In October 1973, the Nobel Committee announced that the year’s Nobel Peace Prize would be awarded jointly to Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho. The American Secretary of State and North Vietnamese diplomat were to be awarded for their work in achieving the Paris Peace Accords, nominally ending the decade-long Vietnam War.
The immediate reaction to the announcement was broadly negative. It was noted that despite America’s withdraw of combat troops from Indochina, the terms of the cease-fire had been almost immediately breached, and that North and South Vietnamese troops were constantly skirmishing as if the Accords had never been signed. George Ball, who had urged Lyndon Johnson not to escalate the war, concluded that “the Norwegians must have a sense of humor” while the New York Times called it “the Nobel War Prize.” The Norwegian Labour Party newspaper Arbeiderbledet concluded that the committee had “disgraced itself;” two members of the committee apparently agreed, resigning soon after the award’s announcement.
Kissinger considered declining the award, though more out of frustration with Tho’s inclusion than qualms about ongoing combat in Vietnam (Kissinger, after all, had announced that “peace is at hand” the previous October, months before any formal peace agreement had been reached). Tho himself took the extraordinary step of declining the Prize: “it is impossible for me to accept the 1973 Nobel Prize for Peace which the committee has bestowed on me. Once the Paris accord on Vietnam is respected, the arms are silenced and a real peace is established in South Vietnam, I will be able to consider accepting this prize. With my thanks to the Nobel Prize Committee please, accept, madame, sincere respects.”
Then why did this bad joke of an agreement go forward? Historians have discovered that the Nobel Committee had argued long, and sometimes bitterly about awarding it to Kissinger. John Sanness, a Norwegian Labour politician on the committee, had personally nominated Kissinger and lobbied on his behalf; eventually, it was agreed to add Tho as co-recipient in hopes of heading off criticism. Perhaps they would have been less inclined to reward Kissinger had they been privy to the White House tapes, where he and President Nixon explicitly wrote off hope of a lasting peace:
Nixon: Looking at the foreign policy process, though, I mean, you’ve got to be—we also have to realize, Henry, that winning an election is terribly important. It’s terribly important this year . . . but can we have a viable foreign policy if a year from now or two years from now, North Vietnam gobbles up South Vietnam? That’s the real question.
Kissinger: If a year or two years from now North Vietnam gobbles up South Vietnam, we can have a viable foreign policy if it looks as if it’s the result of South Vietnamese incompetence. If we now sell out in such a way that, say, within a three- to four-month period, we have pushed President Thieu over the brink—we ourselves—I think, there is going to be—even the Chinese won’t like that. I mean, they’ll pay verbal—verbally, they’ll like it.President Nixon: But it’ll worry them.Kissinger: But it will worry everybody. And domestically in the long run it won’t help us all that much because our opponents will say we should’ve done it three years ago.
President Nixon: I know.
Kissinger: So we’ve got to find some formula that holds the thing together a year or two, after which—after a year, Mr. President, Vietnam will be a backwater. If we settle it, say, this October, by January ’74 no one will give a damn.
No wonder Tom Lehrer concluded that “Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”