Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had stern words for his audience at the University of Wyoming. He was speaking at the UW Field House on the fourth of February 1976. A crowd of nearly 10,000 had gathered to hear him. Kissinger had been on a three-city tour, making stops in Los Angeles and San Francisco before he arrived in Laramie.
His speech started with a history lesson, cataloging all the ways in which diplomacy had served the United States well. But he went on to warn that nuclear war could destroy civilization and that American security could not be achieved in isolation. He spoke of cooperating with the Soviet Union in technical, cultural and commercial arenas and of the need for a softening of cold war relations.
Foreign policy, he said, could be set back by acrimony in Congress and among the American people. Kissinger argued that the principal dangers faced by the U.S. were domestic divisions. The United States, he said, “must speak with one voice as it deals with other nations”.
See the Gale McGee papers at UW’s American Heritage Center, to learn more.