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ForumGEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AFFA

M atch P o in tSPORTS, NATIONALISM, AND DIPLOMACY

7 The Death o f Dou bt?Sport, Race, and Nationalism in the NewSouth AfricaDEREK CHARLES C AT SA M

15 Cro ss-Strait Tug o f WarTaiwan and the World GamesJUNEWI YU

Spo rts witho u t Diplo m acThe United States, Cuba, and BasTHOMA S GA R OFA LO

George Orwell , in a famous essay in1945-described sport as "war minus the shoot-in g. "' E xaggerated as this des crip tion maysound, Orwell observed a seemingly obviousrelationship between spo rt and polit ics thathas not systematically been studied. Givenall our theories about how nation-statesinteract in international relations, this gapin the l i terature is somewhat astounding,especially since sport isan activity engagedin by all of the world's populationacrossterri torial , cultural , religious, and ethnicboundar ies .

The re are many ways to th ink aboutthe link between sport andpolit ics. Thehistorical practice of sport , for example,can have a pacific effect among peoples.In thenin th cen tury B.C.E . , at the firstOlympic festival of the ancient games,thre e kings Iphistos of Elis, Cleosthenesof Pisa, and Lycurgus of Sparta signed atreaty establishing the "Olympic Truce ,"which ba nn ed all hostilities while the gameswere played.Sport can also be a prism that refracts

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INTRODUCTION

where matches between the UnitedStates and Soviet Union had mean-ing beyond the playing field. Victoriesbecame statements of the superior-ity of one social system over another.Ironically, the politics of this sport-ing competition reached its apex inMoscow and Washington's decisionsnot to compete in the 1980 and 1984summer Olympic Games, respectively.Sport has also been a political tar-get of terrorism. Athletes, strewn inthe colors of their countries, oftenrepresent the personification of theirna t ion ' s pol ic ies and in te rna t iona lconflicts. While athletic venues, more-over, were seen as soft targets by terror-ists, they offered a wo rld stage on w hichterrorists could make their grievancesknown. The tragedy of the 1972 MunichOlympics is so well-known that, today,organizers spend almost as much in

dollars on security at venues as on theevents themselves.Sport has also become useful as atool of diplomacy. On certain occa-sions, it has helped break the ice inotherwise frigid relations betweencountriesand in a way that years ofconventional diplomacy could not. Theseminal example here is 'ping-pong

diplomacy, " in which China invited theU .S . table tennis team to play exhibi-tion matches in Beijing in April 1971.The matches played an important rolein helping to pave the way for Sino-American reconci l ia t ion. Of course,there were a number of other factorsat play which led to Richard Nixon'seventual trip to China, but the image ofthese unassu min g diplomats rangingfrom an IBM programmer to a house-

lution to sightsee on the Great Walland to place a long distance call to theUnited States was an undeniable boostto Nixon's diplomatic efforts.Keeping in mind the many purposesof sport in the international arena, thisissue's Forum brings together authorswho advance our knowledge of the rela-tionship between sport and polit ics.

Junwei Yu's contribution looks atthe highly successful 2009 KaohsiungWorld Games in Taiwan. The article 'sfocusthe relationship between sportand national identityrepresents animportant facet of sport and polit ics.Sp ort evokes em oti on and u nity in a waythat no other form of politics, art, ormusic can accomplish. In this regard,Yu shows how the Games provided astage for Taiwan to promote politicalideology and Taiwanese identity in theface of difficult cross-Strait relations.In the past, sport has also been usedas a form of sanct ion. The inte rna t ion -al community banned some countr iesfrom participating in the Olympics afterthe two World Wars; perhaps the mostwell-known use of sport as sanctionconcerned apartheid in South Africa.Derek Catsam's article, however, offersanother side of this storythat is, the

redemptive power of sport. He looksat the interesting intersections betweenrace and nationalism as they are repre-sented through South Africa's experi-ence with rugby andin anticipationof thi s summ er ' s FIFA World C u p -football.Finally, Thomas Garofalo's studyof baseball and Cuba shows us the

potent ial opportuni t ies , afforded bythis shared national pastime, for diplo-

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Match Point

between sport and diplomacy is m o r ethan just love of the game. It requiresa degree of political leadership and awillingness to seek change rather thanthe status quo. As he sees it, with properleadership, sport can be an agent ofpolitical change.

The au thors of th is Forum hold dif-ferent opinions of the utility and roleof sport in international affairs, butthey do agree onone th ing : the p o t e n -

tial influence of sport on the na t ion -state. Sport, asOrwell opined, may lackthe shooting of a full-blown war. Butsport, like war, may be jus t as intenseand just as defining for the characterof a country and for re la t ions amongstates.Victor D. Cha is D.s . SONG PROFESSOROF GOVERNMENT ANDASIAN STUDIESAT GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY.

NOTESI George Orwel l , H i e Spor t ing Spir i t , " inThe P enguin Essays of George Orwell (NewYork: Penguin, 1994)- 321;originally p ublished in Tribune, 14Decem ber 1945-

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