Speculation is growing that the Biden administration will release the arms dealer and terrorist conspirator Viktor Bout for two Americans. President Joe Biden would make a serious mistake in doing so.
As reported by CNN, the prospective deal offered by the Biden administration last month would see the Kremlin release WNBA star Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan, a Canadian American accused of spying on Russia. The Biden administration appears to have leaked the offer in anticipation of a call this week between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The problem? This arrangement would only encourage Russia to conduct more extensive hostage-taking of Americans in the future. It would also play to Vladimir Putin’s perspective of the United States as a weak adversary that can be coerced into policy via emotional rather than hard-headed policy considerations. That is a very dangerous gambit to adopt with the former KGB officer.
This is not to say that Griner and Whelan don’t deserve release. Of course they do.
Griner was detained at a Moscow airport in February after Russian authorities claimed to find cannabis oil in her bag. Whelan was arrested in December 2018 after being detained in an apparent sting operation by the FSB domestic security service involving his purported receipt of classified material. The FSB likely intended for Whelan’s arrest to serve as a domestic propaganda tool and as a bargaining chip for future prisoner exchanges. Whelan is imprisoned in a high-security gulag known for its poor conditions. Regardless, Griner’s detention, in particular, is absurd. Even if she was in possession of cannabis oil, Russian security services normally turn a blind eye to the minimal criminal conduct of high-profile people. Indeed, those same security services are actively engaged in a wide range of exponentially more serious criminal activities.
The issue, then, is not that the U.S. government shouldn’t be working hard to secure the release of American citizens who are unjustly detained. Or even cutting compromises in that pursuit. The issue is whether the U.S. should trade unjustly detained Americans at any price. Because the release of Viktor Bout would come very close to the definition of “at any price.”
Bout, after all, is the antithesis of Griner and Whelan. Far from being caught in the wrong circumstances in the wrong place at the wrong time, Bout is in prison for doing the wrong thing wherever it paid best, all the time. Alongside a number of other charges, Bout was convicted in federal court of conspiring to kill Americans. Alongside his dalliances with terrorist groups, the arms dealer served as a semideniable fixer for the Russian intelligence services. But contrasted to the high-security prison that Whelan is held in, Bout is serving his sentence at a medium-security federal prison. He was and is treated justly. Federal records show he is due for release on August 19, 2029.
There is a better course than this prisoner exchange. Although a resolution may not come immediately, the U.S. should leverage its economic power and alliances to make clear to the Kremlin that this kind of hostage-taking won’t pay. It must thus educate Russia to the exact opposite conclusion that any 2-for-1 trade would infer. By sanctioning the personnel and apparatus of Russia’s criminal justice system, the U.S. could make clear that the longer Americans are unjustly held, the more those responsible for that injustice will pay for it.
The U.S. does not negotiate with terrorist hostage-takers for a reason. It’s that same reasoning that should underline why the U.S. should not cut this deal.
