Precarious Equilibrium

Carter's human rights campaign looked like a success to many of his advisers in January 1981, only days before he left the White House. Yet once commentators, academics and the incoming administration began to question his bipolar approach, it was clear he had failed on two fronts: he had not convinced voters that he understood America's place in the world, and he had not forged a durable domestic consensus on foreign policy.

The administration hoped to revive its ideological contest with the Soviet Union by putting human rights at the centre of its strategy. Its aim was to pressure Moscow into loosening its internal repression, which in turn would bolster support in Congress for detente and arms control. The results ran against this plan. The harder the White House pushed on human rights, the less the Soviets cared about detente. The more it retreated into quiet diplomacy, the more American critics charged that Carter had abandoned the cause. Ultimately the administration missed its chance to stabilise relations between the two superpowers and lost the domestic backing it had won in 1976. Opponents of detente, aided by the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, brought his presidency to an end.

Drawing on recently declassified archival material, this book reassesses Jimmy Carter's human rights policy and the conflicting effects it had on relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.