Political football

Authoritarian regimes love grand international sporting events. There’s something about the mass regimentation, the set-piece spectacle, the old-fashioned idea of nation states competing for glory that appeals to leaders who wish to show off the greatness of their country to the world. Berlin ’36, Moscow ’80, Sochi ’14 — nothing says ‘we’re here, get used to it’ better than a giant sporting jamboree.

The 2018 football World Cup doesn’t offer quite the same degree of validation as an Olympic Games. But for Vladimir Putin, it’s still a major opportunity to demonstrate not only Russia’s new-found greatness but also its continued membership of the civilised world. For what Putin yearns for, above all, is respect, a place at the table of great nations, and recognition from the world that Russia is no longer a poor, dysfunctional collapsed empire but once again a superpower.

You might think that if gaining respect is Putin’s aim, he has been looking for it in all the wrong places. Invading neighbouring countries, cheating at sports and undermining western democracies are hardly classic reputation-enhancers. But respect and respectability are different things. In the convoluted moral logic of Putin-world, breaking the rules is what every great nation does — from the US invasion of Iraq to Washington’s supposed encouragement of democratic revolutions all over the former Soviet Union. And if the US can bend international law and remain respectable, Russia should be able to as well. The question is how to get away with it.

The World Cup, politically, is the Kremlin’s big chance for attempting to re-set the world’s bad opinion of Russia. The Kremlin’s sincere hope is that the world will, some day soon, forget about all its recent crimes and get on with business as usual.