The Olympic truce was born as a radical moral principle: the conviction that war must fall silent, even if only briefly, to allow human encounter on equal terms. It was not diplomacy nor spectacle, but a deliberate suspension of violence as an affirmation of shared humanity. That principle gave birth to the Games. Without it, Olympism loses its reason for being.
Today, that principle is not merely weakened. It has been abandoned.
Since 1993, the United Nations General Assembly has adopted resolutions calling for respect for the Olympic truce ahead of each edition of the Games. These are not binding treaties, but they are explicit ethical commitments assumed by states. Yet recent history shows that the truce has been violated repeatedly, systematically and across the board, without real consequences for almost anyone.
This is not an isolated deviation nor the conduct of a single actor. It is a moral norm that the international system as a whole has ceased to uphold.
During multiple Olympic editions, wars driven or sustained by Western powers and their allies continued uninterrupted. The United States maintained military operations and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq while Olympic Games were being held, without the principle of the truce ever being invoked as a real ethical limit. The war went on. The spectacle did too.
Israel carried out military operations in Gaza during Olympic periods without facing sporting sanctions or structural questioning by the International Olympic Committee, despite repeated allegations of war crimes. Today, even in the face of accusations of genocide raised by United Nations bodies and special rapporteurs, the Olympic system remains silent.
Saudi Arabia bombed Yemen during Olympic Games, contributing to one of the worst humanitarian crises of the twenty-first century, without the Olympic truce translating into any form of pressure. Turkey conducted military operations against Kurdish populations in Syria and Iraq during Olympic windows without consequences. Ethiopia sustained the conflict in Tigray during Tokyo 2020, with documented mass crimes, while the world spoke of resilience and unity.
Russia has also violated the Olympic truce. But not as an exception, rather as part of a rule broken by all.
The problem is not who violates the truce. The problem is that violating it carries no cost, except when it becomes politically convenient to impose one. That selectivity lies at the heart of the current ethical collapse.
The Olympic truce does not fail because it is naïve. It fails because it has been reduced to a moral alibi. It is invoked in speeches while the Games are allowed to unfold alongside bombings, forced displacement and the extermination of civilian populations. Fraternity is proclaimed while international humanitarian law is applied unevenly.
This silence is not neutral. It is structural.
When some countries are punished and others are protected, peace is not being defended; power is being managed. When sanctions are selective, the principle ceases to be universal and becomes a political instrument. And when Olympism accepts that logic, it renounces its moral foundation.
The Olympic Games are not merely a sporting competition. They are, or should be, an affirmation that something exists that is stronger than war. Without a real truce, without minimal ethical demands, the Games are emptied of meaning and become a global spectacle disconnected from the human suffering taking place simultaneously beyond the stadiums.
Speaking of peace while tolerating violence is not neutrality. It is passive complicity.
Today, the Olympic truce reveals an uncomfortable truth: the international order celebrates peace only when it does not interfere with the interests of power. Until that changes, the truce will remain an empty ceremony, and the Games a luminous postcard sustained by the constant noise of weapons.
Without ethical coherence, there is no Olympism possible. Only the spectacle remains.
