The Olympics and human rights: Here we go again

In a Washington Post op-ed piece today, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker makes the case for using the 2014 Sochi Olympics as leverage to win conessions from Russia in the Caucasus:

Few are suggesting that the United States and Europe boycott the Sochi Games, a la Moscow in 1980. But attending the 2014 Olympics under today’s circumstances would make all of us complicit in cementing in practice Russia’s changing European borders by force, even if we reject those changes in principle.

Imagine the practicalities. Abkhazia is a part of sovereign Georgian territory according to every country in the world except Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Nauru. Already, Olympic construction workers are being housed in Abkhazia. By 2014, we could see housing for tourists, regular border crossings between Russia and Abkhazia without a hint of Georgian sovereignty, high-visibility symbols of Abkhaz "statehood" such as flags and travel documents, and the presence of the Abkhaz and South Ossetian "presidents" at Olympic ceremonies — alongside U.S. and European leaders.

To avoid the unpalatable choices of boycott or complicity, the United States and Europe should get to work on a third possibility: that the Sochi Olympics could become a catalyst for resolving long-standing conflicts, bringing the Caucasus region into the 21st century. Russia’s interest in a successful Olympics — an interest that we share — should be a powerful incentive for consigning to history Moscow’s zero-sum, divide-and-rule approach to the Caucasus. This would surely be the best outcome for the states and peoples in the region, for Moscow, for the athletes and for the Olympics.

I’m sympathetic to Volker’s goals, but if Russian leaders are looking to past precedent for these Olympics, I suspect they will find the 2008 Beijing games more instructive than the 1980 Moscow games. Beijing was a textbook example of how an authoritarian government can host a the Olympics without compromising on human rights or foreign policy, or suffering any significant international embarassment.

With the exception of Georgia, it’s hard to believe that any countries would go through with a boycott, and as long as Russian authorities can maintain security — and as long as there’s actually snow at the subtropical beach resort — there’s no reason they can’t have a successful Olympics while continuing their current policies in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and clamping down on political dissent. When that happens, perhaps we can finally put the fantasy of the Olympics as a force for advancing peace and democracy to rest.