Athletes for Peace: Open Letter to the U.S. Olympic Committee

Posted on January 20, 2018 by Cole in Commentary // 0 Comments

The XXIII Olympic Winter Games, PyeongChang 2018, is a major international multi-sport event scheduled to take place in February and March next year in Gangwon Province (Pyeongchang County), South Korea. The Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games will be held in Korea for the first time in 30 years after the Seoul Olympic Games in 1988. IOC photo/Chung Sung-Jun

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The 2018 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, to be held in Pyeongchang, South Korea, offer a unique moment to promote peace on the Korean Peninsula. In November 2017, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for an Olympic Truce, or a cessation of hostilities during the Winter Games, which gained the support of 157 Member States including both Koreas and future hosts of the Olympic Games: Japan, China, France and the United States.

As former and current atheltes, we value the Olympic spirit and tradition of bringing men and women from diverse nations together for peaceful competition and performance. The Olympic Truce represents an important opportunity to defuse tensions and begin the work of reconciliation on the Korean peninsula. We therefore call upon the US Olympic Committee to fully support both Korean governments’ current efforts to restore a peace process.

We in the United States have a special responsibility to demand diplomacy, not war, with North Korea. Let us firmly take hold of the opportunity provided by these winter Olympics to bring this long standing, dangerous and damaging conflict to a peaceful and positive resolution.

Athletes for Peace is initiated by Massaschusetts Peace Action and we invite all peace-loving organizations to cosponsor it with us and participate in a coordinating committee.  Sign the Open Letter at bit.ly/athletes-for-peace-sign!

Signers (as of Jan. 25, 2018)

• Jonathan King, Yale Crew, 1958 – 1960; James Madison H.S. Football, 1956-1958
• Caitlin Forbes, Captain of Varsity Alpine Ski Team, Saint Anselm College, 2010-13.  First Team All American Combined, SL and GS
• Andrew King, Mens Soccer, Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School, 2004-07
• Kevin Martin, Men’s Baskeball and Volleyball, Manheim Twp. HS, Neffsville, PA 1977 – 1980
• Joseph Boyd Poindexter, Harvard University Ski Team Captain, 1957
• Jessica Quindel, Volleyball, Basketball, Soccer, Riverside High School, Milwaukee, WI 1994-1998
• Jeff Brummer, Cushing Academy: Ski team captain, 1961- 62; Tennis team captain, 1961- 62
• Tarak Kauff, Marathon Runner 1974 – 89, Professional boxer
• Patrick Hiller, Columbia Gorge Tri Club, Triathlon, 2011-present
• Ernest Goitein, Swim team, Stevens Institute of Technology, 1950,
• William H Warricl III MD, HS and College Golf Team 1961-1966
• Kenneth E. Mayers, Woodmere Academy, Football Co-Captain 1953; Princeton University Lightweight Crew, 1955-58
• Christopher Spicer-Hankle, Cross Country, Santa Clara University 2004-06; Bishop Blanchet High (Seattle), Co-Captain 2000
• Ann Wright, 1965 Arkansas State Collegiate Singles Tennis champion, 1980 Winter Olympic Games Announcer for the Luge competition, Lake Placid, New York
• John Raby, football and basketball at Dwight-Englewood School,, Englewood, NJ, 1959-61; boys varsity cross-country coach at the Pingry School, Bernards Township, NJ, 1995-2009: 128-22 won-loss record, five conference championships, seven all-state prep championships, three all-state group championships; distance runner, 5k to marathon; frequent age group winner in local and statewide races; ran in two Boston Marathons, 2008 and 2012
• Marcus Christian Hansen, Wrestling, Track, Jefferson HS
• Brenton Stoddart, Allegheny College Men’s Soccer, 2012-2015, Captain 2015
• Blase Bonpane, Ph.d., Football USC 1947 Football, Boxing Loyola High, Los Angeles CIF Championship
• Shirley Hoak, College Basketball & Tennis 1971-73 Shippensburg State, PA
• Jacqueline Rogers Ceary, Basketball, Cathedral High School, Boston, 1962-65
• Chuck Weed, US Disabled Ski Team 1984, 1986; 4 way skiing Middlebury; ski/soccer coach 1965-1966 Northwood School
• Ellora Derenoncourt, Junior Varsity Tennis, Chadwick School, 2003-4

Activites in support of the Open Letter:

Contact your alumni associaton and invite other former or current student athletes to sign the Open Letter, and forward to their former teammates, friends and acquiantenances.

In addition we call on groups and individuals to organize actions or other events in your communities., during the Winter Olympics (February 9 – 25) and Paralympics (March 9 – 18), as well as the broader period of the Olympic Truce (February 2 to March 23).

These could include:

• Olympic watch parties — gather friends and family in your home or a community venue to celebrate the Olympics. Add a dollop of Korean culture and cuisine, and call for peace and diplomacy. Invite your local NBC-TV affiliate (the television network of the Olympics) to cover your gathering for the local news. Watch parties can be great social media events as well. Athletes and Korean-Americans should be the main spokespeople.
• Building Congressional pressure, both in-district and in Washington, DC. Call-in Days, in-district congressional visits, high-level delegations or sign-on letters to Members of Congress calling on them to use the Olympic Truce as an opportunity to stand for diplomacy and continue to suspend U.S.-South Korea war drills, through public statements and support for pro-diplomacy legislation, including asserting Congressional powers over war and peace, and particularly any decision to use nuclear weapons.
• Media coverage and social media promotion (utilizing FaceBook and Twitter memes and actions, Thunderclap, Instagram and other platforms) calling for diplomacy and peace. Use the Olympic Truce as a “hook” for Letters to Editor and Op-eds.
• Teach-ins, webinars, and other types of educational events, supported by fact sheets, articles, videos and podcasts. Korean-American voices need to be front and center.
• Film Screening:  Games of Their Lives is a stunning, exciting, humanizing, sports-fan-enthusiast film by British makers Dan Gordon and Nick Bonner.  In 1966, DPRK won a birth at the World Cup held in England. The story of the players, how they got there, how they were received at the height of the Cold War, the drama of the games, the totally unexpected embrace by the city of Middlesborough, and what became of the team over the years – is absolutely gripping. 
  The film is 1 hr 20 minutes.  You can preview the full film on Youtube here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG-ivV-ps50   It puts a very human face on
  North Korea. Contact Ramsay Liem c/o Massachusetts Peace Action. Related links:
  http://www.verymuchso.co.uk/the-game-of-their-lives
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG-ivV-ps50
• Vigils for peace, public protests where appropriate, visibility actions.
• Petition-gathering and support for the People’s Peace Treaty.
• Other engaging and fun

Published on

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

by

Common Dreams

The Olympic Truce: A Unique Chance to Step Back from the Brink of (Nuclear?) War with North Korea

The Olympic Truce—a tradition which dates to the ancient Greek Olympics—represents an important opportunity to defuse tensions and begin the work of reconciliation on the Korean peninsula.

by

Kevin Martin

 0 Comments

International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach, center, poses with North Korea's Sports Minister and Olympic Committee president Kim Il Guk, left, and South Korean Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Do Jong-hwan at the IOC headquarters on Jan. 20, 2018. (Photo: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images)

Another war with North Korea would be disastrous. It could easily go nuclear. It should be unthinkable, and there are peaceful diplomatic alternatives. For South Korea, which would bear the brunt of any conflict with North Korea, there is no military option. As a group of 58 retired US military leaders acknowledge in a letter to Trump, that military action “would result in hundreds of thousands of casualties.” The people of Korea, North and South, the peoples of the region, and Americans all want peace.

The Winter Olympics and Paralympics, to be held in Pyeongchang, South Korea, offer a unique moment to promote peace on the Korean Peninsula. On a very encouraging note, in November 2017, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for an Olympic Truce, or a cessation of hostilities during the Winter Games, which gained the support of 157 Member States including both Koreas and future hosts of the Olympic Games: Japan, China, France and the United States.

The Olympic Truce—a tradition which dates to the ancient Greek Olympics—represents an important opportunity to defuse tensions and begin the work of reconciliation on the Korean peninsula. The United States should fully support both Korean governments’ current efforts to restore a peace process.

In a very significant development, South Korean President Moon Jae-in has successfully persuaded a reluctant Donald Trump to postpone U.S.-South Korea war drills that would have overlapped with the Olympics. These joint military exercises typically consist of hundreds of thousands of ground troops and such provocative scenarios as “decapitation” raids and simulated nuclear attacks. Delaying them could pave the way for a longer-term “freeze for freeze” deal—a suspension of military exercises for a ban on North Korea’s nuclear and missile testing, and ultimately, an official end to the Korean War by replacing the 1953 Armistice with a permanent peace treaty.

Let’s build on this momentum! We in the United States have a special responsibility to demand diplomacy, not war, with North Korea. An ad hoc network, the Korea Collaboration, calls for weeks of action during the Winter Olympics (February 9 - 25) and Paralympics (March 9 - 18), as well as the broader period of the Olympic Truce (February 2 to March 25). We call on groups and individuals to organize actions or other events in your communities. These could include:

• Teach-ins, webinars, and other types of educational events, supported by fact sheets, articles, videos and podcasts. Korean-American voices need to be front and center.
• Vigils for peace, public protests where appropriate, visibility actions.
• Petition-gathering and support for the People’s Peace Treaty.
• Building Congressional pressure, both in-district and in Washington, DC. Call-in Days, in-district Congressional visits, high-level delegations or sign-on letters to Members of Congress calling on them to use the Olympic Truce as an opportunity to stand for diplomacy and continue to suspend U.S.-South Korea war drills, through public statements and support for pro-diplomacy legislation, including asserting Congressional powers over war and peace, and particularly any decision to use nuclear weapons.
•  Olympic watch parties -- gather friends and family in your home or a community venue to celebrate the Olympics. Add a dollop of Korean culture and cuisine, and call for peace and diplomacy. Invite your local NBC-TV affiliate (the television network of the Olympics) to cover your gathering for the local news. Watch parties can be great social media events as well. Korean-Americans should be the main spokespeople.
• Earned media coverage and social media promotion (utilizing FaceBook and Twitter memes and actions, Thunderclap, Instagram and other platforms) calling for diplomacy and peace. Use the Olympic Truce as a “hook” for Letters to Editor and Op-eds.
• Other engaging and fun, movement-building events around the Winter Olympics.

The coincidence of the Winter Olympic and Paralympics being held in South Korea this year—as opposed to France, Italy, or Utah—is a gift of time, but not a lot of time. Those who refuse to accept the inevitability of a catastrophic war with North Korea must take advantage of it.

Note: In addition to leading Peace Action and the Peace Action Education Fund, the author convenes the Korea Collaboration network. Please see the Peace Action and Korea Collaboration Resource Center websites for more information on how to support the Olympic Truce.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Kevin Martin is President of Peace Action and Peace Action Education Fund, the country’s largest peace and disarmament organization with approximately 200,000 supporters nationwide. 

Korean Peninsula: In The Line Of Fire And Fury

JANUARY 24, 2018GUEST  1 COMMENT

by the International Crisis Group

The threat of nightmarish war on the Korean peninsula is higher than at any time in recent history. As the pace of North Korea’s nuclear and missile testing increased throughout 2017, so too did the U.S.’ bellicosity. North Korea’s neighbours – South Korea, China, Japan and Russia – are caught between Pyongyang’s sprint to expand its nuclear capability and an administration in Washington apparently determined to stop that dash at virtually any cost. Strategic calculations in the region are evolving, due not only to fear of North Korean weapons but also to the spectre of chaos provoked by U.S. military action. Yet opportunities for de-escalation exist: North and South Korea have reopened diplomatic channels, while the more U.S. aggressive posture has added urgency to China’s efforts to find a way out of the crisis.

The sense of peril owes much to confusion about why North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ordered his breakneck pace of nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests. There is good reason to believe that, like his predecessor, Kim is driven chiefly by worry that without such deterrence his country risks attack – and his regime risks ouster – by outside powers. He appears propelled by domestic dynamics as well. A greater nuclear capability shores up Kim’s internal support, burnishes his prestige and diverts attention from deep economic troubles.

What keeps U.S. officials awake is the possibility that Kim might have a third motivation: that acquiring the means to strike major U.S. cities would allow North Korea to dictate an outcome to the crisis on the peninsula. Those scenarios range from the lifting of sanctions to U.S. withdrawal all the way to forced reunification of north and south. Washington fears that Pyongyang’s better ballistic missiles will inhibit its own freedom of action: the U.S. wants to deter not be deterred.

Yet if there is unease about Pyongyang, so too is there puzzlement about Washington. The Trump administration veers from bombast to conciliation. It is squeezing the North Korean regime with a strategy of “maximum pressure”. This involves, first, sanctions and demands that China lean harder on Kim, despite pursuing a maximalist objective – denuclearisation – that no amount of pressure will achieve. More obviously, it involves the White House cultivating the impression it is ready to use force to slow Pyongyang’s weapons program, notwithstanding the catastrophic – indeed unthinkable – risks such action would entail. Then again, President Donald Trump at times broaches the option of diplomacy.

The game of nerves and one-upmanship places North Korea’s neighbours in a bind. South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, supports harsh sanctions on Pyongyang but the last thing he or his citizens either want or can afford is military confrontation. Moon swiftly accepted Kim Jong-un’s 1 January 2018 offer of contact, which has since become a joint commitment to military-to-military as well as high-level political talks.

As the pre-eminent regional power and North Korean economic lifeline, China will have to be an integral part of any solution. President Xi Jinping’s assertive leadership includes a tougher line with Pyongyang, which in turn has become ever pricklier at the exertions of Chinese influence. Xi has curtailed economic assistance and acquiesced to stricter sanctions. Still, and for now, Beijing’s core assumptions remain unchanged: it will not incur Pyongyang’s overt hostility by signing up to an American drive for denuclearisation at any cost. From Beijing’s perspective, a nuclear North Korea is a worry, but a manageable one, while a military conflict is a menace, and an uncontrollable one. China proposes to quell the immediate crisis with a freeze of North Korean nuclear and missile testing in exchange for a freeze of U.S. military exercises in the vicinity. But, thus far, it is confounded in that aim by Kim’s recklessness, on one hand, and Trump’s stubbornness, on the other.

Japan and Russia play less central parts, but their proximity – and Russia’s historical ties – to North Korea give them important stakes in the crisis. Japan broadly tracks U.S. policy on North Korea, and Russia, Chinese policy. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been more supportive than other neighbors of the “maximum pressure” campaign, though in Tokyo, as elsewhere, there is disquiet at the danger of confrontation. Russia opposes North Korea’s nuclearization but has little appetite for hostilities on the peninsula. It also is quick to seize any opportunity to cast the U.S. in a negative light and, on occasion, to offer Pyongyang support.

For decades, Pyongyang’s nuclear program has shaped relations among major powers and regional states, as well as dynamics within the latter. While Kim’s accelerated weapons program and Trump’s combativeness are new, the fundamental challenge – how to restrain North Korea while addressing some of its core concerns – remains. So, too, does consensus among North Korea’s neighbours on core principles: the need to halt Pyongyang’s military nuclear drive; conviction that this objective is not worth risking war on the peninsula; belief that the costs of even limited military action outweigh any potential benefit; and certainty that a solution must be found through diplomacy. If top U.S. officials genuinely believe that military action is their best option – and it is hard to tell if such indications are tactical bluff or genuine intent – then they are on their own.

Yet there may be (thin) silver linings to the dangerous turn the crisis has taken over the past year. U.S. belligerence has jangled the nerves of regional powers but also likely steeled their will to find an off-ramp. North Korea’s advances in its nuclear and missile program could make this moment propitious for diplomacy. Rekindled ties between Seoul and Pyongyang could defuse tensions in the short window ahead of the February 2018 Winter Olympics. Sober heads in Washington might convince the president to use this window to seek some form of de-escalatory deal.

This is the executive summary of a new report by the International Crisis Group. To read the executive summary of the second report, which focuses on the de-escalatory deal, click here. Photo: nuclear artillery test (Wikimedia Commons).

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