Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dominates the news in the west.
As The Economist noted in an analysis in December and as this column argued last week, in the global landscape Russia represents “only the ‘acute’ problem, as America sees things.” The analysis goes on: “The greater threat to the world order — what the Pentagon calls its ‘pacing’ challenge — comes from China, the only country with the potential to dethrone America as the world’s preeminent power. China’s armed forces are expanding rapidly. It already has the largest navy in the world, the third-largest air force, a thick array of missiles and the means to wage war in space and cyberspace.
“… American military officials, in particular, say [Chinese President Xi Jinping] wants to develop the military capability to seize Taiwan by 2027.”
As this column posted last week, before a Chinese spy balloon appeared over Montana, shot down Saturday by a U.S. fighter jet in the Atlantic just over the Carolinas, sparking a still-unraveling diplomatic crisis between the world’s two great powers, everything in our 21st-century world is about China.
There can be zero question, none, that this is the big-picture question confronting the International Olympic Committee as it weighs pathways and precedent for Russian athlete participation as “neutrals” in the Paris Olympics in 2024, and as the contenders for the IOC presidential campaign in 2025 assess challenges to come in the years ahead.
What’s seemingly missing, entirely, from the already-contentious debate over the Russians-as-neutrals for 2024 and the predictable calls from various quarters is elemental: a recognition that the Olympic Games are designed to, as the tagline from some years ago summed it up perfectly, celebrate humanity.
Pope Francis at Mass Sunday in Juba, South Sudan // Vatican Pool/ Getty Images
So much of our world is mired in inhumanity.
The west seemingly can only see Ukraine. But the past 10 years have brought a paradigm shift, one that is now all but hiding in plain sign — one about which the International Olympic Committee, to its credit, recognized and, for once, has been ahead of trend.
If only the most vocal, the most strident, politicians in the west would wake up and see what is right there.
If only the western world would, as an NPR report in December acknowledged, devote perhaps more than 1% of its media coverage to what’s what.
If only these politicians and the media could confront, would at least acknowledge, the bias and the flat-out racism. Because all human beings deserve a common measure of dignity. Everyone.
As the president of the International Judo Federation, Marius Vizer, said in opening arguably that sport’s preeminent tour event, the Paris Grand Slam, over the weekend, “War and politics cannot divide sport and cannot divide us. Sport and religion bring the most important values of society, which promote principles of respect, solidarity and peace. Sport is the last bridge, which today in the world’s confrontations can be a messenger for peace and unity and can work for reconciliation.”
Each December, the International Rescue Committee, the global aid group, puts together what it calls an emergency watchlist of 20 nations at most risk. The December 2022 list of nations for 2023 is home to just 13% of the world’s population and accounts for 1.6% of global GDP. Yet it represents 90% of people in humanitarian need; 81% of those globally who are forcibly displaced; 80%, acutely food insecure; and 89% of conflict-related civilian deaths. The overwhelming majority are people of color.
“Forcibly displaced” is fancy talk for “refugee.” This is the impetus behind the IOC’s refugee team, launched first at the Rio 2016 Games.
No. 1 on the list is Somalia. No. 2, Ethiopia, riven by years of internal conflict. No. 3, Afghanistan, abandoned last August by the United States, which, let us all recall, invaded in late 2001 and stayed for nearly 21 years.
The IRC report says of what to expect in 2023 there: “Afghan women and girls will experience the brunt of this hardship. They remain at risk of violence and exploitation.”
Of Ethiopia, it says: “While a November 2022 peace deal may hold and offers hope for an end to the conflict in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, 28.6 million remain in need of humanitarian aid.” And: “If the peace deal unravels, humanitarian needs will increase even more.”
Ukraine is No. 10, behind No. 9 Haiti, No. 8 Burkina Faso and No. 7 South Sudan.
No. 6, Syria; No. 5, Yemen; No. 4, Democratic Republic of Congo.
To reiterate: Ukraine is No. 10.
In a speech last Dec. 15 at the Council of Foreign Relations, David Miliband, the former British foreign secretary who is now head of the IRC, said these 20 countries account for 800 million people. That’s 10% of the world’s population. Of those 800 million, 244 million are in need, one in three. The proportion for women and girls is higher. These, he said, mark the highest figures the IRC has reported in 10 years of such reports.
What’s happening, he said, is what he called System Failure. Capital S, Capital F.
Some might well call the conflict in Ukraine a proxy war. See the billions in dollars and materiel — now to include tanks — sent by the Americans. The New York Times over the weekend reported that the United States has given Ukraine more than a million American-made artillery shells, which Ukrainians are shooting daily at Russian troops. These shells are made in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and filled with explosives in Middletown, Iowa. Meanwhile, despite sanctions, as the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, Russian jet fighters, submarines and soldiers are being equipped with the help of Chinese companies.
The land war in Ukraine offers several distinct characteristics. Three are most striking.
The first: it’s in Europe.
Two: one state invaded the other.
Three; those involved are, for the most part, white people.
Conflict in the rest of the world, particularly Africa and Asia, is entirely otherwise.
As Miliband told the Council of Foreign Relations in December, “Wars within states are at record levels.”
This — this fact — is what needs to be understood.
War? As the protest song by Edwin Starr reminded us in 1970, it’s good for absolutely nothing. But because the myopic focus in the west is almost entirely on Ukraine, the violence and catastrophe elsewhere, the suffering, the inhumanity, in what International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach regularly calls our “fragile” world is dismissively cast aside.
If it’s too obvious to say so, then let it be said — it’s because these people are black and brown, not white, like they are in Europe.
Every person in our world deserves a common measure of dignity.
Ten years ago, in his first official trip outside Rome, Pope Francis visited an Italian island to pay tribute to migrants from North Africa who had drowned off its shores. In a sermon there, he spoke of the story of Cain and Abel: “God asks each one of us: ‘Where is the blood of your brother that cries out to me? Today,” the pope said, “no one in the world feels responsible for this.”
He called this “the globalization of indifference.”
Miliband said in December, “There are 55 so-called ‘civil’ wars at the moment, although of course they are anything but civilized. Today they are 10 times more frequent than in the previous two centuries.
“They last on average four times longer than inter-state wars because peacemaking is in calamitous retreat.
“Just 21 peace agreements were signed or declared globally in 2020, the lowest since the end of the Cold War. As of mid-2021, there had been just seven.”
To be clear, the position here is that the war in Ukraine is immoral and awful. The hope is that it ends immediately if not sooner.
Similarly:
In Yemen, the IRC said in a Jan. 25 bulletin, two of three people need help. In March, the civil war there will head into a ninth year.
In this past year alone, it said on Jan. 20, 1.7 million Somalis have become refugees. The reasons: conflict and drought.
In South Sudan, which as the New York Times reported, is the world’s “newest, largely Christian and still war-torn state,” nearly 8 million people, or two-thirds of the population, will suffer an “acute lack of food” by April, according to the United Nations. Of those 8 million, 1.4 million are children.
Pope Francis was in the South Sudanese capital, Juba, on Saturday. He said, “I am here with you, and I suffer for you and with you.” He called South Sudan the “greatest enduring refugee crisis on the continent.”
Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of the Philippines, a senior aide who accompanied the pope on the trip, said, according to the New York Times, “We hope that this visit will highlight the beauty of these people and also their suffering,” adding a moment later, ”Unfortunately, we need events like this to enter within the radar.”
To limit political posturing solely to the conflict in Ukraine does a grave disservice to the rest of humanity. We can all do better. We must.
As Miliband said in that same December NPR report, “No problem that starts in Syria or starts in Ethiopia or starts in Myanmar ends there.”
Reminder:
It is the International Olympic Committee. This is why there are five rings. Why an Olympic Games celebrates all — for emphasis, all — of humanity.