Left Flank

What a horribly unpropitious start for 2008 Beijing Olympics. The Russians settle scores with the Georgians over South Ossetia, and the father-in-law of the US Men's Indoor Volleyball team is murdered.

John Hoberman deflates all the positive aspects associated with the Olympic movement, and concludes:

«Admirers of the Olympic “movement” can point to the success of a show business internationalism that has survived a tumultuous history. An institution this hardy, one might argue, must offer something of value. This year, perhaps, it is a starring role in celebrating China’s astonishing economic success story. Just don’t ask about human rights.»

The Duck's Charli Carpenter rebuts the claim, that the Olympic movement is about human rights at all:

I am no expert on the IOC's history or on any large-N studies that may or may not confirm Hoberman's claim that the Olympics have a negative or at best zero effect on the frequency or intensity of interstate war. But I am able to see an important conceptual problem in Hoberman's argument: he treats «internal human rights» as synonymous with «interstate peace.» For example, the first sentence of his abstract begins with the foil: «The Olympic Games were founded to bridge cultural divides and promote peace.» But the article primarily refers to the internal human rights abuses of certain Olympic-hosting states as evidence that this goal has not been met by the IOC. Hoberman derides the IOC's official policy of political neutrality and Olympic diplomacy as an «old cliche»:

«What the Olympics promote instead is a form of amoral universalism in which all countries are entitled to take part in the games no matter how barbaric their leaders may be.»

But it is precisely this amoral universalism that has the capacity to promote peace - among, not within, countries. It is no different from the political neutrality espoused by humanitarian organizations who, like the IOC, lack coercive instruments and instead peddle universal norms; or by the United Nations, an organization founded on the sovereign equality of states moreso than on a commitment to clean up their internal politics. In fact, the tension between these two noble goals - international stability between states, and human rights within them - underlies many of the key debates about UN reform today. Hoberman treats these two goals as if they are the same and can be conflated, when in fact, achieving one often depends on undermining the other.

So, let's be easy on the Olympics? Can we just agree on «Do no harm!» Or, how about, «Get off your asses and play a game yourselves» Why bother defending an institution only trying to refurbish its own reputation, rather than confront its own scandals or improving amateur sport? Has the spackled-on glitz halted the Russians, or kept a tourist safe? The nation-states of the world might not be as aristocratically honorable as the Greeks of the ancient Olympic era, but then the Greeks never had to contend with corporate sponsors and corrupt politicians. Can we just stop selling hope and dreams until someone delivers on past debts?