What does the future of hostage diplomacy look like?

Transcript

PIEN HUANG, HOST:

There was lots of joy earlier this month when 16 hostages were released by Russia, including Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich. In exchange, Russia received a handful of spies and an assassin serving a life sentence in Germany, who President Vladimir Putin insisted be returned. The deal paid off for Putin, which creates concern that it will encourage Russia and others to keep taking hostages. NPR's Jackie Northam reports.

JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE: There is an undeniable emotional response, everything from relief to euphoria, when hostages step off a plane and into freedom. And then come the hard questions, says Mickey Bergman, the head of Global Reach, a non-governmental organization that helps families of hostages.

MICKEY BERGMAN: The common criticism of any deal is that, hey, you're making these deals, you're incentivizing the captors to take more Americans. Look. And it's a legitimate criticism.

NORTHAM: But Bergman says that criticism fails on the data.

BERGMAN: All the research that has been conducted on this has shown complete ambiguity between the way that these cases are resolved and the number of Americans that have been taken after. There's no correlation whatsoever.

NORTHAM: That's in line with what Roger Carstens has found. He became special presidential envoy for hostage affairs in 2020. He told NPR his caseload was much higher back then.

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ROGER CARSTENS: A snapshot in time, I had 54 cases on my desk. And a snapshot right now, I'm hovering probably around 20.

NORTHAM: Carstens' office has got many people released, but that hasn't stopped more people from being picked up. Jason Rezaian, a columnist with The Washington Post, was unjustly imprisoned in Iran for more than 500 days. He's part of a commission studying arbitrary detention. Rezaian says asking whether prisoner swaps will incentivize more hostage taking is the wrong question.

JASON REZAIAN: The right question is, what are we doing to make this costlier and less attractive to governments like Russia, Iran, China?

NORTHAM: A simple answer, Rezaian says, is governments should do more.

REZAIAN: They wouldn't do this if it wasn't appealing. They don't need new incentive to do it. The incentive is already there.

NORTHAM: Rezaian says that's because it pays off. Beijing or Moscow or Tehran know the U.S. and other governments will do what it takes to get back their citizens, whether it be a prisoner swap, sanctions relief or transferring funds, this despite the U.S. having an official no-concessions policy when it comes to hostage taking.

DANI GILBERT: I think that the no-concessions policy is really one of the great myths of U.S. foreign policy.

HUANG: Dani Gilbert is a political science professor at Northwestern University who focuses on hostage taking.

GILBERT: Presidents since Nixon have proclaimed that the United States will not make concessions to hostage takers, but all of them have, including Reagan, including Obama, including Trump, including Biden.

NORTHAM: Gilbert says the U.S. and other countries need to find more ways to deter arbitrary detention. In 2018, Canada drew up the Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention. It came after two Canadians were arrested in China for spying after a top executive with the telecommunications giant Huawei was detained in Vancouver. The declaration is meant to pull together a broad coalition of nations to push back on countries unjustly detaining foreign nationals, sort of a strength in numbers.

John Packer, a professor of international law at the University of Ottawa, says about 70 countries, including the U.S., have signed on.

JOHN PACKER: Unfortunately, the fact that Canada could only get 70 states to endorse it really shows that there's 120 other states that have not endorsed this. So that's unclear whether this adds anything to the international obligations or will change anything in fact.

NORTHAM: Packer says arbitrary detention, hostage taking, has been around since time immemorial, whether it's tribes or gangsters or governments detaining foreign nationals to gain concessions from their government. Ilya Yashin, a Russian dissident who was released in the recent prisoner swap, said arbitrary detention is just a fact of life.

ILYA YASHIN: (Non-English language spoken).

NORTHAM: He said Russian President Vladimir Putin will continue to take hostages because that's what dictators do. Jackie Northam, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.