Should America Boycott China’s 2022 Olympics?
Critics ask why democracies would boost the prestige of a government committing atrocities against the Uighurs.
Should Beijing’s bid have been shot down?
Photographer: Nicolas Asfouri/AFP/Getty Images
The Olympics are nominally apolitical, but only the willingly credulous believe that. The history of the Olympic Games is shot through with the geopolitics of the last century.
In 1936, the Berlin Olympics allowed a dictatorial, anti-Semitic regime to bask in the attention of the world. Twelve years later, Germany and Japan were excluded from the London Olympics for their role in starting World War II. The awarding of Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 1964 and Munich in 1972 symbolized the Cold War rehabilitation of Germany and Japan as members of the democratic West. In 1980, the U.S. boycotted Olympics held by the Soviet Union, after the invasion of Afghanistan conclusively killed off the superpower detente of the 1970s.