Beyond the Boycott: Olympic Security and US Counterterrorism from Munich to Moscow Open Access
Dunn, Melanie (Spring 2021)
Abstract
This thesis provides an interdisciplinary study that traces the evolution of international terrorism, Olympic security, and US counterterrorism strategies across three presidential administrations. From 1972, when Palestinian nationalists targeted the Israeli Olympic team at the Summer Games in Munich, West Germany and throughout the 1970s, terrorists attacked symbols of imperial power—like the US and USSR—to draw attention to their liberation struggles. These terrorists utilized modern technology to traverse borders, to train with like-minded extremist groups, and to seize the world’s attention through what terrorism expert and scholar Bruce Hoffman calls the “internationalization” of terrorism. In light of these global developments, US diplomatic and intelligence personnel reviewed Olympic security protocols and revamped US counterterrorism capabilities.
Though international terrorism in the early 1970s seemed to be a foreign policy problem for the United States, terrorists attacked symbols of American power in the Middle East and slowly made their way across the ocean in the latter half of the decade. Separatist violence on American soil, perpetrated by groups like the Puerto Rican Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional and the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia sent shockwaves throughout the American public consciousness. The 1976 Montreal Games brought the threat and fears about a Munich-inspired Olympic attack to North America. Indeed, as the United States Olympic Committee geared up to host the 1979 Pan American Games in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the White House mobilized its newly developed security apparatus to counter the growing threat of separatist violence to the homeland. Yet, as the internationalization of terrorism and a growing jihadist threat converged at the end of the decade, US presidential administrations struggled to balance older, Cold War rhetoric and foreign policy with the new demands of counterterrorism. How these attitudes coalesced—and where they disappeared—during the 1980 Moscow Olympic Boycott, ordered by President Jimmy Carter after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December of 1979, reveals much about Olympic securitization, the evolving terrorist threat, and the struggle to define national security.
Table of Contents
Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………….pg. 1
Chapter One
“We Shall Have to Live with Terrorism”: Munich and the Making of a Counterterrorism Strategy ……………………......………………………………………………………………………..pg. 16
Chapter Two
“The Future Security of the Civilized World”: The Cold War and Terrorism Compete for Attention …………………………………………………………………………................………….pg. 43
Chapter Three
Pressing the Wrong Button: Soviet Security and the 1980 Boycott………………pg. 66
Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………….…..pg. 92
Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………….…...pg. 97
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