Matt Yglesias

A Better Way for the Olympics

This article about Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics seems like as good a time as any to reiterate the idea that the International Olympic Committee should fix a permanent location for the Games. Presumably in Greece, but really just about anywhere would do.

Even though competition is always fierce for the hosting honors, the reality is that cities only very rarely manage to reap the financial windfall that Olympics-boosters advertise. But if you actually got to reuse a given facility across three or four or five Games before it needed serious repair/replacement then mounting the event would be much more economical. Besides which, a fixed location would be more in the spirit of the original Olympics which were non-rotating.

The Great Power That Wasn’t There

Having the Olympics in Beijing and watching the Chinese dominate the gold medal category naturally leads to an uptick in the “China anxiety” you expect from citizens of the existing hegemonic power watching the rising number two. Some figures, like Robert Kagan, have already taken the arguing that China is inevitably bent on an aggressive foreign policy that will lead to clashes with the United States — and thus we must prepare for clashes with China and not at all worry that such preparations will look threatening to China since, allegedly, we’re already destined for conflict.

It’s interesting to observe, though, that when you look at concrete cases, far from seeming hell-bent on world domination, China is actually oddly passive on the world stage. When the PRC clashes with Western positions on the UN Security Council — over Iran, for example — it almost invariably hides behind Russia even though in the real world, as in the Olympics, China surpassed Russia some time ago as an important country. And when something happens that China can avoid taking a position on because it’s neither geographically in China’s backyard nor formally up for discussion at the UN, China usually says and does nothing at all.

This should be somewhat reassuring to Americans, but it can also actually be a problem. The Georgia situation, for example, has gotten to the point where some third-party mediation would probably be quite useful. A downward spiral in US-Russian relations across the board would be bad for both sides and the issues in play in Georgia just aren’t that important in the scheme of things, but nobody’s going to want to back down. It’d be a big opportunity for a China that was interested in becoming a traditional global power to kind of butt-in, do some mediating, and grab a bit of glory and it’d probably be a good thing for the world if it were to happen. But the Chinese leadership has seemed disinclined for years to try to play a global role in that sense and they give no indication of a desire to change that.

Anyways, consider that a bit of a not-quite-on-point introduction to CAP’s report on outlining a progressive approach to China policy.

Indeed It Might

Kudos to Jamie Kirchick for locating this priceless nugget from Taki Theodoracopulos:

It might seem politically incorrect to say this, but the Berlin Olympics were the best ever staged, the last time white American and European men and women competed on an equal level with blacks, despite the great feat of Jesse Owens in winning four gold medals.

This is, incidentally, a great example of the rhetorical ploys existing around the term “politically incorrect.” By conceding in advance that what you’re about to say is wrong, but then relabeling wrongness as “political incorrectness,” you’re somehow supposed to be exculpated.

Today’s Olympic Question

Every time I see beach volleyball or regular volleyball featured on television during the Olympics, I keep yearning for a behind-the-scenes feature in which we see beach volleyballers badmouthing the conventional volleyballers and vice-versa. I’m sure there are all kinds of invidious — and hilarious! — stereotypes that each breed has of the other, but I have no idea what those stereotypes might be. Any volleyball fanatics in the audience who want to clue me in?

Krauthammer: Russia Must Leave Georgia by 2014 . . . Or Else!

You wouldn’t expect Charles Krauthammer to turn in a sensible column ever. In particular, you really wouldn’t expect him to turn in a sensible column about the Russia-Georgia war. But I feel like today’s effort is an uncommonly silly one. Through his powers of clairvoyance, Krauthammer discerns that Russia’s “real objective is the Finlandization of Georgia through the removal of President Mikheil Saakashvili and his replacement by a Russian puppet” which reveals, among other things, a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of Cold War Finland. But Krauthammer darkly warns that the Finlandization of Georgia will let “Russia become master of the Caspian basin” (oh noes! the Caspian basin!) and then this, through magic, would lead to “re-establishing Russian hegemony” throughout its “former Baltic and East European satellites.”

I don’t know how many different ways there are to say this, but to think that Russia’s ability to detach two miniature provinces that don’t want to be ruled from Tblisi from a tiny country with a GDP of $20 billion will suddenly lead to Russian hegemony over, say, Poland with its GDP of $620 billion is daft.

But beyond all that, considering the high stakes Krauthammer thinks we’re playing for, his proposed remedies are pathetic. One, he wants to “suspend the NATO-Russia Council” that nobody’s heard of but that apparently was founded in 2002. Second, he wants to block Russian entry into the WTO which is already being blocked. Third, he wants to kick Russia out of the G-8. And then we get this:

4. Announce a U.S.-European boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics at Sochi. To do otherwise would be obscene. Sochi is 15 miles from Abkhazia, the other Georgian province just invaded by Russia. The Games will become a riveting contest between the Russian, Belarusian and Jamaican bobsled teams.

All of these steps (except dissolution of the G-8, which should be irreversible) would be subject to reconsideration depending upon Russian action — most importantly and minimally, its withdrawal of troops from Georgia proper to South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Basically, Krauthammer thinks that it’s extremely important to American security for Russia to withdraw forces from Georgia proper and his idea of a good way to make them do that is to . . . threaten to boycott an Olympics (note that this didn’t work in 1980) . . . that’s happening six years from now. That would seem to me to give Russia plenty of time to muck around in Georgia. Indeed, I see no indication whatsoever that Russia so much as aspires to have its forces in Georgia proper by 2014; certainly it won’t take them anywhere near that long to finish wrecking Georgia’s military. This seems to me to be an excellent example of what (via Dan Nexon) Jack Snyder calls “The Myth of the Paper Tiger” whose adherents hold that:

[Enemies are] capable of becoming fiercely threatening if appeased, but easily crumpled by a resolute attack. These images are often not only wrong, but self-contradictory. For example, Japanese militarists saw the United States as so strong and insatiably aggressive that Japan would have to conquer a huge, self-sufficient empire to get the resources to defend itself; yet at the same time, the Japanese regime saw the United States as so vulnerable and irresolute that a sharp rap against Pearl Harbor would discourage it from fighting back.

That sums up Krauthammer’s view perfectly. If we don’t stop Russia from having its way with Georgia, next thing you know the entire Soviet sphere of influence will be reconstituted, but Russia might be coerced into backing down by mild gestures.