War Games | Jake Nevins
At the opening of the 2026 Winter Olympics, held simultaneously at venues in Milan, Cortina, Livigno, and Predazzo, the notion of the games as an occasion for international peace took the form of armonia, or “harmony” in Italian. It was a quality exhibited more convincingly in the ceremony’s fusion of disparate parts than in its relentless message of collectivism. Yet even before American and Israeli leaders, not quite a week after the close of the games, launched a joint offensive on Iran, these Olympics were among the most fraught since the end of World War II. Certainly none have been so troubled since the American boycott of the 1980 summer games in Moscow—followed by the Russians’ boycott of the Los Angeles games four years later. It’s been nearly two months since the Italian games concluded, but their suggestion of internationalism feels even more distant now, so thoroughly have Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, Pete Hegseth, and others eroded any foundation for even a fantasy of armonia. During the original Olympic Games in the eighth century BC, the various …
