TO PLAY BALL, NOT MAKE WAR:
FEATURES
Sports, Diplomacy and Soft Power
DEREK SHEARER
daily life. Serving as soccer coach for 6 year-olds, watching my sons’ basketball games, cheering at my daughter’s
gymnastic competitions, and playing in a regular men’s
basketball games and tennis matches became my routine.
During the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, my son
and I watched an exhibition baseball game in which
Nicaragua was playing, while President Reagan was clandestinely trying to overthrow the country’s government.
My op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times “Let ‘Baseball
Diplomacy’ win a big one for peace,” on using sports as a
way to reach out to Latin nations with which the US had
conflicts (including a proposal for major league expansion
Summer 2014 • H A R V A R D I N T E R N A T I O N A L R E V I E W
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S oft P ower
Photo Courtesy Reuters
DEREK SHEARER is the Chevalier Professor
of Diplomacy and World Affairs at Occidental
College, and director of the McKinnon Center
for Global Affairs. He formerly served as the
US Ambassador to Finland.
and
Nelson Mandela once said: “Sport has the power to
change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the
power to unite people…sport can create hope where once
there was only despair.”
Sport is one of the great commonalities of human
beings. More people watch or play sports than almost
any other human activity. Sport reflects and affects ideas
of race, sex, class, as well as national pride and identity.
Sport can change a country’s “brand”, and, as I’ve learned
from my career, sports can be an effective tool in the
diplomat’s playbook.
Growing up in a middle class section of Greater Los
Angeles, sport was a central part of my daily life. I played
football, basketball, baseball and tennis, swam in the public pool, collected baseball cards, and attended games of
the Los Angeles Dodgers, Los Angeles Rams and UCLA )