The recent column by Chris Benevento, “The Cold War is Over” [Jan. 16], is dismaying in its dizzying level of irresponsible journalism. The column maintains that the general criticism in regards to the Winter Olympics being held in Russia is due to the Cold War mentality of baby boomers, as it suggests that these individuals are “stuck between Stalin and the Cold War.”
The piece leans heavily on a recent interview of the 2002 Olympic committee president and 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In the interview, Romney expressed many concerns about the Olympic Games and the host country, Russia. They include Russia’s national security situation, recent human rights violations and the country’s unwillingness to cooperate on the international level. These criticisms were all left out of Benevento’s piece. This omission serves to distract readers from serious criticisms of Russian foreign and domestic policies. It instead frames America’s mistrust of the country as a result of a Cold War mindset.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has struggled with Islamist militants in the South Caucasus region where Sochi is located. Just days before the interview with Romney, a pair of suicide bombings that killed 34 people occurred in Volgograd, a mere 400 miles from Sochi (not a small distance given Russia’s immense geographic range). These bombings and other attacks like it highlight a significant concern for the security of the Olympic Games, which some Islamist militant groups have vowed to target and disrupt.
As of 1999, homosexuality has been classified as a mental illness in Russia. The Russian government recently green lighted a series of anti-gay laws, including one that deems it illegal to suggest that homosexual relationships are equal to heterosexual ones. These laws additionally prohibit the distribution of material dealing with gay and lesbian rights. Such laws have been criticized by numerous countries and have led many gay rights activists to call for a general boycott of the Games in response to them. Despite this, the Russian government is currently drafting an even stronger law that would prevent gay and lesbian parents from taking custody of a child they had in a previous heterosexual relationship. Russia’s homosexual community lives in constant fear of a government that sees them as less than human in a country that has few avenues for real democratic change.
Russia’s refusal to cooperate on the international level has recently been exemplified by the bloody civil war in Syria. Russia has been unwilling to stop the Syrian government (a key Russian ally) from systematically slaughtering its own people. Instead, Moscow has opted to sell the Syrian government weapons and aircraft that have prolonged and intensified the conflict. An additional result of this action has been the steady rise of Islamist groups that have ties to al-Qaida. Only when the United States and European Union nations threatened direct intervention in Syria did Russia back down and call for the destruction of stockpiled chemical weapons in Syria. Despite this action, the brutal fighting is now entering its fourth year with no end in sight.
These serious criticisms of Russia were left out of Benevento’s column. Many readers may have been led to conclude that America’s mistrust and criticism of Russia is rooted in a Cold War mentality of aging baby boomers and not the result of Russian human rights violations and foreign policy that promotes the needless deaths of innocent civilians. The column concludes that America should “put these baby boomers away in nursing homes” so that it could move past this Cold War mindset. On the contrary, America should be learning from these baby boomers. By doing so, Americans can continue to question and criticize governments such as Russia’s that maintain troubling human rights records yet are allowed to host the Olympic Games. It should not be lost that these games were designed over 100 years ago to promote peace and unity throughout the world, which is something Russia has done little to promote.
-Roy Apostle is an environmental science major and a member of the Class of 2015.
