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teams for Havana and Washington, DC.) was placed in the
Congressional Record by Congressman Mel Levine; it was
cited by other prominent politicians, such as Bill Clinton.
When President Clinton appointed me as the US
Ambassador to Finland, I had the opportunity to practice
sports diplomacy. Playing tennis on Sundays with leading Finnish diplomats was part of my diplomat’s tool kit.
Esko Aho, the Prime Minister of Finland, challenged me
to a friendly game of doubles. Aho brought a ringer as
his partner—a Finnish Davis Cup star—and I came with
my political officer, but it was all good fun (we let the
Prime Minister win, of course), and it helped to smooth
my relations with him and his Centre Party colleagues.
My regular Sunday tennis game led to a friendship with
Max Jakobson, Finland’s version of George Kennan, the
so-called inventor of “containment theory.” Max had
served as the Finnish ambassador to the UN (and was
almost made UN Secretary General, only to be vetoed
by the Soviet Union). And when Henry Kissinger visited
Finland, he asked for a private meeting with Max—and
I hosted a breakfast at my residence for the three of us.
Later, Kissinger reciprocated by hosting a dinner at his
Manhattan home for the President of Finland, when we
came on an official visit. Tennis diplomacy had, in my
personal experience, clearly paid off.
With the ambassador as point guard, US embassy
Helsinki’s basketball team competed in a Finnish industrial league during which we met businessmen from a
number of Finnish companies, leading to useful contacts
for visiting American businessmen. After graduating from
university in California, my eldest son came to Finland
my attention. The culprits later apologized, saying that
they had not realized that the players were Americans;
they thought they were African immigrants. My public
statement that such brutish behavior was wrong regardless
of the country of origin seemed to go over well with the
Finnish public. These experiences as the top US diplomat
in Finland convinced me of the impact of sports on the
public and international sphere.
Breaking The Ice
Returning to teach at Occidental College after my
diplomatic service, I continued to explore sport’s impact
on international relations. At its most ambitious, sports
diplomacy has been used to try to bring together national
adversaries. In 1934, baseball great Babe Ruth and a team
of US all-stars made a good will tour of Japan. The hope
of the sponsors was that the tour might reduce tensions
between Japan and the US. Over 100,000 fans cheered
the Babe and his teammates as they paraded along the
Ginza. The US team played games in twelve cities, and
US Ambassador Joseph Grew called Ruth one of the
most effective Goodwill Ambassadors ever sent to Japan.
Although the trip stimulated the development of Japanese
baseball, US-Japanese diplomacy did not follow and war
broke out. During WWII, Japanese soldiers were heard
to yell across battle lines, “Babe Ruth, go to Hell!”
The most effective example of sports diplomacy is
ping-pong diplomacy between the US and the People’s
Republic of China in 1971. While often cited as a case
of the power of sports to bring enemies together, it is,
as evident in both the above and following examples,
“The most effective example of sports diplomacy is ping-pong
diplomacy between the US and the People’s Republic of China in 1971.”
to play professionally. Attending his games, local officials
often challenged the US ambassador to diplomatic freethrow shooting contests at half time, which the Finnish
press covered favorably.
Enthusiastically greeting American professional and
college sports teams, attending the games and inviting
the teams to my official residence along with their Finnish competitors was another use of sports diplomacy. I
attended professional hockey matches with the Prime
Minister, and greeted the US national hockey team when
they came to play. The team presented me with an official
jersey with my last name on it; I was also honored to open
the championship game in the Finnish American football
league at the Olympic stadium. There were, however,
touchy diplomatic issues one such incident occurred
—
when African-American players in the Finnish basketball
league were attacked by drunken fans—which required
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less an exemplar than an exception. The circumstances
were right for US-China rapprochement and ping-pong
diplomacy. What is not commonly recognized is that this
was a Chinese initiative. Zhou En-lai, wanting to escape
the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution and to advance
the feelers from the Nixon administration, arranged for
the US ping -pong team playing in Japan to be invited to
China. After this highly publicized visit and exhibition
games (which the much better Chinese players let the US
occasionally win), the Chinese team then visited the US,
touring Disneyland, riding on a Memphis steamboat, and
meeting local officials, although pro-Taiwan groups and
anti-communist groups protested.
These highly publicized visits, well-described in
Nicholas Griffin’s extensively researched book, Ping-Pong
Diplomacy, prepared public opinion in both countries for
the dramatic meeting of President Nixon and Chairman
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 • Summer 2014