The Great Powers and the Olympics
With Russia beating up on Georgia at the very same time as the Olympics are underway in Beijing, it’s perhaps inevitable that the conversation has now turned to the propriety of Russia hosting the 2014 winter games while under the rule of a “bad actor” regime. This, combined with the boomlet earlier this year for the idea of boycotting the Beijing games, makes me wonder if it wouldn’t be better to adopt a policy of trying to award the Olympics only to unimportant countries.
Of course you couldn’t make an official “unimportant countries only” rule because some unimportant countries, Italy for example, probably would like to maintain that they are in fact important. But as a commonsense guideline, I think we know which countries the important ones are with our fancy nuclear arsenals and UN Security Council seats. A rule like “the United States gets to host Olympics but great power rivals whose governments we don’t approve of don’t” has a certain appeal from a U.S. point of view but it doesn’t seem likely to be adopted. But if the Olympics were always being held in someplace like Portugal or Argentina or the Netherlands it seems to me that folks could just enjoy the spectacle for what it is and be spared some of the endless controversy about boycotts and so forth.
42 Responses to “The Great Powers and the Olympics”
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August 11th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
See but the you get to France and the UK. And then you have Canada. Are they important? Unimportant? In some ways it makes much more sense just to pick Athens for the summer games and like Switzerland for the Winter and be done with it but then the IOC wouldn’t get the graft.
August 11th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
It could still play into great power games, if “unimportant” countries become proxies for the great powers. After all, somebody has to pay for the bread and circuses, and the great powers might pay for it indirectly for their clients.
Maybe the solution is to downsize the Olympics, getting rid of the less popular sports, and make the games less of a trophy. Of course, the IOC would never consider that.
August 11th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
If the Olympics had been held in the U.S. this year, would there have been more protests over U.S. actions than over China’s?
August 11th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
You mean you’re watching the olympics? By purest chance (flipping channels settled on a Spanish network) I saw the guy running in air to light the torch and that was completely enough for me.
But yeah, awarding the games to powerful “important” countries is six kinds of stupid, especially Russia (under Putin the absolute political heir of the CCCP).
And (while we’re here) London? What the fuck was anyone thinking?
The olympics should go exclusively to:
1. settled second rank cities in politically stable, uneventful countries
2. capitals of formerly 3rd world countries that are progressing economically and politically
Lillehammer? Nagano? YES!
Any where in Russia? NO!
August 11th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
The IOC has truly become a joke. Just give the games to North Kore or something…
http://www.political-buzz.com/
August 11th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
I agree with Rob, hold the Summer Games in Greece and the Swiss Alps every year.
Also Olympics-haters can jump in a lake, I’m a sucker for the Summer Games. I love swimming, gymnastics and track, and I really love finding obscure sports to watch during the day, like sailing or shooting or badminton or whatever. (Sailing is so relaxing and awesome… there’s a single commentator called the Commodore and he spends half his time talking about the weather and how beautiful the scenery is.)
August 11th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Don’t know if this post is meant as a tongue-in-cheek application of the usually correct “U.S. should seek to establish and enforce neutral rules which a rational actor could accept” reasoning, but if it’s serious what are the purported costs of having a selection process for Olympic cities in which political frequently arise, such that you think it’s a good idea to change the process so that those issues arise less often? That the discussion of the political issues is annoying? That doesn’t seem like much of a cost to me.
August 11th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
wonder if it wouldn’t be better to adopt a policy of trying to award the Olympics only to unimportant countries.
Well, Canada *is* hosting the 2010 games…
August 11th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
I don’t know; the controversy of run-up to the games has gotten some conversations started about China’s internal politics and theoretically that could move the ball forward. I think it was a mistake to give them the games, and I don’t think the benefit to the average Chinese citizen outweigs the cost given how many people were displaced by the construction, etc. But in other situations — and if the IOC does this calculus better in the future — you can imagine some future site in which the games are a net positive under this type of analysis. (From what I’ve heard, lots of South Koreans say the Seoul games helped catalyze an opening of their society. It came at a fortuitous time, but still things might have played out differently without the Olympics.)
As to keeping the games in permanent homes — they’d very quickly lose their grandeur, and that would be a real shame.
Note: I’m an unreconstructed Olympics fan.
August 11th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Incidentally, the 2014 Games aren’t just in Russia. They’re in Sochi, which is a city essentially on the Russian border with Abkhazia — the second major disputed territory between Georgia and Russia. We visited there about ten years ago, and at the time, it was not uncommon for Russian planes to be shot down on approach by Abkhazian (or Georgian — I’m not quite clear) guerillas in the mountains outside the city.
It would be as if there was a dispute between the US and Mexico over Baja California, and the Olympics were scheduled to take place in San Diego.
August 11th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Agreed re: Summer Games – give them to Athens, if not every four years, then at least every eight.
Winter Olympics – as long as the Netherlands kicks Germany’s ass in speed skating, I don’t care where they’re held.
August 11th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Also: Alicia Sacramone. Hubba hubba.
August 11th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Except that unlike talking to Bush, getting to host the Olympics is a reward. China has used it to crack down on internal dissent, further censor the internet and stir up nationalism against foreign critics of China’s policies on Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan and Darfur.
August 11th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
How about we just keep sports and politics separate? That doesn’t seem so hard. Pick the most attractive hosting proposal with some provision for rotating hosting duties around the world. That’s pretty much how they do it, no?
I agree Sochi was a bit of a peculiar choice, but given that they (a) send hundreds of athletes to every Olympics, (b) are historically one of the most successful olympic competitors, and (c) have organizational and financial werewithal to put together a strong games, don’t they deserve to host a games every few decades if they want to? Not everything needs to be about politics.
August 11th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
What I can’t understand is why isn’t NBC spotlighting Georgia-Russia matchups in the games? Apparently they placed second and third in women’s air pistol shooting! Later on we might see Georgia vs. Russia in Judo, Wrestling and Beach Volleyball! Tell me that won’t get ratings.
August 11th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
It should just be in Athens every year. Fewer chances for corruption based on awarding construction contracts.
August 11th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
if you win gold in team handball your country
gets a seat on the Security Council
border disputes settle by modern pentathlon
contest between regime leaders
August 11th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
The thing is that small powers can be bastards too. Sudan and Burma are weak nations, but picking on even weaker people.
August 11th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Incidentally, the 2014 Games aren’t just in Russia. They’re in Sochi, which is a city essentially on the Russian border with Abkhazia — the second major disputed territory between Georgia and Russia.
So by the end of the week they’ll be in Russia.
August 11th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
The idea of using Security Council membership as a sort of disincentive occurred to me earlier today, but in a different context. Someone on the news was discussing the probability that Russia can simply veto any sort of UN action on their adventure in Georgia. I wondered … has anyone ever suggested a new UN rule that any country engaged in military action other than territorial defense should lose their UN vote for, say, 5 years? If the UN is supposed to prevent and contain war, temporarily disenfranchising combatants seems like a sensible measure. Better yet, Security Council members who engage in non-defensive war could be dropped from the Security Council for five or maybe ten years. Even though some countries … like the US … openly despise the UN, I expect that the loss of prestige and veto power might be enough to give a would-be aggressor pause.
August 11th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
I think before long you’d end up with a very small UN.
August 11th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
But then we get stuck with second-tier cities we’ve never heard of– Lillehammers and Naganos. Say what you will, but Beijing is a more exciting Olympic host than Salt Lake City or even Atlanta. Depoliticizing the Olympics is kind of impossible (Miracle on Ice?)– but even if it were, it could only be achieved by losing the spectacle that gives the games much of their appeal.
August 11th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Except you can’t really separate them. The host country gets to award contracts for building new venues, give visas to Olympians and spectators, etc. China kicked over a million Beijingers out of their homes to build new venues. People will want to protest anything the host nation does wrong. The host nation gets to decide how free the international media get to be during the Olympics. How do you remove politics from any of this?
August 11th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Then again, speaking as someone who has spent a lot of time in Beijing, Beijing isn’t even the best city in China for hosting the Olympics. All having the Olympics here did was get people kicked out of their homes, increase the state presence in the city (more random scrutiny of foreigners’ Household Registration cards, etc.) and so on. Even if China absolutely had to host the Olympics, having them in a variety of other cities – Guilin, Suzhou, Xi’An, Hangzhou, Ningbo – would have been better, but foreigners are less likely to know those. Some of the soccer games are being held in the nearby city of Tianjin, which is just an ugly factory town.
August 12th, 2008 at 1:34 am
Actually why doesn’t the UN just buy some land from a nation and create an international city specifically designed to host the Olympics? Bonus, it could freak out righties about world government (which I support).
August 12th, 2008 at 8:43 am
A rule that a UN Security Council member would be ineligible to host the Olympics would have alot of appeal, and would keep the Games away from the worst violators of international law. Note that temporary members of the Council could host the Games after their terms expired, but if they got permanenat membership like some countries are lobbying for, they would have to give up any chance of hosting the Olympics.
This will never happen. Neither will my idea of having a lottery, with countries getting three balls for each gold medal they ever one, two for every silver, and one for every bronze, and picking the host country that way.
August 12th, 2008 at 9:24 am
How about a no nukes rule?
August 12th, 2008 at 10:42 am
The Olympics are an innately political event and in fact **were designed that way.** They exist as part of a political movement to encourage congress and understanding between nations. Whether they’re successful in that or not (I think they clearly are to some extent), it makes no sense to say they should be isolated from political machinations — they are a political machination.
August 12th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
I actually really like this idea. Yes, there are lots of unimportant nations that are bad actors, but these nations almost by definition could never afford to pay for the Games. Defining the border could be hard, though. For 2016, obviously we’d have to oppose Chicago, but who among Brazil, Spain, and Japan do we support? All three are on the cusp of being important nations, with the most attractive choice (few cities can handle a crowd like Tokyo) also being the most important nation.
August 12th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
I just want to say that this post cracked me up, in a good way.
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