French President Emmanuel Macron has spoken out against the “punishment” the US has prepared for China
A diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics seems to him too damaging and too soft a step. It reflects the unenviable position of the leader of modern France: He wants to do historic things, but has neither the resources nor the natural gifts to do so.
The so-called diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics was invented in Washington for US purposes, but as if made mandatory for the entire Anglo-Saxon world. Australia and Canada have already joined the action. As for the UK, Boris Johnson has once again shown himself to be an unorthodox politician, managing to play along with “both your and ours”.
He said London would not support a “sporting boycott” but would not send government officials to the Games. And that, in fact, is what a “diplomatic boycott” is, only the Americans, Australians and Canadians announce it with a challenge, and Johnson is very polite, although in many other ways Washington supports the anti-Chinese hysteria.
Beijing’s own reaction is interesting: it is harsh, but with humour. The gist of what Chinese officials have said can be boiled down to two points. Firstly, “we did not invite you. Secondly, it is a political provocation – and the Americans will have to answer for unfriendly actions.
It is as if Beijing nevertheless feared that the bad example would be contagious, that the Anglo-Saxon flash mob would be joined by their many allies, and that the impression of the extremely important Games for Chairman Xi would be blurred. But a broad Western front never emerged – the diplomatic boycott tactic was in fact ridiculed by French President Emmanuel Macron, who said that “instead of small measures, there should be useful activity”, and the Olympics had better not be politicised at all.
He then referred to the Moscow Olympics, when the boycott was also forced on athletes. And it finally became clear what the Frenchman means: previously it was a boycott, and now you are just fooling around.
Macron is absolutely right. He says what he has to say in this situation and in the national interest of France. The paradox of the situation is that Macron is still pathetic to look at: France is no longer what it used to be, and at its head it is more a victim of circumstances than a great politician.
That it is better not to politicise the Olympic movement, as this harms the athletes, cannot be argued with the president. But the politicisation has hardly been avoided, and sporting events have become, time and again, a reflection of the confrontation between the great powers.
This was evident during the last escalation of the first Cold War – in the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan, an ardent anti-communist, was elected US President, and a full-scale boycott of the Olympics became a legitimate means of international pressure.
However, the mastermind behind this policy was not the Americans but the Africans – most of the national teams from the Black Continent were absent from the Montreal Games in 1976. This was their way of drawing attention to the apartheid problem – the formal reason for the boycott was a rugby match between South Africa and New Zealand, which had nothing to do with the Olympics.
In 1980, under the pretext of introducing Soviet troops into Afghanistan, the Moscow Games were boycotted by the US together with its Latin American (like Argentina), Asian (like Japan) and three European allies – Germany, Norway and Turkey. The pro-Soviet bloc (with the exception of Romania, which eventually came second in the medal standings) responded by ignoring the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
Note: China boycotted the USSR Games but not the USA Games. France did not boycott any Games. And since then, full-scale boycotts have not been practiced at all by the major sports powers – too costly a pleasure.
This is, to put it mildly, an extremely unpopular way of conducting foreign policy, above all among athletes. For them, an Olympic gold medal is the ultimate career achievement that every serious athlete should aspire to.
Most people only get the chance to compete for Olympic gold medals two or three times in their lives – they retire early on in sport. It takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears, often money, to train, qualify for championships and prepare for competitions. Athletes who were forced to participate in boycotts felt betrayed and saw themselves as victims of fighting for someone else’s interests.
The moral is: if you respect your national team, don’t get involved in boycotts
In international politics in the 1970s and 1980s there was still that swagger and grandeur when such unpopular and painful decisions were made purely for the sake of a gesture. But no one else is prepared to put the multi-billion-dollar national sports industry at risk. So Biden rolls out a benign diplomatic boycott that is hot and cold, while Macron scoffs at the un-boycott but cannot offer anything more substantial.
He cannot afford a broad gesture with a real boycott. Engaging in a “faux-boycott” would mean lurching into someone else’s politics, and fighting for someone else’s interests against your own, because the Chinese will indeed come up with something and retaliate. The times when the PRC authorities were more outraged than acting ended 3-5 years ago.
By not participating in the Anglo-Saxon adventure, France retains a vestige of self-respect – given the way Washington, London and Canberra treated the French when they created the anti-China bloc AUKUS. What was done to the French defence industry at the time has been called “the French disgrace” in the French media – and not to be overly dramatic.
But non-participation in a traitor’s plot is not the same as a response to betrayal. Nor can Macron do what presidents of the calibre of De Gaulle or at least Mitterrand could. They would have seen the confrontation between the West and Beijing as a window of opportunity rather than a cause for despondency, and offered the PRC a special relationship that would have left France part of the West, but made it a valuable mediator for the East
But modern France is little mobile for such diplomatic turns, too bound to the Anglo-Saxon West to play its own game and assert a special interest. So instead of doing his own thing, Macron complains about the pettiness of the actions of either allies or traitors, and does not label himself above Captain Hindsight, who is not destined to be My General.
Dmitry Byvarin, Vzglyad