Is Sports Diplomacy Still Possible?

Get audio access with any FP subscription. Welcome to FP Free Week. To celebrate America’s 250th birthday, our entire site is completely unlocked this week only. Enjoy the article. On an idyllic spring day this year, diplomats gathered in the United Nations garden to kick around a soccer ball. In anticipation of the FIFA Men’s World Cup and in honor of U.N. World Football Day, they organized an informal soccer tournament, with teams representing Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America going head-to-head. Trading their suits and ties for shorts and jerseys, many diplomats extolled the potential of sports to inspire cooperation. “Conflicts and wars are not solved by sports, but sports diplomacy is a very important thing,” said Ricklef Beutin, the U.N. ambassador for Germany, which hosted a beer-and-bratwurst party for the U.N. tournament. “Sports opens up minds and unites people.” On an idyllic spring day this year, diplomats gathered in the United Nations garden to kick around a soccer ball. In anticipation of the FIFA Men’s World Cup and in honor of U.N. World Football Day, they organized an informal soccer tournament, with teams representing Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America going head-to-head. Trading their suits and ties for shorts and jerseys, many diplomats extolled the potential of sports to inspire cooperation. “Conflicts and wars are not solved by sports, but sports diplomacy is a very important thing,” said Ricklef Beutin, the U.N. ambassador for Germany, which hosted a beer-and-bratwurst party for the U.N. tournament. “Sports opens up minds and unites people.” In June, the U.N. convened a serious meeting on sports diplomacy with business leaders and academics. Now, with the World Cup in full swing, diplomats are gathering for watch parties in the delegates’ lounge at U.N. headquarters, viewing games on screens sponsored by the U.S. mission. Sports diplomacy is having a moment that in modern terms might be seen as a successor to the so-called ping-pong diplomacy that ushered in a thaw in U.S.-China relations in the 1970s—yet the concept is at least as old as the ancient Olympic Games. It’s usually seen as a form of “soft power,” a term coined by Joseph S. Nye Jr. in Foreign Policy that describes the ability to influence others through persuasion. Glenn Cowan (right) of the United State shakes hands with Zhuang Zedong of China after getting off a bus for Chinese players at Aichi Prefecture Gymnasium during the 31st World Table Tennis Championships in Aichi, Japan, on April 4, 1971.The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images Modern sports diplomacy ranges from the personal diplomacy in the U.N. garden to closed-door summitry on the margins of games, such as U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s meeting with Paraguayan President Santiago Peña on the sidelines of the World Cup match between their countries in Los Angeles on June 13. Beneath that spotlight, though, this summer’s World Cup, co-hosted by Canada, Mexico, and the United States, has exposed the limitations of soft power. Hard power continues to dictate the terms of the field—whether through the Trump administration’s stranglehold on entry visas for players, officials, and fans or through attempts at direct public diplomacy by FIFA, the sport’s global governing body. The veneer of neutrality in global sports has been slipping for some time, as the rising toll of armed conflicts—at their highest level since World War II—has prompted a patchwork of curbs on free speech, boycotts, and bans. With hard-power military might and authoritarianism on the rise, it’s fair to ask: Has sports diplomacy hit a wall? United Nations permanent representatives play in a mini-football tournament as part of the World Football Day celebration at the U.N. Headquarters in New York City on May 19.Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images Countries invest time and resources in hosting events such as the World Cup or the Olympics—or, for that matter, the annual Eurovision song contest—in the belief that they will enhance their reputations. That makes U.S. President Donald Trump’s seemingly ambivalent attitude toward the World Cup hard to understand. Trump reportedly plans to present the trophy at tournament’s final in New Jersey on July 19, but so far, he hasn’t attended any of the U.S. national team’s matches. Meanwhile, the U.S. opener against Paraguay became the most-watched soccer match broadcast on record in the United States, pulling in an average of 27.5 million viewers. Many Americans today might now disagree with the 1980s quip by former NFL quarterback and U.S. Rep. Jack Kemp that American “football is democratic capitalism, whereas soccer is a European socialist sport.” On the one hand, the 2026 World Cup is the most international iteration ever. The number of countries in the tournament expanded from 32 to 48, and many of the teams are dominated by diaspora players. On the other hand, growing resistance to immigration—markedly but not exclusively wit

Is Sports Diplomacy Still Possible?

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