The Biden administration’s portrayal of trading convicted Russian agent-provocateur Viktor Bout for basketball star Brittney Griner highlights the central error of quid pro quo hostage deals. President Joe Biden’s misguided triumphalism incentivizes hostile governments, rogue states, and terrorists to calculate the benefits of seizing U.S. citizens as bargaining chips, pawns in their larger strategies.

Humanitarian concern for wrongfully detained Americans is entirely justified, but such concerns should not generate policies putting more citizens at risk. Presidents must consider larger national security priorities, most importantly the even-more compelling humanitarian imperative to shut down hostage-taking as a profitable enterprise. That Washington’s record in handling human extortion has been imperfect is no reason to abandon our strategic aim to protect citizens worldwide under the civis Americanus sum principle, derived from ancient Rome.