Such was the dark mood when shortly before eleven o’clock on the morning of October 16, 1973, a Situation Room officer interrupted a WSAG meeting on the Middle East to hand Brent Scowcroft an Associated Press news bulletin announcing that Le Duc Tho and I had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Scowcroft passed it to me without comment:
30
BULLETIN
PEACE PRIZE
OSLO, NORWAY (AP) — U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE HENRY KISSINGER AND NORTH VIETNAMESE POLITBURO MEMBER LE DUC THO WERE AWARDED THE 1973 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE TODAY FOR THEIR EFFORTS TO OFFICIALLY END THE VIETNAM WAR. CB1050PED OCT 16
I had not even known that I was a candidate. I threw the dispatch on the table. My colleagues read it with astonishment rather than jubilation; they congratulated me but without real passion. For we all were ill at ease.
There is no other comparable honor. A statesman’s final test, after all, is whether he has made a contribution to the well-being of mankind. And yet I knew that without the ability to enforce the Agreement, the structure of peace for Indochina was unlikely to last. I would have been far happier with recognition for a less precarious achievement. Without false modesty, I am prouder of what I accomplished in the next two years in the Middle East.
Mrs. Aase Lionaes, chairman of the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Parliament, issued a statement explaining the award in terms of the world’s relief at the end of the Vietnam war:
News of the Paris Agreement brought a wave of joy and hope to the entire world. The two chief negotiators brought their talents and goodwill to bear in order to obtain a peace agreement. The Norwegian Nobel Committee hopes that the undersigning parties will feel a moral responsibility for seeing that the Paris agreements are followed.
Shortly thereafter, I received a telegram from Mrs. Lionaes, confirming that Le Duc Tho and I would share the prize, amounting to 255,000 Swedish crowns (or about $65,000) each. I was invited to Oslo to receive the Nobel gold medal from King Olav V on December 10 and to deliver a Nobel lecture then or within six months thereafter.
The moment must have been painful for Nixon. There was no recognition for which he yearned more than that of peacemaker. And in fact the major decisions that had ended the Vietnam war had been his, whatever my contribution in designing or executing the underlying strategy. He might well have won the award for the Vietnam peace and other achievements — the diplomatic revolution he brought about with China and the USSR — had not Watergate destroyed this dream together with all the other aspirations that had sustained the incredible self-discipline of his march to the top.
I called on him immediately in the Oval Office. It happened to be the day that Melvin Laird became the first senior official publicly to discuss possible impeachment proceedings: Laird disclosed that he had warned the President he ran this risk if he defied a Supreme Court ruling on releasing the Oval Office tapes. Only those who knew Nixon well could perceive beneath the gallant congratulations the strain and hurt that I was being given all the credit for actions that had cost him so much. I sought to restore some perspective in a formal statement that mentioned him twice:
Nothing that has happened to me in public life has moved me more than this Award, which represents a recognition of the central purpose of the President’s foreign policy which is the achievement of a lasting peace.
I am grateful to the President for having given me this opportunity and also for creating the conditions which made it possible to bring the negotiations on Vietnam to a successful conclusion.
When I shall receive the Award, together with my old colleague in the search for peace in Vietnam, Le Duc Tho, I hope that that occasion will at last mark the end, or symbolize the end, of the anguish and the suffering that Vietnam has meant for so many millions of people around the world — and that both at home and abroad it will mark the beginning of a period of reconciliation. . . .
But beyond all these immediate crises, perhaps the most important goal any Administration can set itself is to work for a world in which the Award will become irrelevant, because peace will have become so normal and so much taken for granted that no awards for it will have to be given.
Normally the award of a Nobel Peace Prize is the occasion for great national pride. But our divisions had been too deep; to many, treating the Nobel Peace Prize as a national accomplishment would have meant acceptance of a course they had bitterly fought. Media reaction was restrained, to put it mildly. A New York Times editorial of October 17 snidely called it “the Nobel War Prize.” The Hartford Times of October 22 spoke of “Honor without Peace?” The Richmond Times-Dispatch of October 23 called it an “Ignoble Nobel.” My old sparring partner George W. Ball was quoted in the October 17 Washington Post as remarking that “the Norwegians must have a sense of humor.” Many objected to the award to Le Duc Tho, and I could share a certain wonder that a representative of a country that had invaded all neighboring countries could win a peace prize for making a cease-fire that even then it was violating in every provision. Nevertheless, in the spirit of the occasion I sent a friendly message to Le Duc Tho on October 16, hoping to inject a human note into the tedious exchanges on the deterioration of the Paris Agreement:
Let me congratulate you, Mr. Special Adviser. You and I have shared a great honor — not so much the award we have been given but rather the historic privilege we had of playing a role in ending a war.
On January 23, when you and I initialed the Paris Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam, you made an eloquent statement. You said that the event was a subject of great satisfaction for both of us personally and that we should not forget that historic day. I echoed this sentiment.
I also expressed my conviction that our work would not be complete until we brought a lasting peace to the people of Indochina and a spirit of reconciliation between the people of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the people of the United States.
This continues to be my profound conviction, and my sincere intention.
Not until eleven days later did Le Duc Tho reply. And he was beyond being moved by bourgeois sentimentalities like “peace” and “reconciliation.” In the interval he had written to the Nobel Committee declining the award because the Paris Agreement, he said, was not being implemented. It was another insolence by North Vietnam, whose transgressions had, in fact, turned the Agreement into a farce. Le Duc Tho cabled me in a similar vein on October 27, proving that no occasion was too solemn for him to forgo scoring debating points:
. . . At the ceremony for the initialling of the Paris Agreement on Vietnam, I still remember, when offering you the pen used for the initialling as a souvenir, I told you that the Agreement being now concluded, you should keep in mind the strict implementation of the Agreement, and you promised me to do so. I have not forgotten that promise of yours.
It is very regrettable that so far the Paris Agreement on Vietnam has been very seriously violated. The war has not yet ended, peace has not been really restored in South Vietnam. Therefore, I am of the view that all the parties signatory to the Paris Agreement must strictly carry it out. Only on this basis can we proceed to the normalization of relations between our two peoples. This is what I wish to see and what I will actively work for. I hope you will do the same.
On November 29, 1973, I asked Mrs. Lionaes and the Nobel Committee to donate the entire proceeds to a scholarship fund for children of American servicemen killed or missing in action in Indochina. The Paula and Louis Kissinger Scholarship Fund, named in honor of my parents, was established for this purpose. (On April 30, 1975, as Saigon fell, I wrote to Mrs. Lionaes returning the Peace Prize and the equivalent of the cash award.VII The Nobel Committee refused to accept them, replying that intervening events “in no way reduce[d] the Committee’s appreciation of Mr. Kissinger’s sincere efforts to get a cease-fire agreement put into force in 1973.”)
I had learned that my presence at the award ceremonies would lead to massive demonstrations by anti-Vietnam groups in Oslo. The Norwegi
an government, though unfailingly courteous and helpful, seemed relieved when I used the pretext of a NATO ministerial meeting to have the award accepted on my behalf by our Ambassador to Norway, Thomas Byrne. Slipping into the auditorium at the University of Oslo through a rear entrance in order to evade snowballs and anti-American demonstrators, Ambassador Byrne read my statement:
To the realist, peace represents a stable arrangement of power; to the idealists, a goal so preeminent that it conceals the difficulty of finding the means to its achievement. But in this age of thermonuclear technology, neither view can assure man’s preservation. Instead, peace, the ideal, must be practiced. A sense of responsibility and accommodation must guide the behavior of all nations. Some common notion of justice can and must be found, for failure to do so will only bring more “just” wars. . . .
Certain war has yielded to an uncertain peace in Vietnam. Where there was once only despair and dislocation, today there is hope, however frail. In the Middle East the resumption of full-scale war haunts a fragile cease-fire. In Indochina, the Middle East and elsewhere, lasting peace will not have been won until contending nations realize the futility of replacing political competition with armed conflict. . . .
If peace, the ideal, is to be our common destiny, then peace, the experience, must be our common practice. For this to be so, the leaders of all nations must remember that their political decisions of war or peace are realized in the human sufferings or well-being of their peoples.
As Alfred Nobel recognized, peace cannot be achieved by one man or one nation. It results from the efforts of men of broad vision and goodwill throughout the world. The accomplishments of individuals need not be remembered, for if lasting peace is to come it will be the accomplishment of all mankind.
With these thoughts, I extend to you my most sincere appreciation for this award.
* * *
I. Thus, Nixon wrote to Thieu on January 14, 1973: “To this end I want to repeat to you the assurance that I have already conveyed. At the time of signing the Agreement I will make emphatically clear that the United States recognizes your Government as the only legal government of South Vietnam; that we do not recognize the right of any foreign troops to be present on South Vietnamese territory; and that we will react strongly in the event the Agreement is violated.”
II. The Washington Special Actions Group, or WSAG, was an interdepartmental group responsible for coordinating policy during crises and reviewing contingency plans. It was formed in 1969. It was chaired by me and included the Deputy Secretaries of State and Defense, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, together with whatever other experts the subject required.
III. The National Liberation Front (NLF) was the original formal name of the Viet Cong, the South Vietnamese Communists. Later they called themselves the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG). They purported to be an indigenous insurgency within South Vietnam. When the North Vietnamese Army occupied South Vietnam in April 1975, the fiction was dispensed with. Some PRG leaders are today in jail, apparently for taking too seriously the propaganda that the PRG was independent of Hanoi.
IV. Nixon used the phrase in his news conference of November 12, 1971.
V. The GRUNK was, by its initials in French, the Royal Government of National Union of Kampuchea, or Sihanouk’s government in exile. It is not to be confused with the FUNK, or the National United Front of Kampuchea, Sihanouk’s political movement in exile.
VI. Seep. 682.
VII. The full text of my letter to Mrs. Lionaes is in the backnotes.25
IX
Chile: The Fall of Salvador Allende
The United States and Allende
IT may seem strange that in a book describing my stewardship of affairs I should feel obliged to include a chapter on the downfall of Chile’s President Salvador Allende Gossens in September 1973. It is a testament to the power of political mythology — for, contrary to anti-American propaganda around the world and revisionist history in the United States, our government had nothing to do with planning his overthrow and no involvement with the plotters. Allende was brought down by his own incompetence and inflexibility. What happened, happened for Chilean reasons, not as a result of acts of the United States. In the mass of documents that make up modern government, unfriendly investigators have failed to unearth any evidence that, even taken out of context, would prove otherwise. A suspicious Senate investigating committee was forced to admit that it could find “no evidence” of American complicity.1
To prove the negative is logically nearly impossible. So this chapter offers a brief history of Allende’s Chile between his inauguration as President in 1970 and his collapse in 1973 as well as a description of American policy during that period.
The record leaves no doubt that Chile was not a major preoccupation of the American government after Allende was installed as President. Indeed, Allende’s overthrow occurred while I was myself in transition from my position as national security adviser to my new appointment as Secretary of State (see Chapter X). Much of my time was taken up with confirmation hearings and the preparation for them.
This fact, which no doubt affected the sense of urgency with which we dealt with the immediate crisis in Chile, was essentially irrelevant, however, to the events leading up to the military coup. The truth is that the coup was indigenous; Allende was brought down by the forces in Chile that he himself had unleashed and by his inability to control them.
In the Presidential election of September 4, 1970, the overwhelming majority of Chilean voters — 62.7 percent — voted against Salvador Allende. But in the three-man race this opposition vote was split between the two democratic candidates, and Allende won with 36.2 percent, by a razor-thin plurality of 39,000 votes out of the nearly three million cast. The Chilean Constitution provided that if no candidate won 50 percent of the popular vote, the Chilean Congress would choose the President six weeks after the election. By tradition, however, the Congress usually confirmed the candidate who had received a plurality of the popular vote no matter how narrow the margin. And this they did. From this inauspicious beginning, Allende undertook a radical, wholesale transformation of Chile’s social structure and political institutions for which he had no mandate. This proved to be his undoing.
It was the first, and so far the only, time in modern history that a democratic process has come so close to producing a Communist takeover. For Allende was not the classic Chilean President who would serve his six-year term and then be replaced through another democratic election. Once he was in office, his proclaimed intention was to revise the Chilean Constitution, to neutralize and suppress all opposition parties and media, and thereby to make his own rule — or at least that of his party — irreversible. More immediately worrisome from our point of view was his implacable ideological hatred of the United States and his determination to spread his revolutionary gospel throughout Latin America. I have described our judgment of Allende’s purposes in White House Years in terms I have seen no reason to alter:
Allende’s later martyrdom has obscured his politics. Socialist though he may have proclaimed himself, his goals and his philosophy bore no resemblance to European social democracy. Allende had founded the Socialist Party of Chile, which set itself apart from the Communist Party by being more radical in its program and no more democratic in its philosophy. He was willing enough to come to power by an election before undertaking the revolution; but the social and political transformation he promised afterward did not differ significantly from the Communist platform. It was a central tenet of the party’s program that “bourgeois” democratic practices would be made irrelevant; by definition his would be the last democratic election.2
This was no mere campaign rhetoric. It had been Allende’s conviction throughout his political career. In 1967 he had been a founder of the Organization of Latin American Solidarity, a Havana-based coalition of leftist groups dedicated to armed struggle against the United Stat
es and to violent revolution throughout the hemisphere. Allende was not a reformist democrat; he was an avowed enemy of democracy as we know it. To imply that he was not loyal to his stated convictions is to insult the intellectual integrity of a man who was proud of his steadfast commitment to principle. Before confirming him as President, the Chilean Congress evidenced its mistrust of him by requiring his assent to a Statute of Democratic Guarantees — in effect, a negotiated Bill of Rights. He agreed to this only as a “tactical necessity,” as he proudly admitted to his French revolutionary colleague, Régis Debray, after taking office. While constitutional President of Chile, Allende told Debray that his assurances of democratic liberties should be viewed as comparable to Mao’s permitting private enterprise for a brief period after coming to power in China. His true objective in Chile, he told Debray, was “total, scientific, Marxist socialism,” which meant the “overthrow” of the “bourgeois State.”3
Nixon and his principal advisers were convinced that Allende represented a challenge to the United States and to the stability of the Western Hemisphere. Allende’s commitment to nationalizing American-owned companies was not our principal worry. True, we believed that policies which discouraged private investment were likely to defeat Chile’s hopes for economic development. And we inherited legislation — the so-called Hickenlooper amendment — that required a cutoff of American aid if American property was expropriated without fair compensation. But the Nixon Administration did not view our foreign policy interests through the prism of the financial concerns of American companies. In 1969, we had cooperated with Chile’s Christian Democratic President, Eduardo Frei Montalva, and negotiated fair terms for the nationalization of majority ownership of the Anaconda copper company. That same year, in Peru, we stretched the Hickenlooper amendment almost to the breaking point to avoid cutting off aid after Peru’s seizure of the International Petroleum Company. We repeatedly sought a basis to avoid invoking the legislation and finally worked out a modus vivendi with Peru despite the fact that its government leaned toward the more radical factions of the Third World.
Years of Upheaval Page 56