The Biden-Putin Hostages for Spies Deal

 
Updated August 4, 2024

James Schumaker 20 hrs ago There is much to justly praise in the hostage deal. I have also seen a lot of criticism from those who oppose the Biden administration. Almost none of the criticisms, however, are intellectually defensible or more than a way of rationalizing why Biden could succeed in freeing Americans from the Putin regime while Trump couldn't. There is one concern expressed by some of the more well-informed critics, however, that does merit attention. These critics have pointed out that trading hostages for criminals and murderers only incentivizes the Putin regime to conduct more hostage-taking, and that the Biden administration's willingness to do this condemns us to an endless cycle of hostage-taking by the Putin regime. This sounds logical, but it misunderstands the current situation. The reality is that we are already in such an endless cycle, whether we like it or not. During the Cold War, the KGB did take hostages to trade for spies. It took Barghoorn to trade for Ivanov in 1963, Crawford to trade for Chernyayev and Enger in 1978, and Daniloff to trade for Zakharov in 1986. Undoubtedly, the KGB of that era saw Western enemies everywhere and, if left to its own devices, would have arrested more people just on general principles. But its worst tendencies were restrained by the political leadership. Today, the situation has changed radically. The current political leadership of Russia is composed of former members of the Leningrad KGB and members of Putin's immediate clan. There are no restraining forces, and as a result, the Putin regime has given in to its worst impulses. The regime is not just collecting potential trade bait, it is collecting people who, according to its paranoid and delusional view, are in some way a threat. That means that even if we stop trading criminals and murderers for hostages, the regime will continue to arrest random Americans regardless of whether a trade is in the offing or not. We will have to find other ways to make them pay for their misbehavior, and there are asymmetrical strategies that can be used. In the meantime, any American who ventures into Russia despite USG warnings is risking summary arrest and imprisonment. At this point, only accredited US diplomats have some guarantee of safety.