the stinger missiles began to ar-rive in UNITA controlled Free Angola. Soviet aircraft were shot down. The bombing and strafing of villagers, schools and churches came to an end. Without any doubt, Ronald Reagan’s policies saved many tens of thousands of lives in Angola.


In my photo albums I have numerous pictures of Soviet aircraft shot down in Angola: Mi-24 Hind helicopters, Mi-8 Hip helicopters, and a MiG-23. They are a reminder of an American President who cared about the people of Angola who were suffering under communist occupation.

May the Lord continue to be your strength and shield.
Yours for the fulfilment of the Great Commission,
Dr. Peter Hammond


Sources
1 Fard, E., “Carter: The President Who Betrayed Shah to Khomeini” [blog], Times of Israel (30 Dec. 2024), https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/carterthe-president-who-betrayed-shah-to-khomeini/ 2 Al Jazeera, “US ‘backed East Timor invasion’ ” (3 Dec. 2005), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2005/12/3/us-backed-east-timor-invasion
3 Smith, M. K., “Jimmy Carter: the False Savior”, CounterPunch (30 Dec. 2024), https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/12/30/jimmy-carter-the-false-savoir/
4 Rennie, A., “BlackRock Leads Consortium Buying Panama Canal Ports for Nearly $23B”, Investopedia (4 Mar. 2025), https://www.investopedia.com/blackrock-leads-consortium-buying-panama-canal-ports-for-nearly-usd23b-11690345
5 Hale, E., “Why is China angry about a plan to sell two ports on the Panama Canal?”, Al Jazeera (1 Apr. 2025), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/4/1/why-is-china-angry-about-a-plan-to-sell-two-ports-on-the-panama-canal
6 Anna, C., “ ‘Our country ignored Africa,’ Jimmy Carter said. He didn’t”, The Washington Times (5 Jan. 2025), https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/jan/5/jimmy-carter-said-country-ignored-africa-didn/
7 Hammond, P., “Ronald Reagan Saved Lives in Angola”, Frontline Fellowship (2 Oct. 2017), https://www.frontlinemissionsa.org/angola/ronald-reagan-saved-lives-in-angola

Frontline Fellowship · A Critical Analysis of Jimmy Carter's Legacy