Thursday's prisoner swap of 16 people, including three American citizens, represented another payoff for authoritarian regimes like Russia that use hostage-taking as a modus operandi to achieve their political goals, the Wall Street Journal reported.
While the U.S. celebrated the return of former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, and Russia-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, hundreds of Americans and citizens of other Western allies remain in captivity by autocrats around the world who have made hostage-taking an enterprise to wield against the West with impunity.
"With the return of great-power competition we now also have the return of hostage-taking for the purposes of political leverage," Vina Nadjibulla, a senior fellow at security consultancy the Soufan Center, told the Journal. "Democracies who care about their people are especially vulnerable, so there is an asymmetric advantage that authoritarian states like Russia exploit."
China, Iran, and North Korea joined Russia as part of a new axis of terror that snatches citizens from Western countries and wrongfully detains them in the pursuit of trade, the Journal reported. For example, the return of Iranian-American businessman Siamak Namazi netted Iran $6 billion that the U.S. agreed to unfreeze as part of a deal last year.
In addition, the U.S. has issued "D" travel warnings against Americans going to Eritrea, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Myanmar, other countries where the risk of wrongful detention is high, according to the report. However, warnings are just that; they're not restrictions. Save for North Korea, Americans are free to travel wherever they want.
"The only real problem with this hostage diplomacy, as far as Iran can see, is a reputational risk. But when you are the Islamic Republic of Iran, you don't have a good reputation to protect," Namazi told the Journal. "If you take hostages and you hold on to them, eventually you get what you want. This is a growing enterprise."