So, let’s get one thing clear right off the bat, before I spend even one word digging into this topic:
I don’t particularly care about Brittney Griner’s politics or personal life. It matters not one whit to me, even as it’s driving a lot of the controversy and narrative surrounding her release. Now, I fully recognize that it may seem strange to set that portion of the story aside, when it appears to many - on both sides of the debate - to be the whole story, but bear with me. I hope it wasn’t a factor in the White House’s negotiations to secure her release; even if that was the case (which we don’t have any evidence of at the moment), it would be an additional element to the story, not necessarily the primary one.
Even if it wasn’t a driving motivation for the White House, it may well have been one for Vladimir Putin. His apparent willingness to consider releasing Brittney Griner, but not consider including Paul Whelen in the deal, could have been precisely because he knew that would result in political blowback for the Biden administration. Though he is a brutal tyrant who overestimated his own military and underestimated Ukraine’s, Vladimir Putin is not a complete madman, nor is he a fool, unfortunately. If he were either, he would not have stayed in power as long as he has, nor would he be as great a threat to the West as he is.
He’s not only a savvy political operator within Russian domestic politics, he’s spent decades observing Western politics as well, and he’s frequently hoodwinked western leaders from various nations and political parties throughout his decades in power. Despite his missteps in Ukraine, he should be neither dismissed as a foe nor underestimated: Indeed, it was doing exactly that helped lead to the invasion of Ukraine in the first place. We can safely presume that Putin is always doing whatever he can, both overtly and covertly, to divide both the Western allies and their own citizens. Given that context, it’s only natural that he would be willing to release one of Biden’s supporters, in the hopes that it would make a bad deal look even worse.
That’s why it’s important to lay aside the optics for a moment and take a look at the exchange itself. It was a pure one-for-one deal: the United States released a Russian citizen in exchange for a detained American. However, while the numbers lined up perfectly, the value to the government of each individual clearly did not - or it should not have, at any rate. Brittany Griner wasn’t an American spy, or a diplomat, or even a former government official who was detained abroad: she was a private citizen traveling for work who was arrested for violating a Russian law. Now, there’s every reason to think that Russian officials were overly heavy-handed at every step of the way in the process, from her initial arrest to her trial and detention. In Russia, as in every country in the world - whether democratic or not - the government can choose how they enforce their laws, and clearly they treated a particularly high-profile American very harshly in this case.
That’s to be expected of Russia, and it’s to be expected that the American government should try to get her back, just as they would any American they consider to be wrongfully detained abroad. We should always strive to make these swaps, though, of an equal number of both people and value. So, rather than releasing Viktor Bout, a high-profile illicit arms dealer who had a long habit of leaving innocent victims (including Americans) dead all over the world, we should have released another Russian instead.
Simply put, if the charges against Viktor Bout were accurate, it’s hard to see how American national security interest as a whole is advanced by his release in exchange for Griner. The problem with this kind of analysis, though, is that it puts a value on individual human lives, which is always morally questionable. It’s entirely reasonable to completely avoid that calculus and just be happy to get any American released, no matter the cost, but that’s not how the United States government should quite be looking at these exchanges.
It’s essentially a version of the trolley problem: is it worth it to free any American, no matter the cost, or should the value of the individuals be considered? For the government of the United States, they need to consider the greater good of the country as a whole, not merely how many American citizens they are getting back or who they are. Alternatively, they could lay aside both of those factors: Not consider who we’re getting back, or how many people, and just come to one simple conclusion.
It isn’t worth it.
Viktor Bout, having gone through the legitimate American judicial system and been convicted of multiple crimes, should have remained in prison. He was sentenced for crimes that he committed, with evidence presented in court, and now that he’s released, he’ll probably go right back to selling weapons in war zones all over the world.
Weapons that end up killing innocent people, including Americans.
Engaging in these prisoner exchanges with illegitimate dictatorships that kidnap our citizens precisely because they need hostages to exchange only encourages them to do so again. It imperils national security, weakens the legitimacy of our judicial system, and makes our country look weak in the eyes of the world. We shouldn’t start engaging in our own hostage-taking, but neither should we encourage it by our enemies and adversaries.
That being said, it’s all well and good for me to sit here and pontificate on it without speaking to the friends and families of the victim being held hostage. I fully empathize with them, but the President of the United States has to decide what’s best for the country as a whole - not merely for a particular individual citizen.
On that basis, this particular prisoner exchange does not seem to be warranted, but at the end of the day, it’s up to the President to make that decision. I just hope, for all of our sakes, that he made the right one here - regardless of whether I agree with it or not.