1973 Nobel
Peace Prize to Kissinger and Le Duc Tho.
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At its meeting on October 16 the
Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Storting decided to award the
Peace Prize for 1973 to Henry
Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, the two chief negotiators who
succeeded in arranging the ceasefire after negotiating for nearly
four years. For many long and bitter years the civilian population
of Vietnam and the fighting troops engaged on both sides had
borne the sufferings and privations of war. This was a war that
concerned not only Vietnam and its people; it was a war moreover
that had poisoned the atmosphere in countries and between countries
all over the world. Never since the conclusion of the Second
World War have the people of Vietnam enjoyed unbroken peace.
At the conclusion of the World War France was faced in Vietnam
with a powerfully armed resistance movement under Communist
leadership. Attempts to negotiate a solution to the problem
of establishing and recognising an independent Vietnamese state
proved unsuccessful. Open war broke out. Although the number
of French troops involved amounted to close on 400,000, France
failed to crush the opposition. After the defeat of France at
Dien Bien Phu in 1954 a ceasefire agreement was concluded at
Geneva. A military line of demarcation was drawn at the 17th
parallel. The intention was for the country subsequently to
be unified after free elections had been held. This, however,
was not to be: the new government in South Vietnam maintained
that free elections could not be carried out under the Communist
regime in the north. As a result two states emerged on the soil
of Vietnam. Between 1954 and 1960 the two Vietnamese states
took shape, a Communist state in the north and a non-Communist
one in the south. In South Vietnam a guerilla movement, opposed
to the government in power, came into being. In the course of
1960 its activities increased. At the end of that year a joint
organisation and command was established in the National Liberation
Movement, the FLN. It was acclaimed in North Vietnam, and the
South Vietnamese government maintained that the FLN was operating
under North Vienamese control. During the years that followed
the South Vietnamese government failed to hold in check the
increasing activities and influence of the FLN. It was also
clear that attempts to create an effective administration and
government in South Vietnam had failed. In 1964 decisions were
made that resulted in the United States during the next few
years, committing American armed forces to acts of war on Asian
soil. These troops were at that time engaged both in a civil
war in South Vietnam and in a war between the two Vietnamese
states. This took the form of a large-scale commitment of American
forces on South Vietnamese soil, as well as air attacks on targets
in North Vietnam and on supply lines, through Laos and Cambodia,
for North Vietnamese troops. In March 1969 the number of American
soldiers in Vietnam reached maximum figures of 541,500 men.
The escalation of the American commitment was matched by a corresponding
increase in North Vietnamese forces in South Vietnam. The world
today is aware of the misery that the war has inflicted on the
people of Vietnam. The mechanical inhumanity of modern warfare
has gone hand in hand with the horrors of civil war. There is
no need here to repeat the uncertain but chilling figures of
the victims of this war - the dead and wounded, the orphans,
prisoners of war, deportees, and homeless multitudes, fleeing
from the theatre of war. The war proved a nightmare not only
to the people of Vietnam but to the entire world. In 1969 the
systematic withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam commenced.
By December 1972, out of a one-time total of half a million,
only 27,000 were still left. But the war continued, with major
offensives in South Vietnam and fresh aerial attacks on North
Vietnam - the latter as late as in December of last year. Nevertheless,
the negotiations for a ceasefire and peace in Vietnam, initiated
in Paris in 1969, only suffered minor interruptions. Finally,
on January 23 of this year the United States negotiator Henry
Kissinger and the North Vietnam negotiator Le Duc Tho arrived
at a ceasefire agreement, which they were able to sign on January
27. The Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Storting was fully
aware that a ceasefire and not a peace agreement was involved.
They realised that peace has not yet come to Vietnam, and that
the sufferings of the population of Vietnam are not at an end.
They were also aware that events in Vietnam may yet endanger
the détente in the world. The ceasefire agreement was only the
first but a tremendously important step on the laborious road
to full peace in Vietnam. It is our hope that the two chief
negotiators and statesmen who have been awarded the Peace Prize
this year will show the same understanding of the purpose and
intention of the award as that expressed by Chancellor Willy
Brandt in his speech here in this Festival Hall when he received
the Peace Prize for 1971: "Nobel's Peace Prize is the highest
honour, but at the same time the one that imposes the greatest
obligations, that can be bestowed on any man bearing political
responsibility.
Henry A. Kissinger was born in Germany in 1923 of Jewish parents.
In 1938 his family escaped to the United States. His father,
who had been a teacher, worked in an office in New York. Henry
Kissinger was called up for military service in 1943, and became
an American citizen. He took part in the concluding military
operations in Europe, and was responsible for the administration
of a small South German town administered by the occupying allied
powers. In 1946 he won a scholarship for study at Harvard University.
In 1954 he received his doctor's degree for a thesis on the
European peace settlement after the Napoleonic Wars. In the
1950s he conducted a study group at the Council of Foreign Relations
in New York. This group analysed the relations of the USA to
the Soviet Union, in particular problems of military security
in the nuclear age. In 1957 he returned to Harvard, where he
was appointed professor in 1962. In the 1950s and likewise in
the 1960s he wrote a great deal on various political subjects.
He also carried out research projects for President Eisenhower
and President Kennedy. Without associating himself with any
party he also helped to draw up Nelson A. Rockefeller's programme
during the presidential election of 1968. After 1968 he worked
in an advisory capacity for President Nixon. From January 1969
he was to play a central role as advisor to the President on
questions of national security. In 1973 he was appointed Secretary-of-State.
In all Dr. Kissinger's writing we catch sight of a basic attitude
which made him particularly suited to the role he was destined
to play in 1969. This attitude emerges already in local German
accounts of his conduct as an American administrative officer
in 1945-46. People still remember the way in which this young
German-Jewish emigré, who returned to the land of his birth
seven years later, wearing an American uniform, and seventeen
of whose relations had been murdered under the Nazis, made it
clear at once: "We have not come to take our revenge." This
attitude reveals an early developed concept of the relations
between people and nations, an attitude which tolerated no fanaticism
- not even in a young man of German-Jewish blood, not even in
his dealings with a people that had allowed fanatics to plunge
them into a moral abyss. In his doctoral thesis Kissinger deals
with the protracted period of peace that reigned in Europe after
1814, a period that lasted with infrequent warlike interruptions
for a hundred years, right up to 1914. In dealing with this
period many historians emphasise exclusively the military balance
of power: no single great power was militarily strong enough
to endeavour to dominate the whole of Europe - as Napoleon had
done before 1814 and Germany was to do after 1914. Kissinger,
on the other hand, places a great deal of emphasis on the fact
that peace was bound up with an international order, based on
universally accepted principles for the behaviour of states
in their relations to one another. In those days, too, political
systems differed widely, and the great powers had a great many
conflicting interests. But by and large they respected these
principles and rules, and on this basis they tried to prevent
differences of systems and interests leading to war. It was
therefore quite natural that Kissinger should place very great
emphasis on diplomacy as a factor for the promotion of peace
as well, diplomacy both as a profession and as an art. The overriding
idea in Kissinger's views on foreign policy is that peace must
be based on rules to which all states, at any rate the great
powers, adhere in their conduct. It is not sufficient for one
single state, or a number of states, to do so. On the contrary,
a dangerous situation may arise if some states desire peace
at any price and fail to ensure that other states, too, adhere
to the rules. In his doctoral thesis he expressed this as follows:
"Whenever peace - conceived as the avoidance of war - has been
the primary objective of a power or a group of powers, the international
system has been at the mercy of the most ruthless member of
the international community. " A policy of this kind could lead
to war, and the most frightening example was the Munich agreement
of 1938, in which the western powers sacrificed Czechoslovakia
to Hitler. There were people who believed that as the result
of this deal peace would be secured "for our lifetime". At the
time there was a failure to understand that Hitler entirely
ignored all the rules of the game in international relations.
It goes without saying that in the case of a man with Kissinger's
background the experiences of the 1930s were bound to set their
mark on his thinking. Whenever political extremists acquired
power in a state, they were dangerous, in his opinion, because
they were unwilling to accept any permanent rules in relationships
between states. For this reason he looked with profound misgiving
at the Communist governments, and this was to affect his thinking
with regard to the situation in the West and its security in
the 1950s. At the same time, however, he was aware, at an earlier
stage than most people, of the dangers to mankind that the new
atomic arms involved. He was concerned with the problem of how
the United States and Western Europe would be able to defend
themselves without having recourse to supremely absurd means
- strategic atomic arms. He pinned his hopes on the thought
that in the age of atomic arms all great powers must realise
that their most important task is to prevent the outbreak of
nuclear warfare. It was of vital importance to them to realise
this, no matter what political systems and ideologies they represented.
But recognition of this fact would also of necessity compel
them to develop a new relationship to one another, a new system
based on universally accepted rules, as had been the case in
Europe prior to 1914. This was Kissinger's working hypothesis,
the basis of his great experiment in foreign policy. In a world
of this kind the United States should not, in his opinion, try
to play the role of "world policeman". The other powers, first
and foremost the Soviet Union and China, should be invited to
join in as equal partners, enjoying the same rights in this
policy and with the same responsibility for peace in the world.
Kissinger is no technocrat: when he set out on his journeys
to Moscow and Peking after 1969 he had no cut-and-dried solutions
to the problems, devised at his desk in Washington. He approached
these problems with his working hypothesis, his message, his
queries. This great experiment indicates a way out of the world
situation created by the Second World War and the Cold War.
The policy Kissinger has attempted to put into effect since
1969 is closely bound up with the ideas he had arrived at long
before 1969. No one is in any doubt as to his personal contribution
to the policy of détente. In a recent interview he made it quite
clear that it is precisely because they have conflicting interests
and different systems and ideologies that it has become imperative
to seek a détente in the relationship between the great powers.
This is why it is so important to reduce the danger of nuclear
warfare. The détente provides governments with opportunities
to negotiate, and to act swiftly when required, as well as the
opportunity to show moderation. This was emphasised in connection
with the crisis in the Middle East. This year's Nobel Prize
winner has been called a realist. He cautions against the markedly
ideological and emotionally conditioned approach in foreign
policy, in his own country as well. This realism of his is deeply
rooted in a considered conviction, a fundamental ethical attitude
which has remained unshaken through changing times and situations.
His preoccupation has been the responsibility of the statesman
in an imperfect and multifarious world, full of danger. Now
he himself bears the burden of such responsibility. In the years
that lie ahead we shall know how far his experiment will take
us on the road to a safer world. But this depends not only on
Henry Kissinger, nor only on the United States. One of the touchstones
in the conflict is the Middle East; another touchstone is the
conflict in Vietnam. Here the result depends on all parties
involved in the conflict, both the states in the actual area
of conflict and the superpowers who are involved. In our part
of the world, too, in Europe, negotiations are at present going
on for a détente, security and cooperation within the global
framework which this great experiment has provided. Today a
handful of great statesmen are sitting down at the conference
table, deciding the question of war and peace in the world.
But the millions of people whose fate is at stake cannot allow
the politicians to carry the burdens and responsibility alone.
By means of an active and positive world opinion we must make
our contribution to the fulfilment of our hopes for peace. Irrespective
of national boundaries the peoples of this world, and not least
the peace organisations, must speak with one voice, the voice
of peace, so loudly that the politicians are forced to listen.
There are people today who cynically shrug their shoulders at
negotiated agreements. This is an amoral, nay, a dangerous attitude.
Ceasefire agreements between states must not be called in question,
they must not be interpreted merely as paper resolutions, but
as a moral and inviable obligation between the states that have
signed them. Only with an honest approach of this kind to the
intentions and obligations of international agreements can they
help us along the road to peace. The peace at which we must
aim must not be limited merely to the avoidance of military
conflict. Real peace in the world can only mean that all of
us, in every country, should make it possible for people, irrespective
of race, religion, ideology, or nationality, to live a life
free from fear, free from violence, free from terrorism - a
life in which the fundamental human rights are the secure and
imperishable possession of every single human being. |
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