In the early hours of a spring 1978 morning, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the stern national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter, entered the Oval Office and found the American leader contemplatively spinning a large globe. He was attempting to determine the most suitable historical location for a crucial Middle East peace conference between Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin.
Many of Carter’s advisors were taken aback by his willingness to risk his presidency on such a bet, save Brzezinski and Cyrus Vance, who were too familiar with their president. While negotiating a deal with Panama to provide it control of the Panama Canal, which was constructed and controlled by the United States, he had already taken a significant political risk the year before, an action that had infuriated conservative Republicans. The odds of Carter obtaining the two-thirds Senate vote required for ratification were quite high, yet he succeeded anyway.
Carter was about to unleash a fresh wave of ulcers on his staff with an even riskier gambit, only weeks after his success in Panama. Peace in the Middle East and the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination were central to Carter’s 1976 campaign platform. The contours of this peace deal, which would incorporate Palestinian sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza, were proposed by Brzezinski and others in a contentious 1975 Brookings report. Despite their obvious differences, the two men reached a consensus on the Israel-Arab conflict: Brzezinski, a Sovietologist of Polish descent with a Machiavellian inclination and a severe rivalry with Henry Kissinger, and Carter, a peanut farmer and former one-term governor of Georgia. Their motivations, however, were distinct. This was Carter’s opportunity to heal the profound animosity that afflicted the biblical Holy Lands; he was a frequent Sunday school preacher even during his early years as president. Such an agreement would be crucial in lowering the Cold War-era Soviet dominance over a big portion of the Arab world, according to Brzezinski. Recognition of Israel by Egypt, the biggest Arab military power in the area, would eliminate Egypt as a potential danger to Israel and would be an essential component of any Israeli-Arab peace. In order to persuade Sadat of Egypt, Palestinian autonomy must be a part of the deal.
Of all the options, Carter settled on Camp David, and the rest is history as a textbook example of the most straightforward form of presidential deal-making. It was a common gripe among Brzezinski and his associates that Carter read excessively. The president had a code term for himself within the White House: “grammarian-in-chief.” It wasn’t until the 13 days of peace talks at Camp David that September came to a close that everyone agreed that Carter’s voracious reading had been crucial. In the long and winding road that led to the first-ever Arab acknowledgement of Israel’s right to exist, his familiarity with every geographical feature and boundary in the contested Sinai desert was crucial. Although the Camp David agreements failed to resolve the Middle East conflict, they served as a blueprint for subsequent efforts to establish a permanent peace.
Looking to replicate Carter’s success, President Trump would do well to research the negotiations that led up to the pact. No president from the 39th to the 47th has been able to achieve this goal, although Bill Clinton came close in 2000 at Camp David.
Everything is in place for a deal to be made. Standardization between Saudi Arabia and Israel would be Trump’s primary bargaining chip with Israel in the current Middle East. Any wider solution would also need to contain a pact to terminate Iran’s nuclear weapons development in order to get Riyadh’s support. Just as Sadat was adamant on a Palestinian settlement, the Saudis will be as demanding.
Important to the Camp David accords was Carter’s stance as the first U.S. president to seriously consider Palestinian ambitions.
