Jimmy Carter: The Liberal Left and World Chaos

What It Is

Published in 2009 by Time Worthy Books, under the full title Jimmy Carter: The Liberal Left and World Chaos: A Carter/Obama Plan That Will Not Work. Mike Evans, sometimes Michael D. Evans, is an American evangelical author and broadcaster and the founder of the Jerusalem Prayer Team, one of the largest Christian Zionist organisations in the United States.

The book is a sustained attack on Carter's record in the Middle East: the handling of Iran and the fall of the Shah during his presidency, and, more pointedly, his advocacy since leaving office, above all the 2006 book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Evans argues that Carter's approach, inherited and extended by the incoming Obama administration, will produce more chaos rather than less.

It is written to persuade, and it never pretends otherwise.

Why It Matters

Christian Zionism is one of the most consequential forces in American foreign policy and one of the least understood by people who do not share it. Evans is not a fringe figure: he built a mass organisation backed by the biggest names in American evangelicalism, and millions of voters hold, in some form, the view he argues. Reading him is the fastest available route into a position the political press describes constantly and reads almost never.

The substantive claim at the centre predates Evans and deserves a serious hearing: that American pressure on Israel to trade territory for peace has, on the historical record, bought neither. Whether the record supports that is precisely the argument.

Carter's 2006 book did lasting damage to his standing with American Jewish and evangelical constituencies, and this is one of the sharpest expressions of the reaction to it. To understand the politics of that decade you need something from this side of the fight, in its own voice.

The weaknesses are real and should be stated. It is advocacy, and the evidence is chosen accordingly; read the diplomatic record directly and it does not look the way it looks here. Prophecy and providence do genuine work in Evans's reasoning, and a reader who does not share the theology will notice the argument moving from history to scripture without announcing the change. And the strongest version of Carter's case is never engaged: Camp David produced the only Arab-Israeli peace treaty that has held for more than forty years, and a book prosecuting Carter on the Middle East has to answer for that. This one does not.

Evans is arguing with a Nobel laureate about the Middle East and does not once concede that his opponent might be arguing in good faith. That is the book's method, and it is also the book's limit.

Before You Read

Short. A few hours. It is written for a general Christian readership and nothing in the prose will slow you down.

Read Carter's Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid alongside it, or at the very least know what is in it. Evans is answering a specific book, and taking a rebuttal without the case it rebuts is not reading; it is being told what to think.

The useful question while you read is not whether you agree. It is what would have to be true for the argument to work.

Which Edition to Read

• The Time Worthy Books hardcover, 2009 — recommended. The first and standard edition, and the complete text; there is no other. If you mean to argue with a book, you want it in your hands. The cost: this is a small-press production, and it carries considerably less documentation than a charge of this magnitude deserves. View on Amazon →
• The Kindle edition. Same text, much cheaper, and searchable, which matters when you are chasing a claim back to its source. The cost: nothing but the object, and there is not much pleasure in that here.
• Used copies. Widely remaindered, and cheap. There is no revised edition, so nothing is lost by buying old.

There is one text, it has never been updated, and no collectible edition exists. What matters is what sits beside it on the desk, and that is Carter's own book.

Getting the Most From This Book

Read it as testimony rather than as history.

Check what can be checked. Where Evans cites a date, a treaty, a cable or a speech, look it up. Where he cites providence, notice that you cannot, and notice how the prose is built so that both kinds of claim carry the same weight.

Then read a serious diplomatic history of the negotiations. William Quandt's Camp David remains the standard account, and reading it after Evans is an education in what advocacy does to a record.

The commonest mistake is to open this looking for a verdict on Carter. You will be handed one whether you want it or not. The valuable exercise is working out which parts of it you could defend to someone who disagrees with you.