Jimmy Carter died on Sunday at the age of 100. The former president’s passing followed that of former first lady Rosalynn Carter, to whom he was married from 1946 until her death in 2023. After leaving the White House in 1981, Carter enjoyed by far the longest retirement of any president in history: nearly 44 years.
Tributes have invariably described Carter as a decent, dedicated public servant; a longtime Sunday school teacher who built homes with Habitat for Humanity. A humble man who lived modestly and who, unlike his successors, did not enrich himself on the speaker circuit.
But this narrative belies the quietly radical approach Carter took to the post-presidency. By fiercely advocating for peace, and playing an active and transpartisan role in international diplomacy, Carter set a venerable standard for how politicians can serve the public long after leaving office. He did more to advocate for peace as an ex-president than most politicians do in the entirety of their careers.
President and First Lady Carter founded the Carter Center in 1982, with an explicit mission to alleviate human suffering. The Center “wages peace” by resolving global conflicts, advancing human rights, and monitoring more than 100 elections in almost 40 countries. The Nobel committee cited these efforts as a reason for making Carter the first ex-US president to win the Nobel peace prize (other presidents have received the prize, but all while in office).
His commitment to peace made Carter a go-to envoy to North Korea for decades. In 1994, he and Rosalynn were the first people to cross the demilitarized zone since the Korean war – and President Carter engaged in talks with President Kim that defused then-intensifying nuclear tensions. He went again in 2010, on behalf of the Obama administration, to secure the release of a US prisoner, after North Korea specifically requested his presence. He even offered to represent the Trump administration, though needless to say, they didn’t take him up on it.
In 2007, he co-founded The Elders, a group of statespeople committed to world peace and human rights, alongside the former Irish president Mary Robinson, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the former South African president Nelson Mandela. Carter played a key role in the group’s inaugural trip to Sudan to bring attention to the war in Darfur. He later led delegations to Israel and Palestine in support of a two-state solution, and in 2015 met with Vladimir Putin in Russia to discuss, among other topics, the conflict in Ukraine.
Carter took courageous positions few US elected officials would dare to take, let alone former presidents. In his 2006 book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, he charged Israel with human rights abuses in occupied Palestinian territory. The book generated outrage – he faced accusations of antisemitism, condemnation from leaders within his own party and resignations from the Carter Center – but Carter stood firm. (Years later, Steve Berman, who led those resignations, would write a letter apologizing to the president for doing so. Carter responded with a handwritten note insisting that the apology was unnecessary, that he understood the way his critics reacted, and that Berman would be welcome to return to the center.)
Carter had no qualms criticizing his successors, either. In a 2016 New York Times op-ed, he called on President Barack Obama to recognize the state of Palestine. He published another the year before, criticizing Obama’s call for the resignation of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. In that piece, he recalled stepping in when the US withdrew ambassadors from Syria, and in so doing he perfectly articulated his unique position in global diplomacy: “Bashar and his father, Hafez, had a policy of not speaking to anyone at the American Embassy during those periods of estrangement, but they would talk to me.”
For more than four decades, Jimmy Carter was the quintessential elder statesman. In a time when former presidents have been more likely to spend their days promoting themselves, rather than the general welfare, Carter stood head and shoulders above the rest. Leaders today could learn from how he leveraged his post-presidential power.
In the coming days and weeks, Carter’s legacy will be written about at length. His presidency will be discussed, as will his decades out of office. Across the entirety of his career, we should remember his fearlessness in the cause of peace, and his faith in the democratic institutions he fought to protect. As he himself said: “We take peace not as a dormant situation, but as one to be fought for – like winning an armed conflict.” The best way to honor Carter’s legacy would be to wage peace for as long as we can, everywhere in the world, with everything we’ve got.
Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of the Nation, she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and has contributed to the Washington Post, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times
This article originally appeared at thenation.com
