Last week, AmericanDiplomacy.org ran an interesting article by Dominic Tierney on American hostage policy. While I don’t agree with a lot of his article (his claims that “the United States probably worries about its reputation more than any other country…” and “…Americans are unusually supportive of retribution against offenders…” spring to mind as somewhat dubious), he does make some interesting policy recommendations. He points out that because past hostage situations have been successful at affecting U.S. politics and policies (especially Carter and Reagan back-to-back), hostage-taking may seem very attractive to asymmetrical opponents. He has four suggestions to minimize the potential gains to hostage-takers:
- Downplay, downplay, downplay
- “Presidents should avoid becoming emotionally attached to the fate of the captives. In particular, they should not meet the families of the hostages.”
- Avoid idealist, retributive, or reputational speech in whipping up public opinion
- Learn to manage and deal with hostage situations rather than obsess about preventing/resolving them
I’m not sure how much this would minimize the situation—much of the hype around this sort of thing comes from our independent press, but it certainly couldn’t hurt.
A Tale of Two Prisoners
In the last month, it’s been interesting to watch two dramas unfold in the countries formerly known as the “axis of evil.” Iran and North Korea each arrested journalists on trumped up charges.
In Iran, in February, Roxana Saberi was arrested for illegally buying alcohol. Those charges were subsequently upgraded to espionage. On April 18, she was found guilty and sentenced to eight years in prison. Following massive international outcry, she was released with a commuted sentence on 11 May. Check out Free Roxana for more information.
In North Korea, in March, two American journalists were arrested for “hostile acts.” Laura Ling and Euna Lee work for Al Gore’s news organization. Their trial is coming up next week. So far, the international outcry has been significantly less. For example, at the time of writing, “Laura Ling” has 154,000 Google hits while “Roxana Saberi” has 5,850,000. That may not be a completely fair comparison as Saberi’s story has already come to resolution, but there is a pretty big difference in scale.
We’ll have to see what happens, but it seems that in Saberi’s case rather than downplaying the arrest, the international community obsessed, leading ultimately to her release. These two cases could be shaping into an unfortunate case study into Tierney’s ideas. Hopefully things will go as well for our citizens in North Korea as they ultimately did for our citizen in Iran.
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I was pretty amazed that Roxana obtained a peaceful release. I read/heard in the news rumors that it was a gesture of goodwill from Iran towards the US in response to the positive message sent by President Obama. I’m not sure how much weight that argument holds, but its an interesting idea.
I’ve held an equally pessimistic view towards the two captives taken in North Korea. I think their situation serves as a microcosm for the larger nuclear disarmament talks. Really, what leverage does the US still have over North Korea? Threatening to inspect/seize cargo? Cutting off the trade and foreign aid that we barely provide them? I don’t really see any good options on the table, other than pleading with China for some help. And I don’t really see much motivation on the Chinese side to provide that help.
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