Nobel Peace Prize winner and former US President Jimmy Carter is celebrating his 100th birthday. Quite impressive for any ex-president, but it raises the question of what a truly vital man he is. It was amazing in 1976. The peanut farmer who was elected as the Democratic candidate in 2010 managed to wrest the presidency from the fantastically politically connected Gerald Ford with his charm. Carter was, of course, an agricultural entrepreneur and quite successful, but of course his ambitions were much bigger. Namely, he was a nuclear submarine officer who graduated from the Naval Academy, one of the first in the US, but they were very carefully trained. In his home state of Georgia, he was elected to the state Senate and eventually won the election for Governor of Georgia, serving one term. His election as President was a sensation. It is not surprising that he was interested in disarmament issues due to his familiarity with the subject. The leader of the USSR Leonid Brezhnev was also interested in disarmament to enhance his prestige in the world. Carter's Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, as it turns out from the Mitrokhin archive (senior KGB officer Mitrokhin handed over the archive of Soviet foreign intelligence to the West in the 1990s), was in close contact with Soviet spies for some time, and so things went smoothly. 1979 In Vienna, the men signed the SALT II treaty.
Unfortunately, things went downhill after that. The Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan put an end to relations between the USA and the USSR, which had been developing successfully in the year of the US presidential election. The USA began a boycott of the Moscow Olympics and the Tallinn sailing regatta.
But even then, no one thought that Carter would lose to Reagan, who seemed to be far right, but of course was not. Reagan was a staunch anti-communist, but Donald Trump is actually much more colorful in his views than him.
Carter had to resign. But fate brought him the Nobel Peace Prize. And perhaps he really was the man who deserved it. He fought for disarmament, for peace in the Middle East, was merciless to prisoners and for human rights in general. Perhaps God gave him many years for this very reason.
