unions

“And do you know why? I normalized diplomatic relations with China in 1979. Since 1979 do you know how many times China has been at war with anybody? None. And we have stayed at war,” he said. The U.S., Carter said, has been at war for all but 16 years of its 242-year history. He called the United States “the most warlike nation in the history of the world,” because of a tendency to try to force others to “adopt our American principles.”

Carter suggested that instead of war, China has been investing in its own infrastructure, mentioning that China has 18,000 miles of high-speed railroad.

“How many miles of high-speed railroad do we have in this country?” Zero, the congregation answered.

“We have wasted I think $3 trillion,” Carter said of American military spending. “… It’s more than you can imagine. China has not wasted a single penny on war and that’s why they’re ahead of us. In almost every way.

Sympathetic to North Korea, to the point he even negiotiated with them in the 1990s to let them give up their nukes:

“And the North Koreans suffered because the United States did everything possible to destroy their economy. And we did everything possible to boost South Korea's economy. And so we condemn North Korea because its economy is lagging behind and its people are starving.”

And a Chavista:

“Electoral process in Venezuela is the best in the world." The comments were made in 2012, just three weeks before Venezuelans re-elected Chávez for his last term in office.

“There are 92 elections that we monitor, I would say that the electoral process in Venezuela is the best in the world,” he said in an annual speech at the Carter Center in Atlanta. He stressed that the system is fully automated, which makes counting faster.

He even admitted America's electoral flaws

At the time, Carter also revealed his opinion that in the US “we have one of the worst electoral processes in the world, and it's almost entirely due to the excessive inflow of money,” he said, referring to the lack of control over private campaign donations.

The Carter Center was one of the only Western NGOs to declare that the 2004 referendum in Venezuela (an attempted legislative coup, following the failure of the military coup in 2002) was fair and free.

And Palestine:

In his book Carter argues that Israel's continued control and construction of settlements have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Middle East. That perspective, coupled with the use of the word Apartheid in the titular phrase Peace Not Apartheid, and what critics said were errors and misstatements in the book, sparked controversy. Carter has defended his book and countered that response to it "in the real world…has been overwhelmingly positive."