Domestic politics always affect hostage deals

The recent prisoner swap between the U.S. and Russia, which also involved prisoners from Germany, Slovenia and Belarus, evokes a trick shot in pool, where with one stroke of the cue, multiple balls spread across the table drop into different pockets. 

Western nations have collaborated before to bring back wrongfully detained nationals, but it is hard to recall a deal this complex. It involved 24 people, including wrongful detainees, convicted felons and dissidents.

Still, even a remarkably creative deal that surely took months of painstaking diplomacy has inevitably drawn criticism. Some make the blanket claim that such exchanges only encourage our adversaries to detain Americans abroad. Others assert that the negotiators did not make a good deal. (Of course, that depends on how one assigns worth to the individuals involved and the premium put on liberty. Freedom costs a lot.) 

But there is always a quid pro quo to gain the release of those held abroad. It may be paid by others who make concessions on our behalf. It may take the form of promised or anticipated payoffs — better relations, lifting sanctions or other incentives. There is no “Get out of jail free” card.

Prisoner swaps being driven by domestic politics is the most common, but absurd, of all the critiques. Of course, it was. It always is.

In a democracy, domestic politics affect all national decisions. Foreign affairs, including freeing hostages, do not reside in a different universe. Public opinion plays a role. This is not a new thing.

Domestic political calculations figured into how the newly independent American republic would deal with Barbary pirates who held American seamen for ransom in the 18th century. 

In 1904, President Teddy Roosevelt used the kidnapping of a former U.S. diplomat in Morocco to project a tough image that secured his reelection. Domestic politics led to American threats of invading Mexico after the detention of an American consul in 1919.

The inability of President Jimmy Carter’s administration to rescue or negotiate the release of the American hostages held at the American embassy in Tehran probably doomed his chances of reelection in 1980.

Ronald Reagan’s campaign worried that Carter might succeed in bringing the hostages home just before the elections — an “October surprise.” Members of the Carter administration, meanwhile, suspected that Reagan’s team was passing messages to Iran to delay making any deal until after the election. 

In 2023, a former official who traveled to the Middle East with Reagan supporter and former Texas Gov. John Connally, claimed that Connally had passed on the message to Middle East leaders to tell Iran to wait until after this general election is over because they’d get a better deal from Reagan. That controversy continues.

President Obama’s creation of a Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs in 2015 came in direct response to outrage by families of American hostages held in Syria. The tragic end to these cases also led to more organized advocacy to pressure the White House to make deals.

Increasingly, detaining foreign nationals is used as an instrument of coercive diplomacy. And as serial detainers — Iran, Russia, China and North Korea — accumulate more hostages, the hostage advocacy movement has gained strength. 

Russia’s detention of women’s basketball champion Brittney Griner in 2022 is a prime example; it prompted a sophisticated nationwide publicity campaign to bring her home.

In her memoir, she writes of the ordeal that Russian President Vladimir Putin, who “was well aware of America’s long history of racial tensions,” used her race “to his benefit” in the negotiations. The fact that she is a lesbian probably added pressure on the U.S. government, lest it appear that she was being treated unequally because of her sexual orientation.

Like the Iran hostage crisis, the Griner case marked a fundamental shift in how the U.S. responds to wrongful detention cases. It raised the expectations of the families of all American detainees still being held. They became more assertive and vocal in their efforts to ensure their cases had the president’s attention. 

In her memoir, Griner also writes that she was told there was competition between government and private efforts to win her release, which she was informed would benefit her situation.

These developments are seen as positive by families and hostage advocates, but they can also be counterproductive, giving foreign adversaries even more leverage in future negotiations.

Russia’s arrest of foreign correspondent Evan Gershkovich, perhaps singled out by Russian authorities because he was on staff at The Wall Street Journal, a powerful and influential newspaper often critical of Democratic administrations, prompted another sophisticated national publicity campaign.

We don’t know the details of the negotiations but, recalling the situation in 1980, the Biden administration may have feared that when Donald Trump boasted in a campaign ad that he could bring Gershkovich home immediately if elected, that might have been intended to persuade Putin to prolong the episode. Trump campaign managers may also have worried that President Biden would seek political advantage by bringing Gershkovich home on the eve of the election. 

Negotiations in highly charged hostage situations never happen in a politically sterile environment. They threaten the American core principle of personal liberty and have always been domestic political issues.  

While diplomats pursue possibilities that all parties might accept, the president alone has to weigh humanitarian objectives against national interests, which some Americans increasingly view as archaic abstractions or chauvinist pretensions. 

No course of action — including doing nothing at all — insulates the president from adverse political consequences. All decisions reflect this political reality.

Brian Michael Jenkins, senior adviser to the president of RAND, has been involved in hostage negotiations as a researcher and practitioner for more than 50 years.