I was reading this morning about a Russian court sentencing American citizen Marc Fogel to 14 years in prison for marijuana smuggling. Details were sparse, but the court is in the same jurisdiction just outside Moscow that is holding WNBA basketball star Brittney Griner on a possession charge. Fogel is said to be in his 60s, so if the sentence is fully enforced he’ll likely die in a Russian prison.
You can read more about the trial here but don’t expect to learn the full story or true facts of the case. The reports I read said the court never announced how much weed Fogel had or who he was selling it to (if anybody); his lawyer claimed it was about half an ounce of medical marijuana. What I think is really going on is that Fogel and Griner are hostages, political pawns in the geopolitical battle between the United States and NATO on one side, and Russia on the other. Taking hostages is what terrorist groups, kidnappers and rogue regimes do.
I am confident that I’m right in my assessment as to what the Russian regime is up to – taking hostages can pay huge dividends. Perhaps the most famous hostage crisis in American history was that related to the takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran, Iran, after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The hostages were held for 444 days before being released on the very day that Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president in 1981. The number, 444, is critical to understand. The popular late night news program, Nightline, began with coverage of this hostage crisis and it, like other news programs, was relentless in counting out how many days the hostages were being held, thereby increasing the pressure on the government to do something about it. What did Iran get for eventually freeing the hostages? The United States freed up $8 billion in frozen Iranian assets – that was the quid pro quo.
Another politically motivated hostage situation was that of Associated Press (AP) reporter Terry Anderson (and others) by Hezbollah-linked militants in Lebanon in 1985. Constant attention to this crisis by the media heaped pressure on the government to do something about Anderson, as well as the other hostages. In particular, Anderson’s sister, Peggy Say, “was a fixture in newspaper articles and on television as she used every means she could imagine to keep his cause alive and fight for his freedom,” as one newspaper wrote in her obituary in 2015. Anderson was released in 1991. Media reports at the time suggested that Iran helped engineer the release as part of a hoped-for improvement in relations with the United States, but this also suggests that Iran simply controlled Hezbollah.
What benefit does Russia see in this latest round of hostage-taking, if that’s what it is? The context may provide the answer. We have sanctions against Russia, but Russia is itself is punishing Europe (and the world, really) by restricting energy supplies to Europe and wheat exports from Ukraine to the world. This is the basis for a lot of our inflation, though by no means all of it. (As Vladimir Putin said earlier this week, we were printing money throughout the pandemic in what was euphemistically called “monetary easing,” and if you have a lot of money chasing a finite amount of goods and services prices will go up. I really hate to agree with a dictator and killer like Putin on anything, but this is Economics 101.)
Well, you know where this is headed. Russia will find a way to release the alleged druggies currently in custody in return for easing of sanctions and maybe a stop to arming Ukraine. That would be asking a lot for two hostages, but they can count on popular pressure to grow and grow in America (as it did with the Iran hostage crisis and Terry Anderson abduction) as long as inflation is raging, and as long as the party in power might want to be seen as bringing down inflation prior to the Midterm elections later this year. (I say the “party in power” because the Republican Party might be as craven as the Democratic Party in this regard.)
I don’t think I’m wrong in thinking the Russians have taken two hostages for the purpose of extracting concessions on the current sanctions regime. And I hope I’m wrong that the party in power might just give in, but I’m far from confident of that.