Gold, Silver, and Brazen

MAXIM MARMUR/AFP/Getty ImagesFalse pride: Russians are thrilled, but the choice of Sochi for the 2014 Games is nothing to celebrate.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC), the 115-member body responsible for choosing the host city for the Olympic Games, fancies that it can separate sports from politics in its selection process. The choice of repressive China as host of the 2008 Summer Games seemed to demonstrate the flaw in that logic. And in July, when the IOC awarded the Russian resort town of Sochi the honor of hosting the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, the committee proved once again that logic is not its strong suit.

The IOCs insistence on overlooking a countrys political environment is becoming increasingly difficult to justify. No matter how much IOC members delude themselves, national leaders are bound to use the Olympics for political ends. At the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, the Nazis used the Games to trump up German nationalism during a time of pervasive depression. Although Sochi 2014 is a far cry from Berlin 1936, one basic comparison holds: In each case, an illiberal government with something to prove managed to co-opt the Olympics in order to reclaim a severely damaged national identity. And it did so with the help of the IOC.

Already, millions of Russians have interpreted the committees decision as a stamp of approval from the international community. Sochis winning bid for the 2014 Olympics is yet another vivid confirmation of the authority of our country in the world arena, crowed Mikhail Kamynin, spokesman for Russias Ministry of Foreign Affairs, shortly after the IOC announced the winner.

Sports and the Olympics are the pretext for all of this nationwide rejoicing, but not the reason, added columnist Melor Sturua in the Russian newspaper Izvestia. The reason is deeper. We have come to believe in our strength, in ourselves, in our purpose, and the world has recognized the rebirth of a new Russia and made room for it, giving it not only what it deserves, but also the place it has earned by right . . . he continued.

Handing an ignoble government the tools to hyperinflate national pride is a dangerous psychological game. Though no one wishes to snatch the joy of hosting the Olympics from children in far-flung towns like Novosibirsk and Murmansk, those children will grow up believing that President Vladimir Putins way of governingfrom polonium to Politkovskaya and everything in betweendeserves credit for Russias return to the world stage. Never mind the widespread corruption, the mysterious murders of journalists, the television censorship, or the use of energy resources as a weapon of diplomacy; the IOC has made the wildly popular Putin even more of a national hero. And now Russians have yet another reason to ignore the need for serious change: In their eyes, the international community has effectively given Putins government a stamp of approval.

But the IOC, a mlange of mostly ex-athletes and former dignitaries, does not represent the international community at large. The mechanisms and power dynamics of the organization reveal just how unfit the body is to make decisions with such consequences. After the 1998-1999 Salt Lake City scandal, when some visiting IOC members exchanged their votes for skis, rifles, and scholarships at Brigham Young University, the IOCs president prohibited his members from visiting candidate cities. Instead, he handpicked a standing evaluation commission comprised of a few trustworthy IOC members and a handful of sports federation executives. This smaller body visits the candidate cities and authors a report, upon whichalong with the presentations given by the country and city representativesthe greater IOC body bases its votes. With sports-minded committee members focusing on the logistics of the luge and the number of hotel beds available rather than on potentially more serious political issues, the result of this blinkered process is, well, Sochi 2014.

Not only does the choice of Sochi represent a propaganda coup for an authoritarian regime, it also offers the potential for a security disaster in the region. The IOC has placed the 2014 Games on the doorstep of a frozen separatist conflict in Abkhazia and near war-ravaged Chechnya. Although it is impossible to predict what the region will look like in seven years, it remains far from stable today. And given Russias track record in Chechnya, one can only imagine what the government might do to quell any potential threat to the Games.

Looking at the evaluation commissions report on the three finalist cities (Pyeongchang, South Korea; Salzburg, Austria; and Sochi), one begins to understand how things might have gone wrong. At no point does the report mention Chechnya or Abkhazia, and neither region appears on the map of the area provided in the report. Had commission members looked just a few clicks east of Sochi, they would have found Nalchik and Beslan, the Russian towns where two disastrous terrorist attacks occurred in 2005 and 2004, respectively. But the committee decided not to address the threat of terrorism because, in the words of the report, it is a global concern that all candidate countries are working to fight.

Nor does the reports section on Sochi mention corruption, despite the fact that Russia ranked 121 out of 163 on Transparency Internationals 2006 Corruption Perception Index, alongside Honduras and Rwanda. The IOC will funnel millions into the development of the Olympic site, andas we saw even in pious Salt Lake Citycorruption could become a serious problem.

The report does note with delight, however, that Russia has ratified the Kyoto Protocol. Three cheers for that.