When I’m 4 Years Old, Jimmy Carter Prevented a Nuclear War. Get Well Soon, Sir
You may have already read a lot of praise to James Earl “Jimmy” Carter in the last 12 hours. Former President of the United States, the 39th POTUS Jimmy Carter is receiving hospice care at his home, the Carter Center announced Saturday. He made the decision after a series of short hospital stays.
He may have made wrong decisions on the Gwangju Uprising 1980 and on Iran, some of the terrible decisions he made. But he is giving more and more to humanity, maybe rather than ordinary US citizens.
Jimmy Carter installing solar panels on the White House. The 40th POTUS Ronald Reagan took them down and gutted the research and development budgets for renewable energy. Admired his dedication and work after common missions in Israel and Palestine. Jimmy Carter "decided not to join corporate boards or give speeches for big money because he didn’t want to “capitalize financially on being in the White House.” Great 2018 profile. Jimmy Carter voluntarily became supervisor of Indonesian Election 1999, a first ever election after ORBA / Soeharto. In continued and fervent prayer this morning for former President Jimmy Carter and the Carter Family. He means so much to so many around the world. My heart goes out to Eleanor Rosalynn. 76 years of marriage. A unique partnership, the depth of which I glimpsed in Gallucci’s office 29 years ago. And I wish Jimmy Carter peace and rest after a life of public service that few could ever hope to match. Pacem Berelum.
Jimmy Carter and the 1994 North Korea nuclear crisis. On August 2nd, 1994, I turned 4 years old officially and set to enter (pre-test) elementary school. Carter prevented a nuclear war.
For the benefit of those who didn’t live through it, the 1994 nuclear crisis was no laughing matter. US and DPRK (North Korea) came closer to war that year than we had at any time since the Armistice. Only the Trump “fire and fury” episode comes close, and we now know that was more drama than real. Dprk was secretly moving to complete work necessary to reprocess plutonium from its 5MW heavy water graphite moderated reactor in violation of NPT obligations. It was also, in wake of the collapse of the USSR (3 years before), feeling vulnerable, and ramping up conventional military preparations for war.
US and ROK set in motion their own war preparations…a period former Defense Secretary Bill Perry has described as perilous. “I was determined to prevent North Korea from developing a nuclear arsenal, even at the risk of war,” he recalled in a 2017 interview. It was against a backdrop of rapidly escalating tension that Jimmy Carter undertook his “private” peacekeeping mission to meet DPRK’s aging leader, Kim Il-sung, the grandfather of present-day leader Kim Jong-un. Prior to his trip, Carter came to the State Dept office of Assistant Secretary Robert Gallucci (who would later negotiate the Agreed Framework) to get up to speed on all we knew about the DPRK in the summer of 1994. It was an all-day briefing covering every imaginable topic: politics, economics, conventional military power. nuclear, chemical,biological weapons capabilities, personalities, food and nutrition, public health, North-South relations…the full gamut. My role was to brief on the conventional military situation. Other experts from across the intelligence community briefed other issues.
He admired the craftsmanship as only a veteran of Habitat for Humanity could and immodestly suggested that his own mitre board work was superior to that in the office.
I could not help but marvel at his good humor amid the crisis. He was less forgiving when a young foreign service officer dispatched to bring him a coke produced a Pepsi instead. “I can’t drink that,” the former President said in his gentle Georgian twang. He meant every word. Coke was eventually procured, and refreshed, Carter resumed work.
Carter began with words before prevented a nuclear war in Korean Peninsula:
“None of you has told me what I need to know. I need to know, what does Kim Il-sung WANT?’
(Moment of) Jimmy Carter's latest situation, coincidentally, with the latest situation in DPRK North Korea. (From Feb 8th 2023 until today, Feb 19th), Kim Jong Un’s daughter, believed to be about 10 years old, was photographed sitting front and center among high ranking North Korean officials. Experts say Ju Ae’s latest public appearance is the clearest sign as of yet that she’s being considered as North Korea’s next leader. Seoul response: according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, President Yoon Seok-yeol told reporters he urged the Japanese side to make “a political decision” for a sincere, tougher response.
Carter understood that the DPRK, facing economic collapse, famine, and isolation after the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s own lurch westward, was in desperate straits. Carter met Kim not as a conqueror demanding surrender…the war ended in stalemate, and the USA was in no position to dictate terms.
Carter met Kim in search of a mutually beneficial arrangement — no nukes, in exchange for a transformed relationship with the United States.
The essence of that bargain would later be negotiated by Gallucci in the October 1994 Agreed Framework, but it would be Kim Jong-il, not his father, who finalized the deal. KIS passed away shortly after his historic meeting with Carter — a meeting that averted war and opened.
Carter is a man of peace, and without question the greatest “ex-President” in history.
No former President has done more / as a volunteer for a habitat, as a peacemaker. 3 years ago, after turning 95 years old, President Jimmy Carter suffered a fall that left him with a black eye, bruises, and 14 stitches — and still went out the next day to build homes for Habitat for Humanity. The lesson Carter shared with his briefers that day is one I hope the Biden administration will remember today.
There can be no peace on the Peninsula absent a formula that addresses the needs of ALL the parties. If we want to dictate terms of surrender, we will have to beat them in war first. A war that would now be with a nuclear-armed North Korea.
Such a war should be unthinkable. Make sure Seoul - Pyongyang keeps on line on the red telephone. Still (keep) back channels open, in hopes of staving off disaster.
Sources knowledgeable about Carter's trip to Pyongyang this week to free American Aijalon Mahli Gomes expect the former president to take the same approach he used with Kim Il Sung in dealing with his son, current leader Kim Jong Il. Carter, they say, will give the North Korean leader the respect he craves, giving him a face-saving way to release Gomes.
As with last year's mission by former President Bill Clinton to free journalists Laura Ling and Euna Less, the deal with North Korea was already done before Carter boarded the plane. In fact, the North Koreans have been looking for a visit from Carter for some time.
University of Georgia professor Han Park, who helped arrange Carter's 1994 trip and played a role in this one, said he brought up the possibility of high-level talks with the former American president during Park's trip to Pyongyang in July. Park said the release of Gomes was actually a secondary reason for Carter's visit, the first being restarting talks with the United States.
"The release was not the North Korean purpose," said Park, who has visited the communist nation 52 times. "They wanted to have a much more substantive discussion when the official line is seemingly blocked."
There was no shortage of envoys ready to travel to North Korea and negotiate Gomes release. Bill Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has gone on previous missions to North Korea, including the negotiated release of a detained American. He continues to hold occasional talks with North Korean diplomats.
Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was also closely involved in coordinating efforts with the White House and State Department to free Gomes, who is one of his constituents, said his spokesman, Fredrick Jones.
It was Kerry, Jones said, who informed the State Department about Gomes' arrest and has been urging the department to do "whatever it takes" to secure Gomes' humanitarian release, including sending an envoy if appropriate. Although he offered to go himself if that was the best option, aides say Kerry assisted with the search to find a suitable envoy.
In the end, the North Koreans are exacting the highest possible price they thought they could get for the release, securing what they see as the credibility a former leader of the free world can provide. Last year, the North Koreans rejected several lower-level envoys before settling on Clinton, who returned with the two American women after three hours of dining and photo-ops with Kim Jong Il.
Carter's 1994 trip to Pyongyang was successful in defusing the first North Korean nuclear crisis, paving the way for the 1994 Agreed Framework in which North Korea pledged to give up its nuclear weapons in return for aid. But it was also controversial because Carter reached a deal with Kim Il Sung and announced it without checking with the Clinton administration.
Obama administration officials don't expect a repeat performance but have kept mum about Carter's trip, saying only if such a mission took place it would be purely a "humanitarian effort." The United States wants to ensure the likely success of any effort to secure Gomes' release and doesn't want to tie the mission to America's tensions with North Korea over its nuclear program.
Those tensions have escalated in recent months with the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan, which the international community has blamed on Pyongyang.
While the Obama administration recognizes the North Korean regime will likely use Carter's trip for propaganda purposes, officials say the most important thing is for Gomes, whose health is deteriorating, to be released. They caution against any expectation of a breakthrough between the two countries, insisting there is no change in U.S. policy toward North Korea.
That policy has included tougher sanctions against Pyongyang and joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises off the Korean coast.
But Han Park views Carter's trip as significant, as it comes at a time when negotiations between the United States and North Korea are at an impasse.
Carter, he said, is not likely to succeed in obtaining North Korean concessions on defense issues, but nevertheless, his trip could help influence public perceptions of North Korea and eventually lead to direct dialog.
"I think President Carter has a keen interest in reducing tensions on the [Korean] peninsula," Park said.