Correspondence

Abstract

CORRESPONDENCE Bill Vaidez, editor Struggle for the Olympics To the Editor: For those of us who have come to expect from Michael Vlahos those 100-megaton ideas that our society needs but does not want to hear, "The Modern Olympiad" (SAIS Review 4, Summer-Fall 1984) is yet another evidence of his Cassandra-like pall, and further increases his stature as one of the few Washingtonians who can be viewed correctly as an intellectual cult figure . It was his humility, no doubt—both personal and national—that forced him not to address the sensational story within his story: the exceptional U.S. national effort to train its Olympic athletes that resulted in this summer's historic shower of gold and goodwill. It was a stunning payoff for a rare four years of cooperation and coordination between the usually disparate elements of government, business, sports industry, and the media. Are Americans fully accustomed to fast-food chains building vast sports-training complexes in a spirit of altruism? The answer is no, of course, and largely because of the weak efforts and results in Olympic competition over the past generation. It is probably true that, like Sparta in ancient times, the Soviets' intelligence concerning U.S. athletic potential led them to eschew participation, fearing not defeat per se, but rather the more damaging impact on their stature that finishing behind their ideological adversary would bring. This is not to say that Rhythmic Dancing, for example, is a Clausewitzian continuation of politics with an admixture of other means, as is war. It is to say, in agreement with Vlahos, that international sport—-just like military prowess, economic strength, natural resources, population, and land—is a visible measure of a state's power. The importance of sports may be disproportionate, and thus significant, because of the telescoping effects of symbolism and media hype. To a callow world, it is not difficult to conclude that the winning performances in the past Olympic competitions by Soviet and Eastern Bloc athletes indicates something very positive about the health and vitality of a Socialist/Communist system. The robustness and success of these athletes might be transmuted so that observers see not only those heroic competitors, but the politicai system they represent as more attractive. No, one might answer, this is untrue, but such an opinion is held by an individual or state that has been helped by a study of history to develop such insights and perceptions . Such a vision is not generally present in those uncommitted and struggling nations that usually find themselves 269 270 SAIS REVIEW on the sidelines of life or on the field as predator's prey. It is this fact that the United States has finally realized, or realized anew, and has thus concluded that the battle for men's minds is fought not only with weapons, resources, and dollars, but is also fought with symbols, one of the best of which is athletes engaged in international competition. Vlahos, however, is not correct when he puts forward a construct wherein the modern Olympic Games are "no longer a symbol of power, [rather,] they are the struggle ." To suggest that perhaps the greatest struggle in world history over both power and ideology can be represented or supplanted by a sports event seems trivial, although the reverse of his suggestion may well be a profound combination of symbol and reality. In contrast, Vlahos is certainly correct when he cites the modern Olympics as a "ritual for political struggle," not "rituals for the unity of humankind" or for "shared values." And he has much good company in that insight. Just as Pierre de Coubertin saw athletics as an "embryo of society," so Vlahos has concluded that sports has significant power to sublimate and covert. Ultimately, success in sports can bring the world audience to accept the vision of world order, with its rules and processes delineated through the eyes of a superpower . I believe him fundamentally correct in that assertion. I also believe that Americans must laud the vision of our nation, a vision that produced both the resources and efforts to fashion anew a competitive Olympic stance for the United States as well as the...