In asymmetrical warfare, hostage-taking can be a superpower

As the first three hostages released by Hamas parade across our TV screens, accompanied by shots of Hamas fighters enjoying a victory lap, what are we to think and believe? Whatever your next thought, when it comes to hostages, it is likely incorrect.

Hostage-taking, whether recently or going back to America’s first overseas military adventures against the Barbary pirates or somewhere in between, reflects America’s waxing and waning policy towards hostage-taking. The only takeaway that terrorists can draw from America’s conduct since at least the 1970s is that hostage-taking is an effective, cheap, and ultimately successful way to conduct asymmetric warfare.

America no longer has a well-defined core value system that reflexively reacts in response to attacks, as we once did. That failure puts us at the same risk that Israel currently faces.

Gaza hostages freed as terrorists dance around

Image: Gaza hostages free while terrorists dance. YouTube screen grab.

Hostage-taking is both a business (think Somalia’s pirates) and, separately, an instrument of war. In the 1970s, terrorist organizations started using it on a mass scale as a tool for political leverage, publicity, and relevancy. This period included notable incidents like the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage crisis and, again, the 1979 Iran hostage-taking.

Operation Eagle Claw, also known as “Desert One,” was Jimmy Carter’s failed 1980 military to rescue 53 hostages from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran. Our inability to rescue the hostages marks the moment we gave terrorists power they still largely hold.

It was in the 1970s that the U.S. established its policy not to negotiate with terrorists. However, when push comes to shove, American administrations have done the same thing Israel did, which is to negotiate to get hostages back. Reagan did it to get back the hostages in Iran, but bowing before hostage takers exploded under Obama and Biden.

The two most recent examples, one under Obama and the other under Biden, have been particularly troublesome:

In 2014, Obama exchanged deserter Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl for five Taliban prisoners. This rightly drew significant criticism, especially because six American soldiers were killed searching for Bergdahl.

Then, in 2022, Biden presided over the Britney Griner fiasco. Griner had been convicted of drug charges in Russia and sentenced to nine years in prison (charges that may well have been a set-up). Russia and the United States conducted a high-profile prisoner exchange involving American basketball star Brittney Griner and Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, a man tied to thousands of deaths through his activities.

Political miscalculations that legitimize hostage-taking create uncertainty and tacitly accept hostage-taking as an instrument of foreign policy positioned between diplomacy and war. The net effect has been a steady acceleration of the tactic and the normalization of deviancy in the eyes of much of the world.

Events in Israel on October 7, 2023, show what happens when terrorists understand the leverage they have via hostage-taking. Despite manifestly winning the traditional war, Israel has yielded to a terrible ceasefire agreement that entirely favors Hamas just to get its people back. Hamas’s theory of war, predicated on opening with seizing hostages, worked.

Because Israel has shown that, no matter its official policy, it too will negotiate with terrorists, the inevitable conclusion is that terrorists will seize more hostages, which is their primary power in asymmetrical warfare. Bowing to any form of terrorism—in this case, hostage-taking—only invites more of the same. It’s to be hoped that, under Donald Trump, we will return to the old status quo that had America’s enemies realize that there was no benefit to hostage-taking but a lot of guaranteed blowbacks.

God bless America.

Author, Businessman, Thinker, and Strategist. Read more about Allan, his background, and his ideas to create a better tomorrow at www.1plus1equals2.com

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