The argument illustrated in the thesis outlines Zbigniew Brzezinski’s ability to manipulate himself and his agenda to top priority as the national security advisor to President Carter. It further argues that Brzezinski deserves more blame for the failure of American foreign policy towards Iran; not President Carter. The sources include primary sources such as Zbigniew Brzezinski and President Jimmy Carter’s memoirs as well as information from President Carter’s library in Atlanta, Georgia. Secondary sources include historians who focus on both presidential policy and President Carter and his staff. The thesis is organized as follows: the introduction of Brzezinski, then the focus turns to his time in the White House, Iran, then what he is doing today.

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This project explores how cosmopolitan personas rhetorically negotiate the space between local and global, discursively tying people to the national as well as to the global or transnational. It examines the possible co-existence of cosmopolitanism and nationalism while identifying how each is articulated in response to the other. As global networks become increasingly complex, rethinking borders and how they are articulated is essential. Can a quintessential cosmopolitan also be a public nationalist? Are cosmopolitan discourses compromised by their presumed lack of attachment to the local? To what extent and with what success are cosmopolitanism and nationalism siultaneously articulated? In order to study these and other questions, I analyze the public personas crafted by cosmopolitan figures Vaclav Havel, Jimmy Carter, and Edward Said. By illuminating how they negotiate that ambiguous space between locale and its absence, a project attentive to the rhetorical possibilities of discursive connection in a world increasingly devoid of shared loyalties and histories enables a fuller understanding of the possibilites of intercultural contact in a globalizing world.

Thesis advisor: Seth Jacobs / U.S. President Jimmy Carter's handling of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Middle East can only be properly understood in the context of his religious beliefs. Carter pursued what amounted to a faith-based foreign policy. Guided by the Christian concepts of justice, forgiveness, humility, and an emphasis on the importance of individuals, Carter attempted to make policy conform to the standards set by his faith. Viewing the Arab-Israeli conflict through this lens, he committed to advancing the Middle East peace process out of a Christian sense of duty. Religious belief caused Carter to champion the Palestinians' cause since he believed that the Palestinian people were suffering grave injustices under the Israeli occupation of the West Banka and Gaza. Ultimately, his faith-based approach proved unable to resolve the many diplomatic challenges facing his administration in the region. Fearing that any chance for peace might be lost, he invited Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel and President Anwar Sadat of Egypt to Camp David for substantive talks in September 1978. Only when Carter abandoned his religiously grounded policy orientation and embraced a coldly calculating approach did he succeed in getting the Israelis and Egyptians to agree to a deal. With the conclusion of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty in March 1979, Carter effectively removed himself from any further involvement in the process. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

Thesis advisor: Seth Jacobs / The Middle East was a tense place in 1976. In the past thirty years, Israel had fought four wars with its neighbors. President Richard Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger helped negotiate three partial settlements, two between Egypt and Israel and one between Syria and Egypt. But Israel maintained control of most of the Golan Heights, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and most of the Sinai when Jimmy Carter was elected president in 1976. One of his first actions as president was to embark on a course to attempt to bring peace to the region. He began with a plan for a comprehensive settlement between Israel and all its neighbors, but left office after only achieving a single peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. This thesis will examine the successes and failures of Carter’s foreign policy to bring peace to the Middle East. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: History Honors Program. / Discipline: History.

abstract: Time magazine called 1976 "the year of the evangelical" partly in response to the rapid political ascent of the previously little-known Georgia governor Jimmy Carter. A Sunday school teacher and deacon in his local church, Carter emphasized the important role of faith in his life in a way that no presidential candidate had done in recent memory. However, scholarly assessments of Carter's foreign policy have primarily focused on his management style or the bureaucratic politics in his administration. This study adds to the growing literature in American diplomatic history analyzing religion and foreign policy by focusing on how Carter's Christian beliefs and worldview shaped his policymaking and how his religious convictions affected his advisors. To better demonstrate this connection, this dissertation primarily discusses Carter's foreign policy vis-à-vis religious nationalist groups of the three Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam). By drawing on archival materials from the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Carter's own voluminous writings, and memoirs of other administration officials, this dissertation argues that Carter's religious values factored into policymaking decisions, although sometimes in a subtle fashion due to his strong Baptist doctrinal commitment to the separation of church and state. Moreover, Carter's initial success in using his religious beliefs in the Camp David negotiations raised expectations among administration officials and others when crises arose, such as the hostage taking in Iran and the electoral threat of the Christian Right. Despite his success at Camp David, invoking religious values can complicate situations already fraught with sacred symbolism. Ultimately, this dissertation points to the benefits and limits of foreign policy shaped by a president with strong public religious convictions as well as the advantages and pitfalls of scholars examining the impact of religion on presidential decision making. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. History 2013

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This study examines how the administrations of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan responded to the widespread human rights abuses committed by the Argentine military during the country's Dirty War between 1977 and 1982. The objective is to gain a broader understanding of the policies pursued by both administrations. Under Carter, who brought human rights to the forefront of American foreign policy, Argentina was heavily targeted and sanctioned with the anticipation that such measures would enhance the human rights status in Argentina. Ultimately, such policies resulted in open hostility in bilateral relations, culminating in Argentina's refusal to support Carter's proposed grain embargo on the Soviet Union in 1980. Reagan moved to restore relations until Argentina's invasion of the Falklands in April, 1982. The works of many authors were consulted in conjunction with newspapers, journal articles, government proceedings and declassified documents obtained from the National Security Archives.

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