# 31. Sport and manipulation ## 31.5. Methodology/Refinements/Sub-species ### 31.5.2. Diplomatic Uses Sporting events have often been used to "break the ice" in diplomatic impasses. But sport can be used to send either negative or positive signals to another nation. Sports diplomacy is attractive to governments, partly because international sport adds to the pursuit of foreign policy goals, but also because of the subtlety and malleability of sports diplomacy. Leaders can meet on the periphery of a sporting event and develop some kind of camaraderie as a pre-cursor to more serious diplomatic discussions. Here are just a few of the many examples of how sport is used and affected by political and diplomatic initiatives: **Cuba versus U.S.A. baseball:** Despite the frosty relations between the USA and Cuba, baseball matches between the countries continued until 1996 - when relations between the two countries became especially frosty following the Cuban shooting down of two small planes entering Cuban airspace to drop anti-Castro pamphlets. In 2012 the baseball matches resumed as relations began to warm somewhat under the auspices of Barack Obama and Raul Castro. Both Cubans and Americans share a passion for this particular sport. **China and the USA:** One of the best known cases of the political use of sport is the one from the early 1970s when attempts were being made to improve relations between the US and China. Following an invitation from the Chinese in 1971, the United States sent a table tennis team to the PRC, followed, a year later, by a basketball team. The sports were carefully chosen for their diplomatic value; it was expected that the Chinese would win at table tennis and the Americans at basketball with no loss of face on either side. **Other examples:** Sport was used in a similar fashion during a period of great tension between the United States and the former Soviet Union. In the late 1950s, US troops were in the Lebanon and British forces were in Jordan ostensibly to forestall Soviet expansion, and Khrushchev talked of the world being on the brink of catastrophe. At the same time the US and the former USSR initiated an annual track and field competition which, while at times reflecting the tensions of the Cold War, generally provided opportunities for diplomatic bridge-building. ***Parent:** [[Sport and Manipulation]]*