Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister of Poland has decided to boycott the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic games in an act of protest against Chinese actions in Tibet. This is a fact that few people through out the world are aware of and perhaps even fewer actually care about for at the end of the day neither us nor Tusk should delude ourselves in to believing that Tusk’s absence from the opening ceremony of the Olympic games is going to make any difference what so ever to anybody. Let alone to the people of Tibet in whose name Donald Tusk is supposedly doing it for. If we may be realistic the Chinese government which granted has an appalling human rights record not only with regards to Tibetans but all its citizens will not change anything simply because one person fails to turn up at a ceremony even a big one.

If we go back to the year of 1980 when the Olympic Games were due to take place in Moscow, it was Jimmy Carter; then president of United States who took the monumental choice of not sending our American Olympic team to compete in the Moscow games in protest of Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. Carter’s actions naturally achieved the goal of

hurting those American athletes who had trained so hard for that moment of glory in their lives but apart from this what else did his efforts amount to? Well let us think for a minute. The Olympic Games were not shown on American television not that I myself missed them given that I spent this summer in Madrid where I witnessed how not even the UK; our closest ally in any war did not follow in our footsteps of boycotting the Moscow games in the naïve hope that it would make the Soviets withdraw their troops from Afghanistan. Naturally if even the UK would not go along with us on this one, it is needless to say that neither would some of our less American influenced allies such as France, Spain, or Italy who like the UK did not fail to make their presence felt at the Moscow games.

Carter’s drive to get the nations of the world to join us in our boycott obviously failed miserably as did his bid to be reelected President when in November of the same year he would go on to suffer a landslide defeat at the hands of ex-actor, Ronald Wilson Reagan. Carter however had other “brilliant ideas” on how to assist the people of Afghanistan and one of them being a grain embargo of the Soviet Union. This tactic contrary to the first one had stronger effects. One of them being hurting our farmers while not helping the people of Afghanistan in the slightest. Perhaps it was ideas like this one that earned him his Nobel Prize?

It is with this in mind that I ask not only Tusk but those who may be contemplating similar actions the following question. If a boycott of the Moscow games by the United States Olympic team, which is one of the biggest with perhaps the one most fans to follow it along with American networks also choosing not to broadcast the event (which meant tremendous lose of revenue to organizers of the games) failed to make the slightest difference in Moscow’s decision to withdraw their troops from Afghanistan why then would Donald Tusk’s absence from the opening ceremony even be noticed by anybody outside of Poland let alone change anything with regards to relationships between Beijing and Tibet?

The simple answer is it will not change anything apart from perhaps making Tusk feel better about himself for having made a gallant though futile effort at something that was doomed to failure from the get go. The Olympic games for better or worse are going to be held in China weather we like it or not; this is a fact and they will not be canceled and even if the whole Polish Olympic team along with other nations were to boycott them as was the case with the Los Angeles games of 1984 it will not alter Beijing’s attitude toward Tibet or anything else for that matter. China right now has an economy that is literally growing by leaps and bounds to the point that it has already past Italy and will soon do likewise with France if it has not done so already with regards to the size of their G.D.P. and though the Olympic Games will provide them with a boost to their economy, it will not be much in comparison to the size of what their economy presently is. With this in mind we should come to the conclusion that even if the Olympic games were not to take place in Beijing this year it would not make that much of difference to the Chinese economy let alone to their political machine.

I am a Republican so it would not be my tendency to agree with a Democrat but I must say that Bill Clinton was not entirely wrong when he said the way to bring about change in China is not via isolation or boycotts or embargos but dialog and negotiation. It is these two however that should never be mistaken for appeasement which clearly failed in Munich in 1938 as it did at the Yalta conference in 1945. For my part I can claim if only Clinton and other American Presidents had held this same line of thought toward Cuba as they did and still do toward China who knows what changes might have taken place there by now? As for China things are changing even with regards to politics though perhaps not as quickly as some would like them to but for sure gone are the days of the “cultural revolution” and its brutalities.

As for Donald Tusk; if his goal is really to assist the people of Tibet and not just make jests that are due to end in failure as did his bid to become president of Poland in 2005 then it is to him that I suggest attending the inauguration of the Olympic Games and claiming he is doing so on behalf of the people of Tibet. It would be a gesture like this that would bring more of the world’s attention to the plight of the people of Tibet then a no-show which did not work to persuade the Soviets in 1980 as it will not secede to do likewise with the Chinese in 2008.