Why does the Biden administration incentivize Russia’s kidnapping of Americans?
Tom Rogan
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Attempting to secure Russia’s release of the unjustly detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and another American, Paul Whelan, the Biden administration is considering significant new concessions to Russia.
As CNN‘s Kylie Atwood and Matthew Chance report, “U.S. officials did make quiet inquiries to the Germans about whether they might be willing to include [Vadim] Krasikov in the trade [for Whelan and Gershkovich]. … The White House is also exploring narrow sanctions relief, senior administration officials said.”
LIBERAL POLICIES ARE MAKING THE AMERICAN DREAM UNAFFORDABLE
It is astonishing that the Biden administration would seriously contemplate these concessions. A former Russian FSB security service officer, Krasikov is imprisoned for assassinating a Chechen war veteran, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, as he walked through a Berlin park in August 2019. Even narrow sanctions relief would also reinforce Moscow’s existing perception that the Biden administration has a weak stomach for confrontation.
The central challenge is that Russia does not regard this U.S. negotiating stance as anything other than an invitation for easy pickings. As I noted last July regarding a then-pending hostage trade of WNBA star Brittney Griner for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout:
“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.”
Gershkovich’s detention testifies to this concern. The Russians keep kidnapping Americans because the Biden administration keeps rewarding them for doing so. It really is that simple. And while it might seem moral for the White House to focus on getting Americans home at all costs, its first responsibility is to the security of the nation and all its people rather than just a few people. This responsibility underlines why successive presidential administrations have refused, at least overtly, to negotiate with terrorists for the release of American hostages.
Top line: If President Joe Biden approves yet more concessions for Gershkovich and Whelan, you can bet they won’t be the last Americans to be held hostage by Moscow. The better response to Russia’s hostage aggression is the most proven Cold War response: for Washington to escalate its pressure, rather than its concessions, against Moscow.