Jimmy Carter’s post-presidency was spent trying to bring world peace
In May 2002, former President Jimmy Carter traveled to Havana, Cuba, for several days of talks with Cuba’s President Fidel Castro.
He became the first and only sitting or former U.S. president to visit Cuba since the 1959 revolution that put Fidel Castro in power. He urged the U.S. to end its longstanding economic embargo against Cuba, which is still in place today.
He delivered his keynote speech at the University of Havana, where with senior Cuban government officials in the audience, along with students and faculty, he called for expanded personal and political freedoms.
“The hard truth is that neither the United States nor Cuba has managed to define a positive and beneficial relationship. Will this new century find our neighboring people living in harmony and friendship? I have come here in search of an answer to that question,” Carter said.
He also urged the U.S. to end its longstanding economic embargo against Cuba, which is still in place today.
“I did not come here to interfere in Cuba’s internal affairs, but to extend a hand of friendship to the Cuban people and to offer a vision of the future for our two countries and for all the Americas,” he said.
“That vision includes a Cuba fully integrated into a democratic hemisphere, participating in a Free Trade Area of the Americas and with our citizens traveling without restraint to visit each other. I want a massive student exchange between our universities. I want the people of the United States and Cuba to share more than a love of baseball and wonderful music. I want us to be friends, and to respect each other.”
During that trip, Carter, a lifelong Atlanta Braves fan, attended with Castro the Cuban Baseball League’s All-Star Game, and the two men stood on the field together, and threw out the first pitch.
In October 2002, former President Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his lifelong efforts to bring peace to parts of the world battered by war.
“War may sometimes be a necessary evil. but no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children,” he said.
Jimmy Carter told me that while he was most proud of his efforts to bring peace to Egypt and Israel with the Camp David Accords, he said the Nobel Committee presented him the Peace Prize for the totality of his work.
Carter also called out the courage of the two other leaders who he spent more than 10 days with at Camp David, Maryland, negotiating the agreement, which is still in place today
“Most Nobel Laureates have carried out our work in safety, but there are others who have acted with great personal courage. None has provided more vivid reminders of the dangers of peacemaking than two of my friends, Anwar Sadat and Yitzak Rabin, who gave their lives for the cause of peace in the Middle East,” he said.
On Oct. 3, 1981, President Sadat was assassinated in Cairo, Egypt, by members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. More than forty years later, the motive for the killing remains under debate, but many historians believe it stemmed from Islamists who opposed Sadat’s peace initiative with Israel and the United States relating to the Camp David Accords.
In the last years of his life, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s health failed, and he died at age 78 on March 9, 1992, of a heart attack. He spent the last years of his life in seclusion that some say was clinical depression.
The Nobel Committee also pointed to Carter’s extensive work negotiating with North Korea, which froze that country’s nuclear weapons program for a decade. Many believe his efforts prevented a second war between North and South Korea.
“Through his Carter Center, which celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2002, Carter has since his presidency undertaken very extensive and persevering conflict resolution on several continents. He has shown outstanding commitment to human rights and has served as an observer at countless elections all over the world,” the committee said.
“He has worked hard on many fronts to fight tropical diseases and to bring about growth and progress in developing countries. Carter has thus been active in several of the problem areas that have figured prominently in the over one hundred years of Peace Prize history.”
As a reporter in Atlanta during Carter’s post-presidency, WTOP’s Dan Ronan interviewed him several times, including during his trip to Cuba and after he was selected for the Nobel Peace Prize.