National Security Must Also Focus on Deterring Abductions

As acting special presidential envoy for hostage affairs a while back, I had the privilege of receiving an American being repatriated from abroad. It took place at a U.S. Air Force base in Germany.

Before I prepared the trifold American flag to present in a few hours’ time, I made a point of rehearsing for some profoundly serious telephone conversations, putting on a suit and tie to respect as much as possible those on the other end.

The news cycle would soon report on the release. To spare the families of other hostages not so blessed that day from spikes of adrenalin and anxiety, I called each homestead in advance, several early morning. In each case their first reaction was a shared relief.

But within 10 seconds the same question: But what about my loved one? That was a question that my office lived with 24/7.

I consciously resisted the pat “we are doing everything we can, everything possible.” Not good enough. I responded that we were always looking for new possibilities and for putting them into effect as practicable.

Each case involved the forcible holding in a murky cell or worse of not only the American, but of American foreign policy interests at stake. Each case required its own “line of effort” uniquely developed around whatever information we could glean.

When you have seen one hostage case, you have seen only one hostage case. There is no formular approach to managing the national nightmare of one person bearing the weight of U.S. foreign policy interests compromised quickly and mercilessly by the mere act of their wrongful and inhuman detention.

In nuclear warfare, all parties are at risk of mutually assured destruction. In hostage warfare — yes, each case is its own war — an asymmetric advantage goes to the captor. Our national security preparedness must dedicate study and doctrine on hostage affairs and develop the consequences and grit to deliver on them as a deterrent to more abductions.

From the Obama through Trump and now Biden White Houses, there has been continuous attention for developing American will and might on behalf of hostage recovery. Years of congressional and political interest in such cases has carefully avoided exploiting this issue as a partisan political football.

We must not let that game ever start — no scoreboard on recoveries or gloating from any publicity-seeking standpoint. Otherwise, anything other than a consistent national resolve on hostage affairs — an American will that both begins and ends at the water’s edge — would be exploited by our adversaries into more and longer American captivities abroad.

Despite the national nightmare in 1979-1980 of Americans held in Iran, there was no systematic U.S. governmental preparedness for such hostage affairs. Only since 2015 has the U.S. government created a standing, hands-on capacity dedicated to unwinding the captivities of our compatriots and by extension their families, the national family, and American foreign policy interests in the mix.

It took the ISIS beheading of American journalist Jim Foley, shockingly transmitted on YouTube 10 years ago this August 19, for the White House to arm itself with a go-to-it resource to meet ongoing and future hostage and wrongful detention cases overseas.

Now at 3 a.m. not only is there someone awoken but there is a resource to activate — something much more than the nightstand. This USG hostage enterprise, an all-of-government tool kit, when effective, has been a rare and welcome development on the bureaucratic landscape. And on its good days it sets an exhilarating example for managing other national priorities.

Let us call today one of those days.