China has been the most consistent and serious gold medal contender for the Summer Games since the early nineties. They even won their first overall victory in the Beijing home-field 2008 competition. Despite repeated athletic clashes among the major players in a theoretical, endlessly-debated New Cold War, the Olympics failed to raise much nationalistic dander over the superiority or vice versa of liberal democracy over autocratic state communism.The Games have become more about individual success than ever before, despite all the pomp and circumstance. They are no longer a way to gauge national rivalries. Simone Biles, Michael Phelps, and Li Xiaopeng, the Chinese gymnast, are more famous for their off-the-field personal trials than they are for being Rocky IV-style national stand ins. Today's Olympics, in this way, are closer to the original Games mission of promoting a kind of global humanism.However, this doesn't mean the Games are without political resonance. The opposite is true: The 2012 Summer Olympics, originally scheduled for last summer in Tokyo have become the hotbed of global debate about how to stop the spread of Covid-19. The suspension of ShaCarri Richards, a U.S. sprinter, for using marijuana; the outrage from other Southeast Asian countries about Japans refusal to ban its Rising Sun flag; as well as the expectation that Russia will hack the games to show its support for Western dominance.There is also the perennial problem with Olympic politics: The widespread corruption, immiseration and waste that follows the transformation of an urban center into a major hub for international competition. One could credibly argue that the Olympics are not East vs. West or the individual against collective but rather the haves and the have-nots. Cities bend over backwards to accommodate the world literally at their doorsteps, while others face deep financial insecurity as they seek global competition.Yet: It is now that a clash between civilizations could be seen on a global level in the post-Cold War, less binary world. Over the past decade, young democracies around the world like Venezuela, Poland, and Hungary have fallen into autocracy. China and Russia are ready to push their younger counterparts onto a similar path, not to duplicate the Soviet empire-building projects, but to continue to promote liberal democracy and increase their own popularity.It is quite strange that the Olympic Games of today have not adopted the same nature as their historical predecessors, given that they are riven with ideological conflict. It is also comforting. Our Soviet adversaries are no longer steroidal automatons. They are individuals who have been manipulated by a flawed system. This is how we come to see Arvydas Sabonis (the Lithuanian basketball player) as an individual. He was a proud representative of the USSR at the 1992 Games in Barcelona and fathered a current-day NBA All-Star. Pop culture has lost the ability to show hatred or villainy toward Russian and Chinese athletes that was once part of American identity. This is real progress.It's what makes the Olympic games today so enjoyable and rich. It turns out that nationalistic pride in an event where people all over the world now know is at the mercy of corrupt bureaucracies doesn't really serve any purpose. Sport for its own sake can be much more fulfilling. Just here in the United States, the miraculous revival of softball, the unexpected-yet-overdue institutional legitimization of skateboarding, or the unprecedented athletic dominance of Simone Biles, are each worth of simply celebrating in their own right, absent any exaggerated vitriol toward our international rivals.Despite the slight defeats it has taken in recent years, America's soft power continues to be a formidable force. This nation's competitive virtue is more about its ability to tell compelling stories and unify people across the globe than it is to produce dominant athletes. Take a look at the myths that we have created around Phelps and Biles or any of the other young stars competing in Tokyo this Week: Even in a less political, globalized Olympics, the Americans still have an advantage.
