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Originally Posted by Flamenspiel
I don’t know where you get your information, the 1980 boycott basically prevented a Soviet propaganda victory, at a time in history when the world stopped working during the games no one really paid attention to those games at all. It was the beginning of the end of an empire that collapsed 9 years later. We’re you even born at that time?
They put in millions of rubies and it came to nothing. In contrast The 1968 protests were cool but the long jump record set by Bob Beamon(2feet beyond the previous record) got more press.
The boycott was extremely effective in that the Soviets did not even show up for the next one. Make no mistake about it China will be putting on a full court press to avoid a boycott( in fact they are already threatening there own sanctions). This is massive for China, the fact that they see so afraid of it is proof of how devastating it would be to that horrific regime.
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Well, no, it wasn’t effective. The Olympic boycott had nothing to do with the Soviet Union’s fall years later. It had no impact on foreign policy. I’m not sure where you get your information, because there’s not a thing written out there that talks about the boycott as anything but ineffective. You don’t have to have been alive in 1980 to know that, and if you’re just going on “I remember!” then you should freshen up the noggin with some reading.
It basically played out in the opposite way you’re suggesting. Many countries didn’t go, so the Soviets dominated the games. They used it as proof of Soviet dominance in general. They didn’t care about what people in Canada thought of them, for example, the propaganda was for the people and it continued strong. The purpose of the boycott was to force the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Instead, the Soviets stayed in Afghanistan for nearly a decade more. And you call that effective? Lol. The funny aspect of that being that had the Soviet Union not stayed in Afghanistan for a decade, they might not have fallen when they did. It was that war that eventually broke them, a war which the boycott tried to end. How silly.
Of course China will retaliate against a boycott. They are not scared of it, that’s naive. They are against it because it’s an insult. Just as the Soviets were against it because it was an insult and retaliated by not attending the next games and holding their own instead.
Your recollection and view of the politics surrounding this is fantasy. You don’t seem to understand the purpose of the 1980 boycott, the actual result, why the Soviets didn’t go to the next one, and why they eventually fell... so how would one trust you understand anything about the implications of a boycott on these games? Bizarre.
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Originally Posted by GirlySports
We can't boycott first, same reason we couldn't declare a genocide first. We don't want to be left holding the bucket. It's the US or bust.
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Agreed. I don’t know why this needs reminding, but Canada is small fish. We can join our allies but it’s up to the US to take the lead because if it’s just us, it’s an even dumber game to play. And we’ve already been caught holding the bag for the US once recently. The boycott is not going to do anything. Start messing with imports and exports, then sure, that’s something real, but the Olympics? China isn’t going to stop being horrific because countries it views as beneath them didn’t attend their party.
I get the moral argument against just being associated with such a thing. But if it’s not going to do any good and the bad it will do is against people of your own country... I dunno, seems ####ty. If you’re going to boycott and have athletes sacrifice their shot at the olympics, have them sacrifice it for something more than symbolic grandstanding. Back it up with something real.