The 1973 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to United States secretary of state Henry Kissinger and Worker's Party of Vietnam Politburo representative Lê Đức Thọ "for jointly having negotiated a cease fire in Vietnam in 1973." Thọ declined to accept the prize, and Kissinger accepted in absentia as he did not want to be targeted by anti-war protestors at the event. Kissinger later tried to return the award, but the committee declined his offer.
The 1973 Nobel Peace Prize is often cited as one of, if not the most, controversial in the history of the award. Two members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee resigned in protest, The New York Times referred to it as the "Nobel War Prize", and Tom Lehrer stated, "Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize".
Award Background
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." 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 Under the agreement, direct American intervention in the conflict was ended and the remaining U.S. troops were to be withdrawn from Vietnam in exchange for a ceasefire and the cessation of conflict between North and South Vietnam. However, the agreement was not ratified by the United States Senate, and fighting restarted before American soldiers left the country. 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. The South Vietnamese government subsequently refused to accept the accords, and North and South Vietnamese forces both frequently broke the terms of the agreement.The Paris Agreement on Vietnam: Twenty-five Years Later Conference Transcript, The Nixon Center, Washington, DC, April 1998. Reproduced on mtholyoke.edu. Accessed 22 February 2024.
Announcement 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.1973 Award Ceremony Speech. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Thu. 22 February 2024. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1973/ceremony-speech/ The committee announced its decision later that day. Thọ was the first Asian chosen for the award. Two dissenting committee members, Einar Hovdhaugen and Helge Rognlien, resigned in protest of the decision.Helge Rognlien. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Fri. 23 February 2024. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/themes/bio-helge-rognlien Einar Hovdhaugen. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Fri. 23 February 2024. The Nobel Prize: Helge Rognlien
Reactions 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 supporting the Pakistani army, and just a month earlier, the 1973 Chilean coup d'état. At the time the award was given, fighting was still ongoing in Vietnam.
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". Diplomat George Ball was quoted as saying, "The Norwegians must have a sense of humour." 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." 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". 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". 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.Award ceremony speech. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Fri. 23 February 2024. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1935/ceremony-speech
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." 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, 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". The deadline for Thọ to accept of 1 October 1974 passed without Thọ accepting the prize.
Ceremony 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. Aase Lionaes, the chairwoman of the 1973 Nobel Committee, gave the award ceremony speech, stating
In the course of her speech, Aase also read from Kissinger's letter to the Nobel Committee accepting the award, in which he said
Kissinger received half of the allotted prize pool for 1973, roughly $65,000 (), which he used to set up a scholarship fund in the name of his parents for the children of dead or missing American servicemen.
Nominations In total, the Norwegian Nobel Committee received 170 nominations for 45 nominees: 39 individuals and 8 organizations.