 The U.S. Naval War College is a Navy's home of thought. Established in 1884, NWC has become the center of naval seapower, both strategically and intellectually. The following issues in national security lecture is specifically designed to offer scholarly lectures to all participants. We hope you enjoy this upcoming discussion and future lectures. Good afternoon and welcome to our seventh INS lecture for this academic year and the first for this calendar year. I'm John Jackson and I will serve as host for today's event. Admiral Chatfield is unable to join us today, but I'm pleased to welcome you on her behalf. We've enjoyed bringing you this series as a way to share a portion of the Naval War College's academic experience with the spouses and significant others of our student body. It has been expanded to include participation by the entire Naval War College extended family, including members of the Naval War College Foundation, international sponsors, civilian employees, colleagues throughout Naval Station Newport, and participants from around the nation. Looking ahead, please join us on 25 January 2022 when Professor Jane Stokes will share her reflections on women in future warfare. Okay, on with the main event. During the presentation of follows, please feel free to ask questions using the chat feature of Zoom and we'll get to as many as we can at the conclusion of the presentation. On December 6, 2021, White House Press Secretary Jim Saki announced that the United States would initiate a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. For the first time in the history of the modern Olympics, the Winter Games have been the target of a boycott. There have been many boycotts in summer games which the professor will speak to. To understand how we got to this point, Professor Nicholas Sarantakis will examine the history of the Olympics, its relationship to international affairs, what exactly a diplomatic boycott entails, the prospects for this Winter Olympics, and the potential shape of future Olympiads. Nicholas Evans Sarantakis is an associate professor of strategy and policy, he earned a BA degree from the University of Texas, an MA from the University of Kentucky, and a PhD from the University of Southern California, all in the discipline of history. He is the author of Dropping the Torch, Jimmy Carter and the Olympic Boycott and the Cold War. Since the Beijing 2022 Olympics opened on Friday, February 4, our topic could not be more timely. Nick, the podium is yours, sir. Thank you for that generous introduction, John. All right, I am Nick Sarantakis and I'm going to begin my presentation in the beginning with an introduction. So I've been here at the Naval War College for 13 years and before that I was at Army Command and General Staff College and before that I was at U.S. Air War College, so I'm Mr. Jointness, Mr. Purple. As John mentioned, I've written a book on the Olympics, a book on the 1980 Olympic Boycott, and then I wrote another book that came out just before the pandemic in late 2019 on Richard Nixon and sports, and actually I wrote that one before I wrote the Olympic book. That book actually does talk about the Olympics, the Nixon administration made a number of efforts to support efforts to bring in the Olympics to Los Angeles in 1976. Didn't quite work out in 1976. Those efforts do lead to 1984. So I have a little bit of expertise on the Olympics. I never competed in the Olympics myself. I was never in great enough athletic shape. So anyway, here is the agenda for today's presentation. So these are the issues I want to look at. I want to look at where we stand, give you a quick history of the modern Olympics, and there are a couple themes. It will be a hop, skip, and a jump through Olympic history, so I won't hit on all the highlights, and then turn to look at kind of contemporary natures with how the Olympics fits into international relations, what the diplomatic boycott is, and then talk about what the future holds. And I should warn you that historians are not particularly good at predicting the future. We're great at telling you what happened, but anyway, so let's begin. Where we stand today, oops, almost, went a little too fast there, sorry about that. As John mentioned, on December 6th of last or last year, Jen Pisaki, the White House press secretary made an announcement. It was kind of in response to a question that was she was asked by a reporter. It was most likely one of those kind of planted questions. If you ask about this, you'll get a good response. So ask about this, kind of based on what I saw in the West Wing and stuff like that. Anyway, she announced that the Biden administration would initiate a diplomatic boycott. There's a reason I'm using air quotes, and that there would be no official representation at the Olympics. She also makes it clear that the administration was making no effort to keep individual U.S. athletes from competing at the Games. And I'll explain a little bit about why she's making that distinction in a few minutes. And she makes clear, subtly, but clear nonetheless, this is about Chinese behavior towards their Uyghur minority. So anyway, now, this is not the first or even the second boycott that has faced the Olympic movement. It is not even the first time that you've seen political interference in the modern games. And I want to look a little at the history of the games to make that point clear. I'm going to go through and give you a little bit of a timeline of the history of the modern games. And it's easy to start or it's easy to pick where it starts. It starts in 1894 with this gentleman, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, and I apologize if I mispronounced his name. I never took French. In 1894, he establishes the International Olympic Committee, and he's drawing on some French ideas on sporting activity, a lot of ideas on British sports administration, and also some of the ideas of a young up and coming American politician named Theodore Roosevelt. So anyway, two years later, the IOC revives, and that's the word, the verb they use, revives the Olympics after taking a pause of a thousand years. They're back. Not true. That's actually accurate verb. But anyway, that's a different story. And the first set of modern games were held in Athens to kind of perpetuate that these are a continuation of the ancient games. The stadium that they are held in is actually really old. It was first established in 330 BC. It's still there to this day. And it's made out of marble. And these are the opening ceremonies of the first of the Athens games. So in a sense, the Olympics are back then similar to what we have today. In another sense, they're quite different. There were only 14 teams. And from the beginning, they're organized on the basis of nation states, or at least they use the names of nation states as we'll get into that's not really accurate on how the Olympics are administered. Reflecting the ancient games, the athletic competitions are limited to male athletes. So none of the ancient games involve female athletes that will change of course over time. The most medals were won by athletes from Greece, which starts a Olympic pattern. Tradition might be too strong a word or misleading, but a pattern where the host country does much better than the normal in winning events. And you see political appearance almost at the beginning, actually at the beginning. The Greek royal family, which was not Greek, they are actually from Denmark. They are tempting to show and prove that they are Greek, which they really weren't. And they want to basically, they make an effort to hijack the Olympics, take over and say, we will have the Olympics every four years in Athens. And this is a way to bolster their Greekness. This was something they were a little worried about because the first king was actually from Bavaria. He's a member of the Bavarian royal family. He's booted out. They're brought in. It's a long, complicated story in Greek history that I'm sure would be very off topic. But there is an effort to take these, claim them as the prerogative of Greece and the International Olympic Committee, which is international, legitimately international in its composition says, no, we got this. That's okay. Next set of games are in Paris. And these are very different than the ones you have in Athens. They are basically an annex to the World Fair, and they are held over the course of several months. So this is not a two-week-long sports festival. There are a couple events in June. You have some track events, then you have some javelin throwing in July. You have some swimming events in August and so forth. This is the first set of Olympics that involve female athletes. And this lady, Cynthia Cooper, is the first individual Olympic champion. She wins a gold medal for the United Kingdom in tennis. There are 28 teams that show up, so the Olympic movement is starting to spread. Again, the host team does pretty good. The French win a lot of medals. They're still dispute to this day about who won and all this sort of stuff. And I actually shouldn't say medals. They win the most of the events. We're not getting medals quite yet. There are questions about whether or not this was an event sponsored by the World Fair or was this the Olympics. Some athletes are surprised 20 years later when the IOC starts trying to really nail down their records and says, yes, I remember being there. I'm an Olympic champion? Really? I didn't know that. Wow. Okay, thank you. There are more political disputes. In this case, it's not the Greek royal family. It's from individual athletes. In the early 20th century, you still had colonial empires. Even in Europe where the Russians and the Austrians and the British had gobbled up their neighbors. There were Irish athletes who did not want to compete for the British flag. There were Czech athletes who did not want to compete for the Hapsburg Empire. And there were Poles who really resented being part of the Russian Empire. And they all wanted, did not want to have their colonial overlords, the flag of their colonial overlords raised up while they were on the podium. And the Czechs actually get a separate Olympic committee out of this. Okay, 1904, the Olympics come to North America. And this sees the creation of the gold, silver, and bronze medals. And this is a copy of each of them. And as you can tell, it's a little different back then. These are actually pin-on medals, kind of like military decorations. These games are poorly attended. You see a drop in the number of teams, actually below what the number of teams that shown up in Athens. This, however, does show the first team from Africa when you see a contingent from South Africa. There was also a dispute between Australia and the United Kingdom about whether or not the team that was sent to St. Louis was Australian or British. Both nations or both national Olympic committees like to say they've been at every set of Olympic Games. And there's a dispute and the Australians are going, well, the British team was actually Australian. And the British are like, well, that's a distinction that didn't matter in 1904. Sorry. 1908, the games are held in London. And this is the first time you have a team from South America showing up when the Argentinians go. You see a recovery, 22 teams. And this is a little, again, a political manifestation shows up at the Olympics. This one is quite small. As they're doing the opening ceremony, all the national contingents dip the flag to the presiding officer. In this case, it was the king of England. And as the team marches by, the guy holding the US flag refuses to dip the American flag and says, we will not honor a king. We've kind of had a little bit of an issue about that since 1776. So to this day, you go through the opening ceremonies. The US team is the only one that does not say honor the presiding officer by dipping the flag. So anyway, and this is a copy or a photograph of the gold medal that you got in 1908. And as you can see, it's a little different than what you get today. It's actually a medal. It's not suspended by a ribbon or a chain. So all right, Stockholm. 1912. We see the introduction of the five ring, five ring Olympic logo. Japan becomes the first Asian team to show up. You have 28 teams. So the Olympic movement is spreading. It's getting bigger. You also see the creation of the introduction of international judges. And this results from political scandal in 19, well, not a political scandal, but a judging dispute from the London games. An American runner is disqualified. And at that time, all the judges came from the host country. Well, it turns out the guy who finished second who ends up getting gold medal is British. And the judge disqualifying him is British. And the athlete who lost the medal is an American and he says, dirty British colonial imperial power. So this becomes a bit of a controversy. And the sports federations who are ministering international sport decide the way around this is to create international teams. And I'll talk about who the sports federations are in a few minutes. So you see international judges and just a little historical trivia that I couldn't help myself because I've written a book on patent. George S. Patton, the general, is at the games. He's an athlete and he finishes in fifth place in the Decathlon, the modern Decathlon, which was an event involving running and fencing and horseback riding and all this sort of stuff. The first four place people who came in first, second, third and fourth are all from Sweden. So he is the highest ranked foreigner in that sport. Another little trivia that I thought was interesting, Oscar Sean becomes the oldest Olympian to win a gold medal. He is 64 years old. He will compete at several more Olympic games and will actually become the oldest Olympian. He competes into his mid 70s. And you're probably wondering how does a 60, 70 year old guy compete in the Olympics? He's competing in the rifle events. So it's not like he's running, you know, in the 100 meter dash or anything. And he is from Sweden. So again, part of the home team advantage. Okay, 1916, the games are supposed to be held in Berlin, but you have the First World War going on. So they get canceled. 1920, the International Olympic Committee makes a decision right at the end of World War One to host the Olympics, to decide to give them to Belgium, to kind of honor and reward the suffering of the Belgian people. Again, you start seeing the introduction of more Olympic traditions. And as you're picking up, a lot of this is kind of comes in bits and pieces. The Olympic flag and the Olympic oath are introduced. This all was organized in two years. And it's kind of not the most smooth organization. For example, the swimming events are held in a channel. And the water is apparently about 30 something degrees 3839 degrees. So people swim and then you have to pull them out of the water before they catch hypothermia. 2019 teams show up. None of them are from the defeated central power. So Germany, Austria, Hungary, Turkey are not invited to come. And this is a photograph of the 100 meter dash. The guy with his hands up is an American. And he comes in first. The guy to his right comes in second. And believe it or not, the third place guy isn't in this photograph, which means he just must have been moving at the speed of light because he's beats that guy on the far left. And they're all from the United States. So anyway, 1924, we see the introduction of the winter Olympics. This is a gold medal from those games. This is not particularly popular with a large number of members on the International Olympic Committee. And their reasoning for this is the ancient Greeks didn't play game winter sports. We shouldn't make them part of the Olympics. This is a different winter. This is different sports festival than the Olympic gathering. It's not right. So there are enough votes on the IOC that they make it part of the Olympics. And until the early 1990s, the winter Olympics were held in the same year as the summer Olympics. In 1992, 1994, excuse me, 1994, they changed that and they created kind of an off cycle winter Olympics. So anyway, the summer games are held in Paris. The Olympic motto, faster, higher, further is introduced by Baron Daber Coubertine, who's still around. And the teams from the Central Powers, again, are not invited. 1928 games are held in Amsterdam by this point. The Dutch aren't angry at the Germans, so they're invited. And at this point in time, actually, to this day, the people who get invited are, it's determined by the organizing committee. So they basically, the Belgians and the French just didn't invite the Germans. And the IOC was, no, I'm okay, you're organizing it. The tradition of the Olympic torch is introduced in 1928. You see 2019 show up. 1936, obviously, that is a super controversial set of games. The winter and summer games are held in both in the same country at this time. So the Winter Olympics are held in Garmisch, Germany. And the picture there is of Sonja Henning, the Norwegian ice skater winning the gold medal in 1936. The Germans invent their tradition of the torch relay. So the torch gets lit in Olympia, Greece. And then you have basically runners run all the way up to Berlin. So that's where the relay starts. Again, number of teams is growing. But there is also a very serious talk about boycotting these games. There's up to this point in time, never been a boycott. The person who actually throws out this idea of boycotting the games is actually an American who's sitting on the International Olympic Committee. He's a former secretary of the Navy. And he says, I see Germany as a threat. And most of the IOC membership rallies against this. And there are a lot of work is spent with the National Olympic Committees to make sure they don't boycott. When it's all over and done with, the IOC basically kicks him out of the committee or off the committee and replaces him with the president of the Athletics Federation, who is also from the United States and who eventually become president of the IOC after World War II. All right. Speaking of World War II, that happens in the 40s and enforces the cancellation of the 40 and 44 Olympiads. 1948, the games are held in London. This, again, is a decision that's made kind of at the last minute. During the six years of World War II, the IOC had not met and they had communicated with each other via mail, which was difficult because some of these guys are living in countries that are at war. Normal lines of communication are broken down, et cetera. The big theme of the 48 Olympics is recovery from the conflict. And you have a very curious situation develop. The British invite the Italians, but they don't invite the Germans or the Japanese. You have a number of teams show up 59, so the number of teams is still growing. But the 48 Olympics are really the last of the pre-war Olympics or they're kind of an immediate post-war Olympics. 1952 is really the beginning of the Cold War Olympics. They're held in Helsinki, Finland. The number of teams is growing. And one of the reasons the teams are growing is because Soviet Union attends for the first time. The People's Republic of China attends. Germany attends. And so does Japan. And with the introduction of the communists, the Olympics becomes a Cold War battlefield. And as we'll see in a few minutes, it's a battlefield that has essentially three different sides, the American side, the Soviet side, and the IOC side. And I'll explain what that means in a minute. The photograph here is of the three medalists and the female shot put. And the reason I have them up there is they are people who could not attend the games four years earlier. Germany wasn't allowed and the Soviet Union wasn't part of the Olympic movement. All right. The games go after Helsinki go to Melbourne. And this is the first time they're held outside of Europe and or North America. And one of the things I want to kind of stress is the Olympics are a European phenomenon. Both the ancient games and the modern games are products of European culture. And even to this day, the center of gravity, the heart of the Olympic movement, the power of the engine, what use whatever phrase you want, but it is in Europe. They come out of Europe. And although the Olympic movement likes to claim itself as universal is still driven by things, events that happen in Europe. So other countries have a say one of the big ones, big exceptions being the United States, but for the majority of it, it's a European phenomenon. Well, these are the first games that are held outside of Europe and North America. You see the creation of a unified German team. And that's important because cold war issues are starting to percolate. By this point in time, you have East German sports federations and you have West German sports federations. And the IOC says, well, if you look at the Olympic Charter, it says there is one team for one country. So there'll be a unified German team. That everyone's willing to do that because Germany is still kind of in a pariah-like status. So they go along with it. The Republic of China had walked out of the Helsinki games when the People's Republic of China attended and participated. This time they say we won't make that mistake. The People's Republic of China says, wait a minute, IOC, your charter says one team for one country, there's only one China. You can't have two teams. And they say, yeah, we're going to, we're the judge, the jury and the executioner of the Olympic Charter. So we get to decide. And yeah, they're going to be two Chinese teams. So the PRC says no, and they leave. Okay. So not consistent. There's going to be a unified German team, but two separate Chinese teams. Okay. These are also the first games that are boycotted. And that has nothing to do with the Australians. No one dislikes the Australians. It's the Soviets they dislike. And in 1956, Soviets invade Hungary. And people say, we're not going to compete with them. We're no way. So a number of teams walk out of the games. The only Olympics at Switzerland ever boycotts. Now Hungary actually goes to the Olympics. And one of the reasons they go is because the team is already in transit, they're already on ships headed towards Australia. And by the time they get to Australia, they're like, what? Oh my goodness. And there's a famous water polo match between the Soviets and the Hungarians. And it's preliminary round. It's not a, it's not the gold medal event, a gold medal contest. And it's legendary because after the game, the water is basically pink because there's so much blood in the water. And then when they drain the pool, they find brass knuckles and clubs and swords. And apparently every time they hung, water polo is apparently a rough sport to begin with. There's reason why you wear a little cap so that people don't tear your ears off. But every time the Hungarians got a chance, they took a little shot at the Soviets. Hungarians win the gold medal. And then every member of that team refuses to go back to Hungary. They defect, they go to, there's a tour organized by sports illustrated in the United States. And all of them basically settle in the United States as political refugees. Okay. There will be more boycotts and most of the boycotts, well, I shouldn't say most, the boycotts will have different reasons. So 64, the boycott has nothing to do with Tokyo. It has to do with Chinese anger at the IOC. And then 72, 72 has nothing to do with the Germans. 76 has nothing to do with the Canadians, but 1980 and 84 and 88 have to do with the host. So, and that's people trying to show their unhappiness with actions taken by the host country. So a lot of different political motivations, but I hope you're picking up on a big theme that I'm trying to put down, which is there have been politics involved in the international Olympic movement since the beginning that oftentimes have very little to do with international sport. Okay, 1958, the People's Republic of China withdraws basically over that issue. It's like, well, you get to have Taiwan or you get to have us. Since you said you're not going to pick, we'll pick for you. We quit. 1964, the games of Tokyo are held. This is also boycotted. And it's basically a boycott that's led by Taiwan or, excuse me, China and Indonesia over the status of China. And the fact that Indonesia has been suspended for competing with Chinese athletes. Just before the Olympics begin, South Africa is expelled for its apartheid system. And it's literally expelled from the Olympics days before the game starts. So the athletes are actually in Japan and they go, Nope, you're not competing. They're obviously probably not very happy about that. 1968, the Winter Olympics at Grenoble in France are very interesting because this is the first time that you see an East German team compete as the East German team. This gets into a big political confrontation between the IOC and NATO, believe it or not. In 1961, the Berlin Wall goes up. And this is designed basically to keep East Germans from running to the West. So it's designed to kind of control traffic by this point or defections. By this point in time, the East Germans have created a number of sports federations. So there's an East German skiing federation. There's an East German archery federation, rifle shoot, etc., etc. And they've also got themselves a separate national Olympic committee. Now the IOC is still insisting, primarily at the insistence of the president of the IOC, that there be a unified German team. Okay, now at a number of other world championships, etc., the East Germans are showing up and competing as East Germans. And a lot of the sports federations have admitted that the East Germans in, they said, listen, it's been 20 years, the war's over, there are two separate Germanies. We're accepting the fact that East and West are not, there's not a comprehensive sports organization for all of Germany. We're just going to recognize reality. However, NATO had policies in place that said, you cannot travel on an East German passport, you cannot, we will prohibit the use of the East German flag. This was, we will not allow the national anthem to be used. And this was not only aimed at athletes, they were the most visible target, but it was also aimed at keeping scientific delegations from traveling. And it was all in response. If you're going to control, keep the average East German from going to the West, we're not going to allow you to have any normal contact. Well, sports federations start saying, hey, you, if we're going to have a world championship in your country, you have to admit all of our sports teams, you can't cherry pick and say, this team can come and that team can't. So if you're going to, if you want to host an Olympics or a world championship, you have to let everyone come. Well, NATO says, no, no, we don't. So what happens is the IOC has a vote on Mexico City and, or excuse me, let me rephrase that, they have a vote on who to host in the 1968 Olympics. And the finalists are Detroit from the United States, a NATO country, Leon in France, a NATO country and Mexico City. And the IOC says, well, Mexico City is not in NATO. And they say, are you going to have, give us a problem with East Germans? And they say, no. So, okay, you get it. So, and then IOC makes it very clear, you can forget any NATO country ever hosting the Olympics as long as you have this policy. Three months later, the IOC has a vote on who gets the winner Olympics. And by this time, France has basically said, we've invested too much money in the process of trying to get the Olympics to France. We do not want to lose sports festivals in the future. It brings in a lot of tourist revenue. Okay, we'll find the East Germans can come and compete. So the IOC forces NATO, at least France, to do a pivot on it. So the 1968 Olympics, both winter and summer are the first time when the East Germans compete as a separate team. Now, what's interesting about this is the IOC still says you can't use your East German flag. They also tell the West Germans who can't use the West German flag. So they insist on the Germans using the same flag, which is the German tri-color with the five logo, the five ring logo superimposed on it, which seems a little weird, but and it won't last. 1972 is super controversial for all sorts of reasons. There's controversy long before the Olympics are awarded to Munich. Basically, the West Germans want the games to show that they've recovered, that they've been rehabilitated, that they're not Nazi Germany, that the Third Reich has long gone over, all these kind of post-war issues. All right. Well, the IOC says, we got a problem. You have to admit everyone who's a member of the International Olympic community, you have to send an invitation, and that includes East Germany, and you cannot prohibit them from using their flag for their national anthem. And actually, in West Germany at the time, there was law that prohibited the display of those symbols. So they literally forced the West Germans to change their law because the West Germans want it. They feel that the propaganda value of hosting the Olympics is far more valuable. So this is the first time when the East Germans get to compete as a separate team and use their separate national symbols and logos. Of course, that's not what we remember from the 1972 Olympics. We remember the terrorist attacks. And one of the reasons those happen is because security is rather lax. And people actually predicted, they hire a conservative consultant, and he says, here are the problems you have to worry about. The Irish Republican Army will do this, this organization will do that. The Palestinian Liberation Organization will do this, which is exactly what they do. So they actually had warning. They said, well, putting all these security measures in place is going to make people think a lot about 1936. No, we're not going to do it. So there is something of a cognitive dissidence where they just refuse to accept that this threat is out there. 1972 is also the first Olympiad where you see the introduction of a mascot. So this is Walde, the doxen. So my favorite Olympic logo is the raccoon from the 1980s, the Lake Placid Olympics. All right, 1975, Rhodesia is expelled from the Olympics. They've actually been kept from competing at the 68 and 72 Olympics. That had something to do with the apartheid-like system in place in Rhodesia, but a lot more of it had to do with the fact that the white settler community had staged a coup d'etat against the British administration and the British basically say, we're going to squeeze the IOC hard to keep the Rhodesians from competing. And a lot of the other African countries are like, yeah, we don't want a white supremacist country showing up. Ironically, Rhodesia will be admitted back into the Olympic movement long before South Africa. 1979, the People's Republic of China returns to the Olympic movement. And as I mentioned earlier, the Olympic movement likes to think itself as being universal. And they wanted the PRC in the movement, which is very interesting because at this point in time, the International Olympic Committee is controlled by very rich, wealthy, Western European individuals, mostly men, in fact, all men at this point in time, and about a third of them have some kind of title, their princes, their barons, their dukes, their grand dukes, etc. These are not people who like communism. But they're like, you got to have the Chinese. And ultimately, the issue becomes after spending 20 years and not talking to each other and talking past each other, they say, oh, the Chinese will come back. It's just the issue is the name. Okay. And they don't want there to be two Chinas. Okay. So there's willingness to bring the Mac. And what they basically say is, okay, you're going to be China. The Republic of China, Taiwan, is going to be Chinese Taipei. And that's the deal that's worked out. Now, as I point out there, that's the deal that's worked out in French and English. French and English are the official languages of the International Olympic Movement. If you are on the IOC, you have to speak one or the other language. In all communications, all letters, all minutes are kept in French and English. In fact, basically, they're kept in both. And if you write a letter in English, it's translated into French and vice versa. So that's the deal that's worked out in English and French. But if you actually go to the Olympic Committee for Taiwan's website, it still says Chinese Olympic Committee in Chinese. 2010, you get a new logo. So the five rings, the five interlocking rings are kept, but they change the color yellow to gold. And in 2021, you have the 2020 Olympics held in Tokyo. This is the first time an Olympics has been postponed. This course is due to COVID. The last time you'd had a pandemic had happened during World War I. The Spanish Influenza epidemic and by 1920, that's burned out. So you never really had to deal with it. If you watched any of those games or any of those contests, you're going to notice that all the medals and all the posters said 2020. So anyway, you also get a new motto at the 2021 Olympics. It's faster, higher, further, together. And then North Korea is suspended for two years. They do not send a team to Tokyo. They basically say COVID is too dangerous. Sorry, we're not sending people. And the IOC says you're suspended, which kind of shows you the priority that the IOC has at times. Sometimes their priorities are a little out of whack. And this is the mascot for the Tokyo Olympics. All right. So what I'd like to do now is look at how the Olympics figure into international relations. What I've been trying to kind of stress with the history is that politics have been there in various different guises, but they've been there from the beginning. All right. The judge, jury and executioner of the Olympic movement, the enforcers of the Olympic Charter, which is the Constitution, the center of all power for the International Olympic Movement is the International Olympic Committee. When I began research on my books, I thought the IOC was a miniature version or an athletic version of the United Nations. There are national Olympic committees and they send delegates to the IOC. Turns out that's completely wrong. The IOC is an organization that controls its own membership. So one IOC president said, it's really like a social club. We pick who gets to be in. And there are no requirements. So there are 102 members of the committee. There are over 200 national Olympic committees. So many nations do not have any kind of representation on the IOC. And in fact, the IOC pushes back against the word representation. They say, our members are ambassadors of limpism to their home countries. So who gets on the committee? Well, for the majority of its history and even today, it's been an organization dominated by European men. There are about two-thirds male, one-third female, but females only become members of the committee in the early 80s. In the 70s, as I mentioned, it was littered with minor European nobility and aristocrats. There are still a fair number of those. You can see there are still several princes, a sheik, a grand duke, a couple of knights, and two heads of state. Prince Albert of Monaco and the Grand Duke of Liechtenstein are both members of the committee. There are three U.S. citizens on the committee. There's actually a rule on the committee that says you can only have two people from one country. So how do you end up with three U.S. citizens? Well, one of them is from Puerto Rico. And according to the Olympics, Puerto Rico is different. Okay. It used to be an organization which you were on for life. They put in, following the bribery scandals of the 1990s, they put in some reforms. One of them was there's an age limit and I'm not sure what it is. I believe it's 80, but it might very well be 90. So you're on it until you get there. There's no time limit, though. And the person who's been on the committee the longest is Richard Pound, a lawyer from Canada who competed in one of the earlier Olympics, I believe he competed in the Tokyo Olympics. 70% of the membership has been on the committee for less than 10 years. So there's a lot of not having institutional memory. And what appears to matter most to the IOC is whether or not you are part of the Olympic movement as an athlete. As you can see there, about 40% of them competed in at least one Olympics and about just under a third won a medal of some sort. And Richard Pound said once that the criteria for getting on the committee has to be money, particularly in earlier decades when you had to travel internationally, until really the 90s international travel was very expensive. So you had to be able to travel because there'd be a meeting in Spain, then there'd be a meeting in Kenya, then there'd be a meeting in Mexico City. The other thing is apparently you had to be influential enough because you're an ambassador of the Olympic movement to your home country. You had to be influential enough that if you called your president or prime minister, they'd take your phone call or at least they'd call you back in a day. Now, having looked at who was on the committee from the United States, I'm not sure that ever applied for the Americans, but anyway, it's supposed to be kind of highly prestigious, highly influential. Now, I mentioned there are national Olympic committees. These are the organizations that administer the Olympics at home. There are 204 national Olympic committees. That means there are more national Olympic committees than there are members of the United Nations, and that gets at something. These do not necessarily configure to the boundaries nation states. Political boundaries and Olympic boundaries are a little different. Case in point, if you are a citizen of the United States, you can compete in the Olympics for any one of four different national Olympic committees. Puerto Rico has one, Guam has one, the United States has one, and the Virgin Islands have one. So if you're not good enough to get on the US Olympic Committee, go to the US Olympic team, go and you might be able to get on the Virgin Island Olympic team. Case in point, political boundaries aren't always the same as Olympic boundaries. The Olympic Federation of Ireland and the British Olympic Association overlap. If you live in Northern Ireland, you get to choose which team you compete for. You can compete for Team Ireland or Team Britain. There are other instances, Hong Kong has a separate Olympic team, even though it's part of China. Now let's take a moment to look at the US Olympic Committee. This is one of the founding organization elements of the Olympic movement. It's a founder from the get-go. It's over 120 years old. It is a Title 36 federal nonprofit corporation, and the reason I stress that is a lot of people expect it to carry the weight for US foreign policy. They've expected that in the past to kind of expect that even today. And what I'm trying to point out is this is a nonprofit organization. It's made up of sports administrators. They're not politicians. They're not diplomats. During its history, it's had five different names, and it just changed its name about three years ago in 2019 to the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee. And I think that gets at the point I'm trying to make is it's not a agency of the federal government or anyone that's an organization that should really be expected to be familiar with the foreign policies of the United States. With that name, I think that name kind of communicates that a little bit more than the US Olympic Committee. All right. It's based in Colorado Springs, and it has training facilities there in San Diego and in Lake Placid, New York. And I like to argue that I've been talking to a lot of reporters the past few months having written a book on a boycott. It's like suddenly I'm an instant expert, but I've argued that a more accurate name for this organization would be to call it the Colorado Springs Athletic Club. And that kind of gets at the point that it's not carrying the weight for US foreign policy. Since it has a federal charter, Congress basically got concerned about poor performance in the 70s and passed the Amateur Sports Act of 1978. And basically forced the committee to reorganize and become more lean in its administrative structure. And there were huge disputes between the AAU, the Amateur Athletic Union and the NCAA that runs college sport and several other organizations. And there were disputes, well, if your athletes compete, we're going to prohibit them from competing here. That was one of the reasons why the organization was having so many problems getting people to compete in the Olympics. All right. Well, that streamlines it. The act also basically gives the US Olympic Committee legal ownership of certain trademarks and logos. Okay. Up to this point in time, the IOC had said these belong to us. And we kind of defer main supervision of that in Mexico to the Mexican Olympic Committee and Canada to the Canadian Olympic Association in the United States to the USOC and so on and so forth. Congress said, no, we're giving the ownership of these copyrights to you, which the IOC says, what? Huh? What? And that's one of the reasons why they changed the color of the logo and changed the motto. It's like, well, you can have ownership in the United States of the five rings with yellow, but now the official one is gold. So what long story made short, there are a number of scraps and disputes between the two organizations in starting in the mid-80s over fundraising, corporate sponsorship. And basically, the IOC is getting about half of its funding from North America, or to be more accurate, the United States, but they're basically, the law says you have to share it with the USOC and the IOC says, we're doing the fundraising. Why should we share it with you? Well, we own these things in the United States. No, you don't. So, well, you need us. We're the top dog. So, acrimonious relationship involving money. I've mentioned international sports federations, and this is something that people don't realize. These are organizations that administer international sport. The International Olympic Committee just is in charge of picking the city that the Olympics are held in and picking the sports that will be part of the Olympics. The federations are responsible for administering the sport, which is they create the rule books, they keep the records, they select the judges, they decide, you know, this is an acceptable, you know, the basketball arena has to be this many yards by this many feet and all this sort of stuff. There are over 280 of these organizations, and I discovered some really obscure sports have international sports federations. Apparently, there are people who play polo on elephants, and they have a federation. There is a federation for American football, which surprises me because the only people who really play American football are Americans. But anyway, there are 24 federations associated with the Olympics, with the Summer Olympics, and nine with the Winter Olympics. And they administer 33 sports in the Summer Games and 15 sports in the Winter Games. And you have a number of different medal events. What do I mean by medal events? Well, for example, if you're in the competing and swimming, there are various distances in various track and field events, there's the 100 meter dash, there's the, you know, four by 400 relay, et cetera. Most of these federations are not particularly influential on their own. They have events that, you know, you know, five, 600 people come to, world championships that maybe a thousand people come to. The only federation that is really powerful in its own is FIFA. And it is so powerful that it actually does not send its best athletes to the Olympics. FIFA administers the sport that Americans call soccer, and everyone else calls football. And they basically, the World Cup in many ways, outshines the Olympics. They also do it every four years. And they basically send their under 20 team to the Olympics. The most influential federation within the Olympic movement itself is the Athletics Federation, which is the federation that administers the sport that Americans call track and field. So the running events, the javelin throw, the shot put, the discus, so forth. Okay, so let's talk about the diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics. And why am I putting it in air quotes? Why am I putting it in quotes in this slide? Well, the Olympics has had politics superimposed on it. Sometimes it has its own domestic politics, which is to say, this member of the committee doesn't like that member of the committee, or this guy wants to be president of the International Olympic Committee next. And he feels he has to reward to collect votes. He's got to make sure that, you know, Belgium gets to host the games or Germany or whatever. So there are politics that are involved that involve just 102 people getting together. The Olympics likes to think of itself as a peace movement. And there is an element of truth to this. We bring the world together every four years, we put aside our differences, we sit and we revel and are awed by the majesty of athletic competition. We cheer, we play within the same rules. We don't, you know, we respect each other's athletic achievements and the grace of people who are competing for love of sport, because most Olympic sports, even in other places on the planet, are not particularly super popular. So there isn't a whole lot of money to be made shooting archery in Australia or Italy, because there's not, you know, a professional archery league or something like that. It's not like soccer, football, baseball, basketball, where you're going to make a lot of money. So majority Olympic athletes are competing for the love of the sport. And the rule for a sport getting into the Olympics is that it has to be played on all six continents. Okay. So archery is played on all six continents. The Bobsled is done on all six continents, although I'm not sure if it's really done, you know, in Australia, but that's a different story. Australia is not a strong winter sports superpower. As part of that effort to be a universal movement that brings the world together, they started asking national governments to send delegations to the Olympics. And this process started in roughly 2000. That's the first time I can find a White House official White House delegation. Now this is completely ceremonial. And in fact, this will tell you how important the delegation being a part of the White House delegation is. In 2004, President George W. Bush sent his mother, his wife, his two daughters, and his father to be the delegation. So it was a Bush family vacation. President Obama sent a number of athletes who were open about their sexuality to basically stick it to the Russians over their law, which prohibited adoption of Russian children by same-sex couples. So, you know, and people are going to go, who is Brian Botano? You know, he's famous, he's an Olympic figure skater, but, you know, I'm not sure you would notice him if you walked down the street. So it's totally ceremonial. Now there's been talk about doing something about the Olympics since before the Tokyo Olympics. So it's just to say, starting in 2019, just as the pandemic started. And people have been unhappy with China's behavior for a while. Now, this gentleman, Mitt Romney, who is now a Senator from the United, from the state of Utah, wanted, wants to basically show that the American public is not happy with what China is doing. And China is an issue in Washington that is very bipartisan. There is strong support on both sides of the political aisle of basically showing your opposition to Chinese actions and behavior. However, Romney had made a name for himself before he got elected governor of Massachusetts by organizing or salvaging the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. It was racked by bribery scandals. Turns out we bribed a number of members of the International Olympic Committee to vote for Salt Lake. A couple people went to jail. Romney comes in, he salvages the situation. And they're very impressed by these athletes who are dedicating themselves to the sport, oftentimes with nothing more than the glory that sports brings and the love of the game. And he didn't want to sacrifice them, but he wanted to show opposition to China. So he basically coins the idea of a diplomatic boycott in an op-ed that is published in the New York Times in March of last year. And this is the key phrase that comes out of that boycott. He basically says, let's do an economic and diplomatic boycott of the games. We don't want to sacrifice the athletes. They've done too much. And they're really, they're just doing this for love of the game. So let's not send official delegations to show our anger and displeasure. Let's also keep from spending U.S. dollars in China. So don't go. Let's not send, if you're an individual, don't go to the games, don't buy hotel rooms, or excuse me, rent hotel rooms, buy tickets, buy meals, et cetera. And that way we can kind of show our displeasure, make sure Chinese understand in the most basic way, which is to say we stick it to them in the pocketbook. All right. There is strong support for this boycott in Congress. Again, bipartisan. There was a lot of opposite there. Boycotting the Beijing Olympics before Miramini comes up with this idea, had people on both sides saying no, and most people on both sides saying yes. And again, the big lesson from all the boycotts of the 70s and 80s is the only people who suffer are the athletes who don't get to go. So while there is strong support in Congress, there is limited support in Europe and Asia. And as of today, these are the countries that have said yes to a diplomatic boycott of Beijing. Now, I should point out that this might be a distinction not worth making, is that the powers, the superpowers in winter sports are countries with snow and ice, which is to say Norway, Sweden, Finland, Austria. Well, Austria is there. So that's kind of a coup. But we're not keeping the, Austria is still sending a team. It's just the president isn't going. So how important the diplomatic boycott becomes is open to question. And in fact, President of France said, you know, we're not going to take part in this. It's an empty gesture. It won't do anything. And oh, by the way, we have to worry about, you know, our Olympic games that we're hosting in two years. He didn't say that, but I kind of, you know, can translate French. All right. So what does the future look like after Beijing? Well, again, I'm a historian. I'm great at telling you what happened, not necessarily what is going to happen. But here is the pauses or the pluses. You have nailed down the hosts for the next three summer games. And you've also nailed down the host for the next winter games. And they're all in countries that are politically reliable, reliable, which is to say they're not going to go off and do something. They're not going to have a coup d'etat. We're not going to have something really dreadfully happened that really brings them into question. You're not going to have riots in the streets. You're not going to have massive public health problems or under developed, you know, facilities. So they've really kind of nailed it down. And that's a good thing. There are negatives. However, they do not have a host for the 2030 games. So this is right about the time when they need to be making a decision. On top of this, global warming is starting to become a problem for winter sports. And I would not be surprised if it really becomes only places in high altitude where you have a decent amount of snow. Beijing is not a city of snow and ice. It's going to be all artificial. There are a few bidders to host summer games. One of the reasons you nail this down is when you last had a bid, the last two bids for the 2024 games, you only had two cities bidding, Paris and Los Angeles. And the IOC kind of said, well, we don't want to say no to either one. So why don't we award two sets of Olympia ads at the same time? And then for 2032, there was only one country that wanted to host it. And they said, Brisbane, well, you're good. Whether Brisbane can actually do it is a different story because that's an issue of how many hotel rooms you have, how many stadiums, how much of a road and transportation network. So you don't see a lot of bidders for the Olympics. And that's kind of a long-term problem. And one of the reasons for that is there's been a gross amount of overspending and waste in hosting the previous sets of games. Most cities are losing money on hosting the Olympia ads. The last, I shouldn't say the last, but Los Angeles pioneered a slightly different way of hosting it instead of using the Olympics as an excuse to build big stadiums and build highways that you might not really need after the Olympics are over. And that's a real problem. They basically pioneered a different approach. And they said, we're going to use existing facilities. We're going to use hotels that are already here. We're going to use stadiums, the Rose Bowl and the LA Coliseum, et cetera. So they use the dorms at USC and the dorms at UCLA to be the Olympic Village. And they didn't basically waste a lot of money on the Olympics. And they actually turned a profit. And they've used that profit that there's a trust fund or fund that still exists. And they basically build parks in Los Angeles. They fund youth sports leagues, et cetera. And they turned a big profit. If Los Angeles uses the same model in 2028 and they turn a profit, it might change the approach. But over the past decade, two decades, city after city has seen it as a prestige project. They've said, okay, we're going to build stadiums and we're going to build road networks and they end up losing lots and lots of money. With that said, I also expect that there will be some kind of Chinese retaliation against the United States in 2028 and probably against Australia in 2032. What that retaliation looks like, I'm not sure. But I just, I don't foresee them turning the other cheek. That's just not part of Chinese tradition. So that is pretty much my presentation. I would like to stop here and see if anyone has any comments, discussion, questions, et cetera. Thank you. Thank you. Can't quite hear. Can't quite hear the 110 people who are on Zoom, but I'm sure they're out there and whatnot. Does anyone here in the audience have a question that they'd like to ask? Gary, do you have anything from the Zoom audience? I do, John. I have two questions. The first question asks, what are your thoughts on on the reputation of the country that wins medals? Does it boost the country's image more among its citizens or among foreigners, if at all? Do you have any thoughts on that? Yes. Thank you. That's a good question. Most cities lose money on hosting the Olympics. I've argued it's a boondoggle. That's the word I've used. People do argue, and there is actually some economic evidence to suggest that hosting the Olympics is good, not necessarily for the city, but for the nation. So it doesn't necessarily help in a PR sense, but it actually helps increase trade with that country because it's a great mechanism to get attention out for at least two weeks, probably a lot longer because of the buildup of the Olympics. So there is an argument that trade improves, and it's not necessarily the games themselves. Who cares how many, if they're dramatic events and canoeing and water polo, et cetera. But it's the fact that a country is developing, getting its act together, bringing attention to the country. So there actually does seem to be some evidence to suggest the nation might profit. Whether or not the city does, well, that's pretty clear. And in fact, one of the reasons the Olympics end up in Beijing is because Oslo and Norway, which basically was the frontrunner, they basically look at this and say, we don't want to spend public money on this. We're going to lose billions. And that really isn't an exaggeration. So there's basically a vote held in a referendum, and they basically say no public money, no appropriated funds will be used. And after that point, it's like, you can't go forward. If you can't, you have the police and fire emergency response teams, it's obviously involved as appropriated funds. So Oslo backs out. And the IOC is left with Kazakhstan and the city, Alami is actually right now, right now today has people protesting in the streets. So that was a bad choice, a really bad choice. And you have Beijing, which is not a great choice. So the IOC kind of painted itself into a corner there. But there is evidence that there is some kind of trade boost. Propaganda PR, not so much. And my general argument is if someone's dumb enough to want to host the Olympics, let them. So part of me is like, the Chinese are going to lose a lot of money on this. I'm okay with losing money. So another question is, so for all these boycotts that had taken place historically, what are your thoughts on whether or not they've been successful in bringing attention to particular issues that the boycott served? The boycotts are not particularly successful. That's the argument of my book that focuses primarily on 1980. There were boycotts before and after 1980. One of my big arguments is that they really the only people who suffer are the athletes who do not get to attend. And most athletes, there are exceptions. There are a fair number of exceptions, but the majority, 50%, a little over 50% of the Olympic athletes get to go to one set of Olympics. You simply can't keep yourself in your body in that kind of conditioning for an extended period of time. Three years is one thing. Nine years, that's a whole different story. So most people get one opportunity. And if you don't get to go because, you know, sports administrators or that your politicians are saying you can't, you know, that seems a bit unfair, particularly since they're not supporting it. Now the question was about bringing attention to a cause. Most of the causes that people are arguing about already have a fair amount of attention. So I don't think it really does much in that sense. It really does strike me as somewhat unethical to basically expect others to sacrifice for your cause, particularly when you're not supporting their efforts. And 1976 is particularly bizarre. The Olympics starts and then basically a boycott starts among African countries because New Zealand is at the Olympics. And they're angry that the New Zealand Rugby Union played games against South Africa, which is a violation of the ban that had been placed on South African sports. And they say, well, so long as New Zealand's here, we won't refuse to attend. And a bunch of countries walk out about five days into the games. What's bizarre about that is in 1976, rugby was not an Olympic sport. The Rugby Union in New Zealand and the New Zealand Olympic Association are two separate organizations. And the best I can determine have no overlapping members. The only thing that keeps them in common is that they basically have the words New Zealand in their title of their organization. So in some instances, this is an effort just to have some nasty press releases and play to the television cameras and reporters. So does the boycotts bring attention to issues? No, for the most part, those issues are already there. Now, I should also point out that some of these issues are particularly profound. What's happening to the Uyghurs is huge. And it's extremely unpleasant. It's bad. I could sit here and come up with stronger words. But it is way far more important than a winter sports festival that uses the garb and language of ancient Greece. But boycotting this isn't going to do anything to help these people. And in fact, it might make the situation worse because it's going to anger the Chinese without doing anything to help the Uyghurs. So that's my long-winded answer to a fairly simple question. And kind of bridging that to what we have noticed recently, social and personal protests at professional sports venues. Do you see this as kind of like a growing phenomenon in upcoming Olympics? Yes. So the idea people are using their notoriety, their famous athletes to direct attention to some kind of political issue that they think is important. And there's certainly been examples of this. There's the famous example of the 68 Olympics when Tommy Smith and Carlos, and I forget his last name, but the two American athletes who hold their fists up during the gold medal, the medal ceremony, and who are ripped apart when they come home for politicizing and manipulating events and all sorts of stuff. The problem with using a political venue to make some kind of political statement is oftentimes it's a misappropriation of the platform. You're getting this attention for something you did out of athletics because you can run fast, you can jump fast, you can do something fast. You're not necessarily getting it because you're an expert on the topic that you want to comment on. No matter how genuine the thing you feel about that. So if you start politicizing it, don't be surprised that someone else starts politicizing it. And it's also possible that the other guy's politicization is going to be something that you don't like. So you might think your politics are righteous, but what happens about this guy's politics? He might think his politics are righteous. And at some point, it's like, okay, guys, we're all adults, we're all creative thinkers, we're all smart. But am I really going, what, turning the TV on to learn about the politics of the person who can do the giant solemn down the hill in a record time or the speed skater or the bobsledger or the luge individual? So I think in some ways, people are misappropriating the platforms that they have. Now, if you have a view of political views and want them to contribute, that's fine. And being an Olympic champion probably will give you a powerful platform. But during the games itself, it seems like it's probably not the right thing to do. Gary, I'll take the final question here. If I could, you've talked about amateur athletics a lot, but do we not see professional athletes competing, i.e. American basketball players, etc. How has that changed? And how is it possible that professionals are now allowed to compete against amateurs? Yeah, the International Olympic movement starts in the 1890s, and it's influenced by the British attitude of amateur versus professional. And the idea is that love of sport is the most important thing. So all the athletes should be amateur, which is basically they're not getting paid. Now, amateur basically means wealth, the people who have the time who don't have to work, who can devote their time to this are generally the wealthy, the second son of the Earl, or the third son of a Duke. He doesn't have to work on a job because he's got a trust fund or something like that. So it does kind of cut to a certain degree. And there was also a strong feeling that the Olympics should be run by gentlemen, and paid sports administrators are not particularly people we want to associate with and all this. So this is a late Victorian attitude that is adopted. To be that good, to be able to focus on getting your body in shape and running fast, etc. You really do need to concentrate. And not a lot of people can do that. They need support. And one of the ways around this for a long time was teams or companies would basically underwrite you. They would not necessarily, you know, you would not be a paid employee, but you would be, you would use their stuff. And they would be supporting athletic achievement with the idea that turning you into world-class track athlete is a great way to sell shoes later on to average individuals like myself. There were also trust funds and stuff like this. There were a lot of workarounds. The definition of who is a professional and who is an amateur was ultimately left to the sports federations. And you saw a lot of inconsistency where they took a very lenient view, where this federation took a very stringent view. And it basically became an issue. It's like, ultimately, if you want the best athletes at the Olympics, you have to really do away with these things. So today, athletes, there really isn't, there are no longer restrictions against professional athletes. But I would point out that there are people who can make a ton of money playing basketball. So that's here as far as professionalization goes. But there are other people who are shooting archery. And they might get an endorsement deal from an archery company. But what's that going to be? Is that going to be the 20 million a year that a player in the NBA is making? It's probably going to be more like $10,000 or something like that. Let me take a picture of you and put it on our box or something like that where we sell our arrows. Paul Smith, who won the gold medal in 1984, says, use this. So we've seen a big change over the course of 120 years about definitions of who should compete in the Olympics. So it's been ongoing. And I think I'll just leave it at that. Excellent. Thank you. Very, very interesting and very timely, as we said. So that concludes today's event. And again, we encourage it all dial back in on the 25th of January to learn about the future of women in combat. Thank you very much. Good night.