What If We Threw An Olympics And Nobody Came? Ctd

A reader builds on Leon Aron’s analysis to consider Putin’s geopolitical motives for holding the Games in Sochi:

Aron writes, “[This will be] the first Olympics to be held in an area of mass expulsion of an indigenous people, whose descendants accuse Russia of genocide. Perhaps most hazardously of all, it is the first (and almost certainly the last) Olympiad to be held within a few hundred miles of a low-intensity but deadly jihad.”

Russia has committed military assets to this region to varying degrees since the early ’90s. The proximity to the disputed territory of Abkhazia strikes me as a feature of Putin’s strategy, rather than a bug. Russia has supported Abkhazia and South Ossetia’s independence from Georgia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Access to warm-water ports and the ability to transport troops through the Caucasus Mountains have always been security interests of the Russian state. The Olympic games give Putin an opportunity to build up reconnaissance and logistical infrastructure in a way that previously would have required a hot war. In one stroke, he’s able to build up security presence in the region and preemptively kill any number of jihadists, all while presenting himself as a peaceful world player.

Another reader notes:

One thing that’s going unsaid amid the lead-up to Sochi is that this is something of a rehearsal for the much larger World Cup that Russia is hosting in 2018. If Sochi is a security nightmare, I can only imagine how difficult it’s going to be to secure 11 cities, from Sochi to Moscow to Kaliningrad. If I were FIFA, I’d be crapping myself.