OPINION:
We are all glad WNBA star Brittney Griner is back in the United States. But President Biden’s prisoner swap to get Ms. Griner home in exchange for “the merchant of death,” Viktor Bout (a notorious Russian arms dealer and enemy of the U.S.), amounts to submission to Russia’s hostage diplomacy and results in making Americans less safe abroad. The trade should have never been done.
What is more disturbing is that this appears NOT to be a one-off in U.S. diplomacy, but a trend, for Mr. Biden also bowed to China in September 2021, when he released the CFO of China’s Huawei, Meng Wanzhou, and China released Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who’d been arrested for no legitimate reason by China soon after Ms. Meng’s arrest in Canada by Canadian authorities at the behest of the U.S., who charged her with serious counts of fraud. The arrest of the two Michaels was clearly hostage-taking, a response to the arrest of Ms. Meng in Canada.
In both cases, dictatorships one-upped the United States. In both cases, the U.S. swapped a legitimate prisoner, Mr. Bout, in the Griner case, and Ms. Meng, in the Huawei case, for people who should not have been detained in the first place (Ms. Griner and the two Michaels).
The result of all of this is that Mr. Biden has, perhaps inadvertently, signaled to thugs and dictators around the world that the U.S. will now negotiate with such thugs and dictators, that if such thugs and dictators have a high-value prisoner in U.S. custody that they’d like to see released, all they have to do is grab an American off the street abroad (or a Canadian, alluding to the Meng case). The U.S. will eventually release that prisoner. In the Meng case, the U.S. released a white-collar criminal working for a Chinese communist proxy/front in Huawei who’d lied to banking regulators and helped her company violate U.S. sanctions against Iran. Now in the Griner case, the U.S. has released a notorious criminal and arms dealer with U.S. blood on his hands.
This is not good from a diplomatic standpoint. This is not good from a U.S. national security standpoint. This is not good from an American expatriate community or tourist standpoint. This is unjust and unprincipled diplomacy. It means Americans abroad now have to look over their shoulders and have to be more careful than ever because their president has now signaled to the world that he is willing to do business with criminals and dictators (in fact, there is not much distinction between these two classes), trading American hostages or the hostages of America’s allies in exchange for prisoners in U.S. custody who might be criminals, terrorists, murderers or serious security threats to the United States.
This new American diplomacy is highly disappointing and highly concerning. It should be of particular concern to Americans living, traveling and working abroad. A message to them: Keep your nose clean and your eyes open, for your president just signaled that it might now be open season on Americans abroad.
• Gregory J. Moore is a Centennial Institute fellow and professor of global studies and politics at Colorado Christian University.
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