America will not prove its openness through hosting the Olympics, but by engaging in diplomacy

It must be difficult for Barack Obama to hear the words ‘no you can’t', but that was exactly what he had to face today as the IOC chose Rio de Janeiro to host the 2016 Olympics over his hometown of Chicago. Earlier this morning the US president made a characteristically charismatic speech, telling delegates the games would show that “America at its best is open to the world.” It’s a curious sentiment. Last year’s Beijing Olympics didn’t exactly demonstrate China’s openness to the world, anymore than the 1936 Berlin Olympics gave the globe a nice big hug from Hitler. It’s not through sporting co-operation that America will turn its back on the brinkmanship and dogged unilateralism of the Bush years, but diplomacy.

Yesterday’s meeting in Geneva marked the highest level talks between the US and Iran in 30 years. And whilst the headlines talked of signs of a breakthrough in Iranian co-operation, with the Islamic Republic agreeing to permit international inspections and export a sizeable portion of its uranium for outside enrichment to render it unuseable in weapons, the real breakthrough was seeing America come to the negotiating table. Of course, the US approach to the issue of nuclear proliferation remains one-sided and hypocritical, not least in its double-standards over Israel’s known, but never acknowledged warheads. But whilst the agenda remains the same, the new multilateral approach offers signs of hope for a safer world where simplistic, dangerous sentiments like ‘axis of evil’ give way to a more nuanced approach. Where imperialist aggression, bullying and sanctions give way to talk.

As Latin America celebrates the Olympic Games coming to the continent for the first time in history, its northern neighbour must do more to make its newfound goodfaith clear, building on the turning point it reached when it refused to endorse the Honduran coup by listening to the demands to end the unjust and inhumane embargo on Cuba. America will not, afterall, prove its openess through discus, but discussion.