Many analysts cite 1989 (the year the Berlin Wall fell) as the end of the Cold War. But there was no hint of thawing relations between the world's two superpowers at the beginning of the decade at the Moscow Olympic Games.
In fact, there were no American athletes at the games at all. This was because U.S. president Jimmy Carter ordered a boycott of the games in response to the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
But President Carter was playing a game of his own—he was trying to draw international attention to Soviet actions in Afghanistan while keeping American actions there secret. Read about the intrigue in this new teaching activity from World Conflicts Today (login, free trial).
President Carter's boycott, which 61 other countries supported, successfully put Russian officials on the defensive and brought the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan back into the international spotlight. President Carter was also successful in keeping U.S. involvement in Afghanistan secret.
Afghanistan was one of the Cold War's battlefields, where Americans hoped to weaken the Soviets without fighting them directly. As such, according to Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the United States more or less goaded the Soviets into invading Afghanistan. For months before the invasion, Brzezinski said in a 1998 interview, the United States had been arming anti-Communist Muslim fighters (the mujahideen).
In providing weapons to the Afghan mujahideen, Brzezinski implied, the Carter administration was knowingly—and, what's more, deliberately—increasing the likelihood that the Soviets would invade Afghanistan to prop up Kabul's Communist government.
It's clear then that the 1980 boycott had to do with a larger game than the Olympics—a game played between the Soviet Union and the United States for much higher stakes.
Learning Activity
Read through the history sections of the World Conflicts Today report on Afghanistan, and answer this essential question for critical thinking:
How might wider knowledge of American actions in Afghanistan prior to the Soviet invasion have weakened support for the U.S.-led Olympic boycott?
Now read through the history sections of the World Conflicts Today report on Darfur, and answer another essential question for critical thinking:
Why might people who advocated boycotting the 2008 Beijing games seek to downplay or suppress information about rebel crimes in Darfur?
Tensions within states—not only between states—are also sometimes on display during Olympic games. For example, indigenous Canadians have objected to the design and use of the inukshuk (an indigenous stone landmark) as the symbol of the 2010 Vancouver games. The inukshuk is an important cultural symbol that objectors feel is being used inappropriately.
In World Conflict Today's Basque Country report, read the Regional Autonomy section of the Origins category and the "Read More about the bombing of Guernica" sidebar in the Developments category. These sections explain the symbolic importance to the Basques of the ancient oak tree in Guernica.
As a class, pretend that Spain (rather than Brazil) won its bid to host the 2016 Winter Olympics and decided to use an oak tree as its symbol for the games.
Would the Basques likely support or reject such a symbol and why? What would such a symbol communicate to the rest of the world about Madrid's values and relationship to the Basque Country?
