The Big Story/ The Terror Olympics

 

By Rick Boettger

 

American news coverage of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, has been relentlessly negative. Most of the leads are about the sure threat of terrorist attacks, followed up by corruption, with a dash of its being too warm there for snow. It’s as though we want them to fail.

 

 

Welcome to the new Cold War, in a warm winter clime. And we Americans are basically the bullies creating the fight. How would we feel if any country covered one of our own events, like the Super Bowl, with nothing but “Don’t go! Terrorists will target the Super Bowl!” Of course, any major event anywhere in the West can be called a target for terrorists, if you want to. And that has been the singular obsession of the American press with the Russians’ big show in their favorite vacation spot, Sochi.

 

 

Sadly, this theme is consistent with everything we’ve done with the Russians since they gave up Communism and opened up to the West in 1990. Starting with Bill Clinton, we’ve said we want to be friends but act like enemies. We’ve established NATO bases in half of the 14 former Soviet republics. At the same time, we deny them any right to intervene in bordering states, like Georgia, that they perceive as threats.

 

 

Worse, we even presume to lecture them on how they should run their own political economy. At high levels we support “regime change,” that is, taking out a president, Putin, who has maintained high levels of popularity for a decade, unlike any of our own presidents.

 

 

While applauding Russia’s remarkably successful efforts to secure its former far-flung nuclear weapons, we at the same time unilaterally withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, so we could continue to pursue our destabilizing Star Wars dreams. Lately, in 2007, we initiated an empty treaty that not only fails to reduce nuclear bombs but lets us develop new ones. Finally, we’ve put our missile defenses right next door to them in Poland and the Czech Republic.

 

 

Remember how we reacted to Soviet missiles in Cuba? For two decades, we have been far more threatening to Russia, while professing it is all their fault we’re not better friends. Our continuing hostility is evident not only in the press coverage but in statements by our authorities. While the President says, “I believe Sochi will be safe,” the rest of his interview dwells on the threats — and his actions are that the First Family is not going. Homeland Security is detailing a scary new threat every week, from female suicide bombers to toothpaste bombs in planes.

 

 

What I fear as much as an actual terrorist attack (which of course is a threat everywhere, especially in our own country) is what our American response will be. From what I’ve seen so far, I expect to hear a not-so-grim satisfaction in seeing that yes, we were right, and Russia is dangerous. I fear something worse than schadenfreude, the guilty pleasure in the misfortune of others. I fear a not-guilty pleasure in the suffering of a people, the Russians, whom we have made our enemies.

 

 

While I’ve read the top U.S. Soviet scholar Stephen Cohen’s recent book for the above précis of the last 20 years, I have considerable Russian experience myself, which is why what I’ve seen and read about Sochi pains me so. I learned Russian in the Army Security Agency, when they were indeed the Evil Empire, so I was elated to be in Moscow presenting at a mathematics conference in 1990, shaking hands with a Soviet officer in a shared cab, newly friends. I even, in an excess of enthusiasm, briefly married a beautiful Muscovite half my age.

 

 

More seriously, I taught business in Moscow for a semester as a Fulbright Professor. While there, I mentored a 19-year-old, eventually putting him through MIT’s business school. He worked for Roman Abramovich before opening his own mergers/acquisitions shop and becoming a generous multimillionaire. His sons are like nephews to me.

 

 

So, yes, I am very biased. Nonetheless, please join me in a sincere prayer for the safety of everyone, not just our fellow Americans, at the Sochi Olympics.

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