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Myanmar: It is Time to Play the Olympics Card.
The moral authority of the United States has been generally absent from the world stage during the Bush Administration's tenure, but it is not too late for the Administration to make one last effort to redeem itself.
The time has come for the United States to play the only card it has in its deck of playing cards in its relations with the People's Republic of China. The United States must seriously threaten to boycott the 2008 Summer Olympics unless China (and Russia) put creditable pressure on the Generals to restore the role of the Buddhist monks in Myanmar society and release their leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
We need to play the Olympic card because the situation in Myanmar verges on genocide. The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defined genocide as "acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial, or religious group...." What this means in the Myanmar context is that the Myanmar Generals have deliberately set out destroy Buddhism as an institution in Myanmar by killing and incarcerating Buddhist monks not for what they did, which was to organize and participate in mass pro-democracy demonstrations, but because of who they are, a religious force for change that advocates dialogue and reconciliation based on the benign teachings of the Buddha.
Samantha Power tells us in her Pulitzer Prize winning study of genocide, The Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, that Raphael Lemkin, the Holocaust survivor who was the father of the 1948 Convention on Genocide, once wrote that "The Treaty is like a ship carrying survivors, it cannot be permitted to sink." Lemkin's words cry out to the United States with a plea for the last remaining superpower not to look away as wisps of genocide float through the blood stained Pagodas and monasteries in Myanmar, now empty of monks.
China is the one country which the Generals might heed. However China, like Russia and India, has put economic self-interest ahead of moral considerations and currently has no incentive to change its view.
The People's Republic is seemingly impervious to outside influence except for one chink in its armor, the 2008 Summer Olympics. China hopes to obliterate memories Tiananmen Square by dazzling the world with a brilliant coming out party next summer. Only the United States has the stature to spoil the party.
How would Olympic card be played? Cleverly, not unlike a good poker player plays a hand that holds an Ace in the hole. While China has consistently vetoed Security Council resolutions that urge an improved record of human rights in Myanmar, this could change if China found itself starring at the possibility of a tarnished 2008 Olympics. To start the United States would inform China that "nothing is off the table" regarding our response to the situation in Myanmar. If this does not adequately focus China's attention, the United States should raise the ante by advocating that spectators planning to attend the Olympics make a statement in support of the monks by canceling reservations and staying put. Finally, the American athletes themselves would be asked to support freedom and democracy in Myanmar by making the heartbreaking but stunning sacrifice of withdrawing from the Olympics.
It is not often that morality is afforded an opportunity to trump economic self-interest, but the United States is now presented with the unique chance to stand up for freedom, where others fear to tread. History will judge such a stand as a shining moment in our history, one that will help rescue American prestige in the eyes of the world for years to come.
Do we dare?
Peter F. Spalding is a retired member of the senior Foreign Service and is completing a book on how to achieve an ethical foreign policy. He can be reached at PFS202@AOL.COM
14 Comments so far
Show AllPeter F. Spalding,
What a load of crap!
"How would Olympic card be played?" Stupidly. Playing card games with athletics and international relations? Is their any question as to why the US Foreign Service has such low respect throughout the world? The power to screw with athletes lives does not do service to any foreign policy, except to make it look juvenile and pathetic.
"Do we dare?" - Are there is any more immature foreign policy stances promoted by ex-Foreign Service officers? What's next? Are you going to "Double-dare" us?
Do you really expect free thinking people to link what athletes to for THEIR competitions and what governments do in their international relations?
How successful were the last boycotts? Have they received anything other than derision? This is what any future boycotts will confront also. Please help our relations grow beyond these simplistic bobble-headed policies.
The assumption that China has that much influence over the thugs oppressing Burma is not an accurate one. Thailand has more influence but they have a military dictatorship at present too.
I wish there were an easy answer to ending the horror going on there, certainly arms and assistance to the resistance would be helpful.
How on earth can the US show moral authority while engaging in attempted armed robbery on a nation-wide scale in Iraq? The US has been and continues to be directly or indirectly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq, and for the unremitting use of DU which will cause hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths in the future. How someone can urge Bush to reach for an even higher level of hypocrisy is beyond me.
Who cares about the athletes and their stupid games?
Its just a money making enterprise anyway.
At least in ancient times it was a respite from wars--but now it goes on whether there are wars or not.
Its a joke.
The situation in Tibet should have been enough to cancel the Olympics.
I just hope they get a nice dose of Chinese pollution.
If the US were to boycott the Bejing Olympics, China has its own trump card in that it could refuse to buy anymore US Treasury Bonds, thereby causing serious doubt about the US's ability to service it's own debt, and causing further decrease of the US dollar.
It's a truly global world!
Given the gross war crimes and many other crimes against humanity committed by BushCo and previous administrations, it is the US team that should be barred from participation. Furthermore, US athletes participating at international venues deserve to be heckled, booed, etc., as these athletes often make 6-7 figure amounts of cash and are thus part of the elite strata economically, which often leads to their being reactionaries politically, and jingos if they become announcers.
RichM
"The US govt lacks the moral authority to lecture ANYONE on any issue of human rights or "democracy." "
I completely and totally agree. We are like pigs sniffing at anything that looks remotely like food. We cause more deaths per week in Iraq than the junta has managed to do in a year.
We Americans are desperate to do something to assuage our guilt it seems, and the bush administration is more than willing to score points over China. The Burmese people are not in our consciousness, unless ofcourse you live in Berkeley ..
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/1997/08/berkeley.html
What about Chevron? I guess it's too much to demand that an American company support the Burmese citizenry.
No offense, but I lived through the early eighties when everyone was boycotting Olympics and banning other countries. Then, in 1996 I was living in Atlanta when the Olympics came to town and I got to experience the event first hand.
My conclusion, no people or country should ever be banned from the Olympics for any reason.
There's a very special atmosphere about the Olympics when they occur. Yes, there's a lot that isn't perfect. They can be too commercial. And they can be very disruptive as the preparations are done, and very likely resources spent preparing a city for the Olympics could be better spent.
But that said, when the Olympics finally occur and people from all around the world gather, there is a truly special atmosphere that occurs. If you ever want to truly feel like a citizen of the world, then go to the Olympics and just walk around. I can't think of a better way to encourage peace in the world than by walking around an Olympics. And I can't think of a better experience for people who's country is not at peace than for them to come to an Olympics.
Keep the Olympics dedicated to sport and to the coming together of the people of the world in an atmosphere of cooperation and peaceful competition.
Sorry, but we tried this kind of "We won't play with you" bullshit back in 1980 when the Soviets went into Afghanistan. It achieved nothing.
A better example would be to play the Jesse Owens Olympic card. Just as Owens embarrassed Hitler by beating his Aryan supermen four times, the US and the West should go to the Games and raise hell in CHINA about Burma, and Tibet for that matter. Imagine the trouble athletes could cause on the medals podium, in interviews, during opening and closing ceremonies.
And at the end of the day, that won't work either because the Burmese junta will only leave office in a coffin.
Olympics is about kids playing fun games. ok, i know a lot of dumb things happen, but kids do work so hard for so long to get to the games it's too stupid for government- any government- to take it away to make some kind of political point. there are always other things to do. let the kids run.
I'm with the author.
The spirit of the Olympics will survive if the 2008 games don't go ahead, though they probably will as even the 1980 Moscow games did despite a massive boycott.
As a kid aware of the controversy at the time I STILL thought the mascot bear was cute, and that it wonderful that people from all different nations came together.
Everyone knows that it sucks to party on as if nothing's wrong, when eveyone knows something is very wrong. So you might as well turn the music down a bit, especially if might increase the peace of a suffering neighbouring nation.
As for ratcheting up Bushco hypocrisy, I think it's a sublime idea. It can only help to shred any remaining tatters of the administration's credibility.
Commondreamers with severe neural intolerace of Bushco may protest the very thought of one more thing to despise, but really, that's not a very strategic attitude. Be joyous of opportunities to share the intolerance in ever-broader circles of solidarity.
The International Olympic Committee has had or been strongly allied with absolute scum, so the idea of the olympics being pure is is pure bull.
On US TV, events that the US does well in are focused on not mearly the excellence of athletic competition.