That sixteen innocent Westerners, most visibly Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, have been released from Russian captivity is a happy occasion for them, their families and their countries, but it is not, as Jim Geraghty points out this morning, an untainted diplomatic triumph:
The message is clear to every Russian spy, assassin, operative, hacker, or criminal: If you get caught, don’t talk. Sit tight. Be patient. Vladimir Putin can and will get you out eventually. He can get anybody out, from an arms dealer so notorious he inspired a Nicholas Cage movie to a guy who’s executing dissidents in front of horrified kids in a German park. There is no monster so heinous and wicked that Putin can’t strongarm a foreign government into releasing him.
We should expect additional wrongful arrests, detentions, kidnappings, and abductions in the future, because the U.S. government had made clear that the tactic works; if you arrest our people on nonsense charges and throw them in prison, we will give you back the worst of the worst, the ones who required Herculean efforts to bring to justice.
As the price paid for the prisoners’ release sinks in, expect to see this Rudyard Kipling quotation “again and again”:
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
If you have travel plans in Russia, it might be prudent to reconsider.
Comments