“Attorney, scholar, diplomat, and confidant to several Presidents.” To this brief description given by the President of the United States, we would add our own: One who has done his best to save us from ourselves and, more often than not, succeeded.
In Max M. Kampelman, we honor a man who has served his country and, indeed, the world, in a successful effort to achieve among diverse nations that understanding of mutual interest that has resulted in a significant lessening of tension between the world’s greatest nuclear powers.
He served as Ambassador and Chairman of the U.S. Delegation to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (1980-83), and in the same capacity as Head of the United States Delegation to the Negotiations on Nuclear and Space Arms in Geneva (1985 to 1989). Perhaps it was as chief United States negotiator in the Geneva arms reduction talks with the Soviet Union (successfully concluded in 1988) that he made his greatest contribution, lessening the tensions between our nations and reducing the threat of a nuclear holocaust. Most recently, he served as Ambassador and Head of the U.S. Delegation to the Conference on the Human Dimension in Copenhagen in June of 1990.
Ambassador Kampelman has been the recipient of over forty honors and awards from many countries and organizations. Over seventy of his books and articles have been published. He has been a faculty member or visiting lecturer at a number of universities and colleges, and served for a time as moderator of public television’s Washington Week in Review.
It is not always easy to see the scope and magnitude of the Peace Maker, for no battles mark the ground of his achievement, no city provides a monument of radioactive rubble, no cemeteries place rows of tombstones for those who have not fallen in a war that never happened. He is the hero of the non-event- something that quietly did not happen. So, Mr. Ambassador, we salute you for all those things that never happened. Life may not be quite so exciting, but we prefer it that way, and we thank you.
It is with gratitude, with affection, with pride, and with pleasure that the 1991 Cosmos Club Award is bestowed on one of its own, Max M. Kampelman.
