"NO WAR PLEASE"
Athletes are speaking out against Russia's war in Ukraine—and their protests matter.
Dear Readers,
The news this week has been . . . not good. Of course, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is dominating the headlines, as the Ukrainian military—and groups of very brave Ukrainian civilians—try to repel the Russian assault. In the sporting world, it’s looking like MLB and the MLB Players Union are still at loggerheads, meaning the league will likely cancel games unless the two parties can come to a deal by . . . let’s see . . . tomorrow.
So all in all, things are not so good here on planet Earth—some things, of course, being much, much worse than others. That said, we’d like to discuss a topic that is solidly in our wheelhouse: the recent displays of anti-war sentiment in the sporting world. In particular, we’d like to discuss why these anti-war protests are so important in the context of Russia’s imperial ambitions. We hope you enjoy.
As a side note, Southpaw’s new t-shirts are supposed to get to us this week, at which point we’ll start distributing to those of you who have ordered one. As an added incentive for those of you who haven’t ordered one, we’ll cut you a deal: if you make a donation of $20 (or more) to a charitable organization that’s helping Ukrainian refugees, and then email a copy of your receipt to editor@southpawreport.com, we’ll give you a t-shirt for free. As a reminder, here’s what they look like:
In the face of large-scale invasion, small acts of protest can seem meaningless. Here’s why they aren’t.
This Thursday, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The next day, Russian tennis player Andrey Rublev prevailed over Hubert Hurkacz in the semifinals of the Dubai Duty-Free Tennis Championships. Rublev went on to win the tournament yesterday.
After his semifinal victory, Rublev picked up a pen and scrawled on a nearby camera lens “NO WAR PLEASE.” Rublev’s message was an extension of his comments from the day before, when he told the press, “In these moments you realize that my match is not important. It's not about my match, how it affects me. Because what's happening is much more terrible. You realize how important it is to have peace in the world and to respect each other no matter what and to be united . . . We should take care of our earth and of each other. This is the most important thing.”
In these dark times, it’s easy to get cynical about a gesture like this—to write it off as posturing for the media, or to think that it fits so snuggly within the realm of acceptable political discourse that it does not help the people of Ukraine at all.
But in this case, that line of thinking misses the mark, even for hardened skeptics like us.
First of all, it’s important to distinguish between the power of an answer at a press conference and the power of on-court protests. Press conferences are carefully controlled environments when athletes are given license to give boilerplate answers to journalists’ softball questions, and Rublev’s statement during his press conference followed the usual playbook. But Rublev’s decision to put anti-war sentiments on display on the actual playing field (or court) is different altogether. In doing so, Rublev highlighted a political and humanitarian issue in a forum that has been explicitly designed to exclude those sorts of political expression—except when they’re in the service of flag-drenched nationalism or jingoistic militarism.
More importantly, Rublev’s gesture got a reaction. A video of the moment on Twitter has over 20 million views:
We don’t know how many people tuned in to a non-major tennis semifinal in February, but our guess is that the number fell quite a ways short of 20 million. This is why sports figures expressing their political beliefs in the middle of competitions has historically been so successful: not only does it force the viewers who are watching to consider the message, but it also has a way of reaching people who would never in their lives tune in to a tennis match or any other sports game.
In the grand scheme of things, “NO WAR PLEASE” is a pretty uncontroversial slogan—as evidenced by the fact that the television announcers quickly responded to Rublev’s protest by saying “I think we can get behind that.” But the second—and more important—piece of his protest has to do with sports’ role in geopolitics in general, and in Russia in particular.
For the past few weeks, observers outside of Russia have been trying to make sense of Putin’s imperial designs using the usual categories of analysis that “experts” reach for to make sense of state behavior: some sort of realpolitik, for instance, or clear calculations about Russia’s national interest. Other observers have tried to explain Russia’s invasion based on Putin’s personal understanding of Russian history and Russia’s role in the world, placing particular emphasis on Putin’s sense that Russia, once a great empire and an unquestioned global power, has been embarrassed and undermined by malign Western powers. Others still have honed in on the psychological wounds born of Putin’s relatively diminutive stature.
Yet none of these explanations really seem to capture the elusive core of Putin’s motivations. Although NATO expansion into eastern Europe does pose some threat to Russia’s control over its near-abroad region, it’s not clear that the installation of a pro-Russia puppet regime in Ukraine will do much to forestall the fundamental changes in the region—though it very well may embolden other autocrats around the world to try their own hands at territorial expansion. Putin’s own justifications for the invasion—including that Ukraine was the historical invention of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, and that the Ukrainian state is run by a bunch of closet Nazis—provide a window into a mind that is motivated by something other than rational calculations of Russia’s interests.
But that’s exactly the point: Putin’s designs in Ukraine appear to stem from some pre-rational, visceral sense of Russian pride, an almost spiritual belief in the power of violence to rejuvenate Russia’s national spirits. That pride originates from the same part of our psyches that gives rise to sports fandom, with all of its irrational loyalties and unjustifiable hostilities. This is why, for centuries, political regimes have used sports to rally their citizens—and their conquered inhabitants—behind the banner of the state, and to marshal them against the state’s enemies. Nationalism and sports fandom grow out of the same deep part of us, and it’s not a part that can be easily explained with reason.
This is particularly true in the Russian case. Consider, for instance, Russia’s borderline-pathological obsession with the success of its Olympic athletes, and its subsequent outrage at the International Olympic Commission’s decision to ban Russia from the Olympics in response to their state-sponsored doping regime. In Putin’s political imagination, Russia's success in the athletic arena isn’t just a symbol of Russia’s success on the global stage. Insofar as it forces other nations to respect Russia’s greatness, it actually creates the geopolitical conditions for Russia's political rejuvenation.
But by the same token, protests that interrupt this easy alliance between sports and nationalism carry outsized influence. Luckily, various organizations around the sporting world have begun taking a stand against Russia’s aggression. The Formula 1 team Haas is almost certainly dropping its Russian sponsorship, and the Putin-allied owner of Chelsea FC has been forced to give the reins of the team over to his board of directors (though this could essentially be a well-timed PR move). On Friday, UEFA announced that it had decided to move the 2022 Champions League Final out of St. Petersburg, and Formula 1 announced that it had canceled the 2022 Russian Grand Prix.
These actions—coupled with quotidian displays of resistance from individual athletes—constitute a clear rebuke of Russian imperialism from within the very arena that Putin has tried to use to broadcast Russia’s greatness. Of course, these displays won’t stop the invasion. (Only Ukrainian civilians with long guns might be able to do to that.) And the next step in these protests must be for athletes to engage in actual transgressions, such as speaking out about Russia’s state-sponsored doping programs or calling Putin out by name for his authoritarianism.
Still, the sporting world, despite its all-too-frequent alliance with the forces of injustice in this world, has a chance to show that it stands for something better than nationalism and militarism and imperialism. We hope it will rise to the challenge.
RODNEY’S ROUNDUP
Do you want to read about. . .
. . . how the owner of Chelsea FC is attempting to deal with sanctions? “Chelsea football owner Roman Abramovich and the awkwardness of Russia sanctions” by Greg Miller in The Washington Post (February 26, 2022).
. . . what people at the baseball negotiating table don’t understand? “Baseball is stuck, and time is running out” by Chelsea Janes in The Washington Post (February 26, 2022).
. . . how Russian sponsorships are quickly disappearing? “With Ukraine Under Attack, The Sports World Cuts Ties With Russian Sponsors” by Marty Swant in Forbes (February 26, 2022).