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Football Diplomacy
09.10.2017
Listening to the September 19 U.N. speech given by the current United States President Donald Trump, as I heard his bombastic speech against America’s perceived enemies, his words of militaristic hysteria made me understand how dangerous the period we are living in is at the present time.
Should this narcissistic American President, with his morbid delusions of grandeur, decide to enforce a pre-emptive strike against the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea), then not only will he attempt to kill, that is, obliterate, 25 million North Koreans, but he will also create the death knell for thousands upon thousands, and possibly millions, of Americans as well.
We should understand this is the first "leader" of any country in the world to deliberately threaten at the United Nations to destroy a whole people and a legitimate nation-state with his vile and insidious rhetoric.
Do the American people comprehend fully what a delusionary and infantile man leads their country? We shall see how ‘educated’ and politically conscious the American people are when it comes to confronting the president who mirrors their national character.
As a military historian, also a writer and former football (soccer) coach, I have come to understand there are various kinds of diplomacy in reaching out to adversaries and friends alike.
I recall when the DPRK defeated the great football team of Italy in the 1966 World Cup. Years later, I would purchase a replica of the DPRK’s World Cup shirt, because I found it interesting, indeed even creative, that such a small, socialist country could defeat a modern Western nation like Italy.
That victory taught me no one should ever underestimate those you might consider to have materially less than you, or those whose struggle might seem insignificant to you. I also came to understand there are other forms of sublime struggle not always on the battlefield, but also on such places as a football pitch, as the field is known everywhere else except the US.
Therefore, in my own limited way, I came to understand as an ordinary citizen, as well as a football coach, one can create “Football Diplomacy” not necessarily as a way to solve the world’s problems, but as a way to create an opening of dialogue with those whom we do not always agree, even with those who may want our demise.
Through diplomacy, the last path prior to open conflict which is the friction of war, there is the art of negotiation which is a form of the Greek term diplömacy, meaning “folded in two,” and the suffix -ma, meaning “an object.”.
So, in the end, the object, or objective, of solving the political question of war or peace, is resolved by two opposing forces, folded into a contract of two… If that is not achieved, then it is a non-solution - political strife by another means, which is unfortunately nothing less than war.
