Sport and War
If war is a continuation of diplomacy by other means, how far is sport a continuation of war by other means? This thought occurs to me each time the Olympic Games come round, with their hoisting of national flags, playing of anthems and tables of medals. The same goes, of course, for football, both soccer and rugger. The Welsh, for example, are reputed to approach matches against England as an act of natioonal vengeance. {I know nothing of the American or Austalian varieties.) How far does sport serve as a safety valve for aggression, and how far as a stimulus? Your thoughts, shipmates.
Comments
Whipping up nationalist sentiments may help governments get buy ins for war, but I don't see much evidence that they ever reach a level where governments have to find an outlet for them that isn't war.
I don't think performance at the Olympics or World Cup correlates with the belligerence of the State except in so far as belligerent states tend to have less money to put into sport.
They are, though, a thoroughly murky business.
That's not inconsistent with nations using sport as an alternative to war in terms of confirming their superiority over other nations.
Understandable. Whereas a fair number of Americans who don't have a big relationship with some other country will cheer for Canada if the US is eliminated from competition in a sport they follow closely. Which is one reason why I think sports reflect international relations a lot more than they affect them.
Also, given that games in sports like NFL football and big-time association football are associated with spikes in domestic violence, especially when people's teams lose, it's hard for me to see how sports could be a safety valve for aggression among fans.
The US sends hundreds of athletes to the Olympics, but their experiences don't affect most of the 330+ million other Americans. Fans of particular sports will remember details, but I couldn't tell you which countries the US competed against in most of the competitions. Except I do recall we beat France in the basketball final. How that affects a bond that predates the independence of the US and the French Revolution I don't see at all. Bonds between countries are forged in shared experiences that go a lot deeper than a few people competing in sports.
The beach featured in the video during the Olympic closing ceremonies a few weeks ago is a block from my apartment. They brought in fake palm trees and the real Snoop (edit : okay, he was born here, so they didn't "bring him in") and sucked up a bunch of beach parking and blocked off a chunk of the beach to film. In 2028 the sailing will be in that water. The rowing and canoeing will be in a venue a short walk from here. If my partner and I are still living here then, we'll give serious consideration to leaving town for the duration. It will be a logistical nightmare, the homeless will be chased away and lose their belongings, and if there's a cost overrun, as California taxpayers we'll help pay for it. I would rather everyone stayed home - I'm not the least bit interested in having people from around the world squeezing through our narrow one-way streets.
Though old attitudes die hard - I can remember a letter to either the Times or the Daily Telegraph in the last 20 years - I suspect the latter but it was in a time when I had access in the wardroom to basically all the daily newspapers at breakfast (though I think we can rule out it having been the Guardian…) that said something like:
‘Sir,
There are only three sports - hunting*, shooting and fishing. Everything else is a game or a pastime.
Yours etc’
*for the benefit of those outside UK and Ireland, ‘hunting’ almost always means ‘with hounds’ - if you’re going after something with a gun that’s shooting.
Riding ostriches!
...when there's a cost overrun.
No modern Olympics has remained on budget.
Mind you, LA does have a history of making a financial success of the Olympics - the 1984 Olympics were the only games in modern history that on reasonable analysis actually made a profit. AIUI, the success of that games was largely found in using existing facilities for the competitions, and not building a bunch of expensive white elephants.
Individual sports are more like one-on-one fighting. The contest between two particular people at a particular moment becomes everything, whether it's a duel or in a stadium. Where multiple individuals come together, the champion of many nations or tribes going into a non-fatal kind of war. Each one trains its champion, and endows them with all sorts of characteristics which are the most prized elements of tribal/national character. The champions compete with each other, and the standard of the victor's tribe/nation is raised in triumph. This is not a coincidence.
Sport is where people with skills and talents practice them and then compete against each other to see who is best. Competitors should stick to the rules.
Yes, a country might have some well-deserved pride that its rugby team, say, is better than someone else's but that is nothing like bombing, shooting or otherwise disposing of human life.
Oops, I think I revealed my cards.
I believe in Just War Theory, and that, plus the Geneva Convention, pretty much sums up my views of war.
If we could resolve our international conflicts via sports, as long as the resolution did not result in tyranny or injustice or the like, that might be good. But I don't think people work that way in general.
Whatever prestige is associated with sports doesn't extend very far. None of the Los Angeles-area teams have brought prestige to the city as a whole when they've won championships, not prestige that extends outside the sport in any way. Los Angeles didn't even have NFL football, the biggest sport in the US, for over 20 years, and hardly anyone here cared. Football fans cheered for USC or UCLA, and that rivalry is deep enough that some people really do care about the bragging rights, but bragging rights are all the fans get when their team wins. UCLA hasn't won its conference in over 10 years, and the prestige of the school overall has not been tarnished by that; I'm sure that hurts its football recruiting, but world-class scientists aren't deciding not to come to UCLA because the football team is mediocre. The Los Angeles Dodgers have won their conference 10 out of the last 11 years and won the World Series in 2020, but any prestige gained doesn't extend to the city as a whole. And I don't imagine there are a lot of people inside the country or outside who don't already think well of the US who admire the country because it wins a lot of Olympic medals. The Olympics are barely over and already I can't remember if we beat out China for the most medals or not, and I sure as hell can't tell you about the medal count for any other Olympics. It's the sort of thing you care about if you care about that sort of thing.
Professional sports exist to make money, at least in the US. There is prestige to be had, certainly -- people admire successful athletes -- but pro sports wouldn't be the huge thing that they are if there weren't so much money to be made, and owners these days make money whether or not their teams win. Every NFL team owner got a $400 million check from the league office for the last season. You can make more money if your team wins, of course. But the Dodgers will make more money this year just for signing the world's most popular player, even if they flame out in the post-season for the third year in a war. And again, there's prestige in that -- but it doesn't matter outside baseball and its fans.
To play sports, everyone involved has to be in some kind of agreement about when and where to play, what the rules are, what the stakes are. When you play a sport, you agree to take the chance of losing. If you don't take it well when you lose, you're called a "sore loser." If you start a fight, it's typically considered unsportsmanlike conduct, and there are penalties for fighting. Sports are fundamentally cooperative. You can opt in or opt out, choose to play or not play, choose to cheer and be a fan or not. You have to work not only with your teammates but also with your opponents to play sports.
Countries or factions go to war because they are very much not in agreement with each other. You're working against your opponents, not cooperating with them. You don't call up the other country and agree upon a time and place to have a war, you don't line up referees, and you sure as hell don't quit fighting when the other country needs a breather. If you lose, nobody says things like, "Buck up, kiddo, what's important is how you wage the war, and you gave it all you had." There are no awards for good sportsmanship in war. And if your nation goes to war or is invaded, and you're not a fan, you don't get to just opt out. My tax money helps pay for US wars; it's illegal for me to opt out, despite being a life-long pacifist. Ukrainians who are not fans of the war don't get to just not buy a ticket and do something else instead. Go tell anyone in a war zone right now that war is like sports and see what they say.
Tell the people imprisoned for years at Guantanamo about the rules of war.
They are in Gitmo because they violated the rules of war, at least according to the United States.
I am just saying there are rules of war. But, just think how football (soccer) games can get in parts of the world if there is not a strong police presence.
How does this make them like war?
Comment 2: There actually are definitions of the term "war", such as "the controlled use of force to achieve a purpose". Do you want to disagree with that, and if so, can you improve on it?
Who are you addressing?
No, I don't have a good definition of "sport".