With human rights as its moral core, Carter promoted the idea of global independence. The Carter administration wanted to move away from the principle of containment. They rejected the East-West dichotomy of Kissinger’s linkage theory, which tied Africa and other regions of the Third World to the central question of U.S.-Soviet relations. 163 ‘Problems in that world, Vance stressed, had to be dealt with “on their own terms, and not through the prism of East-West competition.”’ 164 The regionalist concept was essential for the Carter administration in its attempts to promote human rights case-by-case. The Third World countries held particular importance as the administration attempted to bring an end to white-supremacy rule. Moreover, the surest way to combat Soviet and Cuban expansion in the region was American support for majority rule, human rights, and economic development. 165 The U.S. stance on the independence of African countries was ‘based on three fundamental principles: fair and free elections…an irreversible transition to genuine majority rule and independence… [and] respect for individual rights of all the citizens of an independent Zimbabwe.’ 166 By backing countries individual human rights, especially in the Third World, the administration took on a different approach to combating Communism. By promoting human rights by 163 Paul E. Masters, Carter and the Rhodesian Problem, International Social Science Review , Vol.75:3/4 (2000), pp23-33 (p.25). 164 Cyril Vance in Walter LaFeber’s The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad 1750 to the Present (Norton: New York; London, 1994), p.681. 165 Paul E. Masters, Carter and the Rhodesian Problem, p.30 166 Jimmy Carter, Public Papers of the President of the United States: Jimmy Carter, 1978: Book I – January 1 To June 30, 1978 , p.647.
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