March 19 (UPI) -- As millions of Americans fill out brackets for March Madness, the annual NCAA basketball tournament offers more than collegiate drama -- it highlights the quiet power of sport to build bridges across cultures and borders.
From the Cold War's ping-pong exchanges that helped thaw relations between the United States and China to the rare sight of athletes marching under a unified Korean flag at the Olympics, sports has repeatedly opened diplomatic channels when politics stalled.
As geopolitical fragmentation deepens and Washington launches its U.S. Decade of Sports, policymakers may find that sports diplomacy offers an overlooked tool for engagement across Asia.
The Indo-Pacific offers fertile ground for this approach. Basketball courts and soccer fields have become unlikely arenas of diplomacy, particularly in Southeast Asia where sports culture runs deep among youthful populations.
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