Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Improbable Militarist: Jimmy Carter, The Revolution In Military Affairs And Limits Of The American Two-Party System, Jeremy Kuzmarov

Class, Race and Corporate Power

Jimmy Carter is known for championing peace and pro-democracy causes in his post-presidency and is widely respected as a moral leader. Few Americans, however, are aware of the fact that in his last two years, Carter presided over a huge increase of the military budget that amounted to the largest in history to that point and promoted the adoption of fancy new military technologies which would be applied in wars waged by his successors. This paper examines Carter’s foreign policy and his embrace of the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), which aimed to reinvigorate American military power after Vietnam …