1973 Nobel Peace Prize

Henry Kissinger and Lê Đức Thọ had respectively been the United States and North Vietnamese representatives at discussions beginning in 1968 in Paris, France which aimed to put an end to the Vietnam War. On 26 October 1972, Kissinger held a press conference in Washington, D.C. in which he declared, "Peace is at hand."^[4] On 27 January 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were signed. Under the agreement, direct American intervention in the conflict was ended and the remaining U.S. troops were to be withdrawn from Vietnam in exchange for a ceasefire and the cessation of conflict between North and South Vietnam.^[5] However, the agreement was not ratified by the United States Senate, and fighting restarted before American soldiers left the country.^[6] Additionally, South Vietnam had not been consulted on the terms of the agreement, and in fact had not even been informed that negotiations had resumed.^[7] The South Vietnamese government subsequently refused to accept the accords, and North and South Vietnamese forces both frequently broke the terms of the agreement.^[5]

On 16 October 1973, the Norwegian Nobel Committee held a meeting at which it decided to give the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize to Kissinger and Thọ for their roles in negotiating the Paris Peace Accords.^[8] The committee announced its decision later that day.^[1] Thọ was the first Asian chosen for the award.^[9] Two dissenting committee members, Einar Hovdhaugen and Helge Rognlien, resigned in protest of the decision.^[2][10][11]

International responses were strongly polarized, especially regarding the decision to award Kissinger. Controversy focused on his role in orchestrating the secret bombing of Cambodia, as well as his involvement in planning or aiding events that were deemed antithetical to the principles of the Peace Prize, such as Operation Condor, the Bangladesh Liberation War, and just a month earlier, the 1973 Chilean coup d'état.^[1] At the time the award was given, fighting was still ongoing in Vietnam.^[12][13]

In the United States, reactions were widely derisive. The New York Times published an editorial dubbing it the "Nobel War Prize", describing the award as "at the very least, premature".^[7][14] Diplomat George Ball was quoted as saying, "The Norwegians must have a sense of humour."^[7] Ernest Cuneo lambasted the decision to award Kissinger and Thọ while conflict was still ongoing, sarcastically writing in an editorial that the award "can only mean Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Chancellor Adolf Hitler were most cruelly overlooked for the same award in 1938."^[15] In Norway, the Nobel Committee was subject to widespread criticism, with the Norwegian Arbeiderbladet newspaper calling the award a "bad joke" and stating, "The Norwegian Nobel Committee has disgraced itself".^[16] In a joint letter to the Norwegian Parliament, multiple Harvard professors wrote that awarding Kissinger and Thọ was "more than a person with a normal sense of justice can take".^[1] For only the second time in history, Norwegian Nobel Committee members resigned as a result of the decision; the first time being in 1935 in response to giving the award to Carl von Ossietzky.^[a][17]

Kissinger himself contemplated declining the prize, as he considered Thọ's nomination to be an affront. He is quoted as saying to Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, "I figure it like Groucho Marx said, 'any club that took him in he would not want to join'. I would say that anything Lê Đức Thọ is eligible for, there must be something wrong with it."^[7] Thọ, in turn, did decline the prize, stating that "such bourgeois sentimentalities" were not for him, and citing the fact that the Paris Peace Accords had not yet stopped the fighting in Vietnam,^[7] though he said he would consider accepting the prize if the Paris Accord "is respected, the arms are silenced and real peace is established in South Vietnam".^[18] The deadline for Thọ to accept of 1 October 1974 passed without Thọ accepting the prize.^[8]

The award ceremony was held on 10 December 1973, on the traditional anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death, to give the Nobel Peace Prize to Kissinger. Kissinger declined to attend, concerned that the event would be targeted by anti-war protestors.^[3][7] Aase Lionaes, the chair of the 1973 Nobel Committee, gave the award ceremony speech, stating

In awarding the Prize in 1973 as well to two responsible politicians at the centre of events, the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Storting emphasizes its belief that the approach to a solution of the many controversies that have led to or may lead to war must be via negotiations, not through total war aiming at total victory.^[8]

In the course of her speech, Aase also read from Kissinger's letter to the Nobel Committee accepting the award, in which he said

I am deeply moved by the award of the Nobel Peace Prize, which I regard as the highest honor one could hope to achieve in the pursuit of peace on this earth. When I consider the list of those who have been so honored before me, I can only accept this award with humility. The people of the United States, and indeed of the whole world, share the hope expressed by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee that all parties to this conflict will feel morally responsible for turning the ceasefire in Vietnam into a lasting peace for the suffering peoples of Indochina. Certainly my Government, for its part, intends to continue to conduct its policies in such a way as to turn this hope into reality.^[8]

Kissinger received half of the allotted prize pool for 1973, roughly $65,000 (equivalent to $446,000 in 2023), which he used to set up a scholarship fund in the name of his parents for the children of dead or missing American servicemen.^[3]

The following members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee were appointed by the Norwegian Parliament for 1973.^[19]

As hostilities in Vietnam resumed in full, the 1975 spring offensive and subsequent fall of Saigon marked the complete failure of the Paris Peace Accords, and South Vietnam surrendered on 30 April 1975. On 1 May, the day after Saigon fell, Kissinger tried to give back the prize, stating via a cable to the Nobel Committee that "I regret, more profoundly than I can ever express, the necessity for this letter... the peace we sought through negotiations has been overturned by force."^[3][20][21] The Nobel committee declined his offer to return the award.^[1][21] As of February 2024, Lê Đức Thọ is the only person to have ever declined the Nobel Peace Prize, and one of only two people to ever decline any Nobel Prize.^[b][1][22]

The award has endured as a critique of the Nobel Prize and its chosen winners, and is often remembered as one of the most controversial Nobel prizes ever given.^[1][2] With regard to why he stopped writing politically satirical music, comedian and musician Tom Lehrer famously quipped, "Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."^[23] After the war, it was revealed in the Chennault Affair that Kissinger may have intentionally sabotaged peace talks in Vietnam in 1968 in order to help Richard Nixon become president, casting further derision on the choice to award him a Peace Prize for his work in Vietnam.^[24][25]

On 11 January 2023, documents from the 1973 nomination process were unsealed, showing that even the members of the committee who voted for Kissinger and Thọ believed that they could prove to be poor choices; further, they were skeptical that the Paris Accords would bring lasting peace.^[21] Stein Tønnesson, a Norwegian historian who reviewed the documents, said of them "I am even more surprised than I was at the time that the committee could come to such a bad decision."^[20] The records also revealed that John Sanness, a member of the committee, personally nominated Kissinger, and that the committee jointly awarded the prize to Thọ despite knowing relatively little about him as they felt they "could not give it to Kissinger alone."^[20][21] Following the unsealing of the documents and Kissinger's subsequent death in 2023, renewed attention was given to Kissinger's Peace Prize. One editorial published by Al-Jazeera labeled him "a war criminal with a Nobel Prize," calling the 1973 award "abhorrent" and "a slap in the face for the victims of Kissinger's brutality,"^[26] while Norwegian Nobel historian Asle Sveen told the Agence France-Presse that it was "the worst prize in the entire history of the Nobel Peace Prize."^[1] However, some defended Kissinger's award. In an op-ed in the National Review, Jay Nordlinger argued that North Vietnam, not Kissinger, was responsible for the collapse of the Paris Peace Accords, and that an undue amount of backlash was directed at Kissinger as opposed to Thọ.^[3]

The following individuals were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973; their names were unveiled in 2024.

• Abrams, Irwin (2001). The Nobel Peace Prize and the Laureates: An Illustrated Biographical History. Science History Publications/USA. ISBN 0-88135-388-4.
• Feldman, Burton (2000). The Nobel Prize: A History of Genius, Controversy, and Prestige. Arcade Publishing. ISBN 1-55970-537-X.
• Horne, Alistair (2009). Kissinger's year: 1973. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 9780297850915.