I can think of no better overview of this latest development than the following:
Russia dopes its athletes to gain unfair advantage in international competitions as readily as it meddles in foreign countries to undermine democratic institutions.
I hope that strikes a chord. Because it informed my commentary after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) issued its first report on Russia’s state-sanctioned doping program. That report assailed the Russian government’s
… complicity in widespread doping and cover-ups by its track and field athletes and said they should all be banned from competition until the country cleans up its act.
(Associated Press, November 9, 2015)
In that commentary, I placed WADA’s report into context and recommended what the governing bodies of all sports should do about it. Here in part is how I did so in “In Putin’s Russia Even Athletics Is a Criminal (Doping) Enterprise,” November 9, 2015:
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Not since Adolf Hitler presided over the 1936 Berlin Olympics has a leader been so determined to see his country win the overall medal count. Only this fanatical nationalism explains Putin dispatching members of his special police to ensure that no Russian athlete tests positive — no matter how dedicated that athlete’s doping for Sochi.
Nevertheless, I do not agree with WADA’s recommendation to ban all Russian athletes from international competition, including the 2016 Rio Olympics.
There’s no evidence indicating that governments in other top-performing countries (e.g., Jamaica for Summer Games or the United States for Winter Games) have aided and abetted doping the way the Russian government did. But there’s more than sufficient prima facie evidence to suspect that athletes from those countries engage in doping just as much as athletes from Russia do. …
WADA should enlist the governing bodies of all major sports to ban Russia from hosting any sanctioned competition, so long as Putin remains in power. Because, no matter their representations, officials in Putin’s Russia will never implement the reforms WADA deems are necessary to eradicate this systemic doping. …
But WADA should not stigmatize and penalize Russian athletes – who subjected themselves to independent testing and never tested positive – with collective punishment.
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The point is that, just as Russia will continue meddling in foreign countries until punishment makes doing so prohibitive, it will continue doping athletes until the same.
That’s why I am so heartened by WADA’s latest punishment. And, that it echoes what I asserted and recommended in the 2015 excerpt above is neither here nor there.
The World Anti-Doping Agency executive committee handed down the most severe punishment to date in the years-long Russian doping saga, issuing a four-year ban that will bar Russia from competing at the next two Olympic Games.
The [unanimous] decision means Russia will have no formal presence at next year’s Summer Games [in Tokyo] or the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing and will be barred from most major international competition through 2023, including FIFA’s World Cup, the Youth Olympic Games, Paralympics, world championships and other major sporting events subject to World Anti-Doping Code.
(The Washington Post, December 9, 2019)
Incidentally, Russian bodybuilder Natalia Kuznetsova personifies the transformative absurdity of systemic doping among Russian athletes. Because she proudly sports a physique more muscular and vascular than Arnold Schwarzenegger’s was in his Pumping-Iron prime …
But, lest you think all Russians are jingoistically complicit, this should disabuse you of that thought:
Even Russia’s own anti-doping agency head, Yuri Ganus, has admitted he fears the worst after discovering that thousands of entries on a key database of athletes’ test results had been doctored despite his calls to come clean.
‘They (the sanctions) are to be expected and they are justified,’ Ganus said. ‘It’s a real tragedy for our sport.’
(The Daily Mail, December 8, 2019)
Hear, hear! That’s why it’s notable that, according to a December 9 report on the Olympic Channel, WADA’s punishment further echoes my recommendations as follows:
- Russian government officials and ROC members are barred from attending WADA-sanctioned sporting events.
- Russia is barred from hosting any major event (including world championships and Olympic Games).
Trust me, this punishment will be a huge blow to Russia’s national pride. After all, WADA has deemed its flag too tainted to fly amidst those of other nations at the Olympics and other international competitions. Moreover, the shame Putin himself will harbor will be in direct proportion to the pride he exuded while hosting the Sochi Olympics. Checkmate…?
That said, this punishment is as much about politics as it is about sports. Accordingly, it behooves Western governments to emulate WADA by inflicting punishment severe enough to make it prohibitive for Russia to continue meddling in their elections (and other domestic affairs). After all, it’s self-evident that all economic and political sanctions to date have done nothing to chasten Russia. (I first recommended what punishment would prove prohibitive in “Putin Takes Crimea. Checkmates Obama…?” March 1, 2014.)
Meanwhile, abiding resentment over the disintegration of the Soviet Union motivates Putin’s behavior on the world stage. And public gloating like this could only have caused him to weaponize his resentment:
‘Look, Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country,’ [the late Senator John] McCain said. ‘It’s kleptocracy. It’s corruption. It’s a nation that’s really only dependent upon oil and gas for their economy, and so economic sanctions are important.’
(The Week, March 16, 2014)
This and other slights, real or perceived, explain Putin’s Machiavellian calculation that the best role for Russia to play on the world stage is to
- be the authoritarian bane of democratic countries like the United States and United Kingdom (notably by sowing political, racial, and every other manner of discord);
- act like a hired gun of or godfather to authoritarian countries like Syria and Venezuela; and
- dangle unlimited supplies of oil and gas to curry alliances with developing countries like China, India, and all Eastern European countries that once composed the Soviet Union.
This is why I fear the only way to make it prohibitive for Russia to continue its bad ways is to sanction its state-owned oil and gas companies, comprehensively. In fact, but for Trump, the US would be leading the way to sanction Russia’s the way it is now sanctioning Venezuela’s.
I am mindful that Trump telegraphed his intent to lift sanctions imposed on Russia for political meddling and other transgressions (like annexing Crimea). Remarkably, even congressional Republicans balked at enabling this act of betrayal. Indeed, the spectre of a congressional veto override proved that America’s unique system of checks and balances could make Trump Putin’s poisoned chalice as much as his presidential puppet.
So here’s to sanctioning Russia, at long last, where it hurts. Because failure to do so will only embolden Putin to continue deploying any means necessary to undermine democratic countries in any way possible.
Related commentaries:
Putin’s Russia (doping)…
Putin takes Crimea…
Putin’s puppet…
poisoned chalice…