A well-turned piece by Carne Ross (Independent Diplomat) taking up the release by North Korea of the two American journalists on the problems facing diplomats as and when hostages are grabbed:

Even Bill Clinton’s harshest critic should celebrate this rescue as triumphant and humane. But as the women’s families breathe a sigh of relief, a nagging question remains: has Bill Clinton just made the world a more dangerous place?

… The Administration may insist that no substantive policy concessions were made (and we may never know), but the visit alone was a kind of ransom payment. We can be sure that North Korea will continue to take "prisoners," whether from the South or better yet, America, and will seek concessions for their release. All over the world, hostage-takers, whether states, terrorists or pirates, are being regularly paid off, hush-hush, without fanfare. The message is clear: hostage-taking gets results. Tehran, Hizbollah and Pyongyang, and other violent groups across the world, will be taking notes.

Somehow the whole world is in the grip of the hostage-takers: no one has a good solution. We badly need a debate on how to alter the terms of hostage diplomacy, by reducing the rewards for those who use such coercive techniques — and increasing them for those who don’t. 

Carne tries to crank up an Independent Diplomat argument for ‘rewarding’ eg the Polisario Front whose moderation (he argues) has led to them being largely ignored. Fair enough, although it does not follow that moderation in itself should guarantee success. 

But ensuring that Good Behaviour is rewarded does little to deter those who think (rightly) that Bad Behaviour also is rewarded.

Bad Behaviour has several advantages over Good Behaviour. It appears to show a higher level of reckless determination, it achieves momentum, it catches people’s attention, and it marginalises pesky moderates. See Hamas passim.

So the only answer to Bad Behaviour is to confront it ‘somehow’ with a good prospect of Very Bad Outcomes.

But even that is not so easy when a state is doing the kidnapping. Ronald Reagan’s 1986 attack aimed at President Gaddafi springs to mind as the best available example of an attempt to catch one leader’s personal attention. Not so easy to do that to North Korea when its large army is so close to the South Korea capital. 

Basically, North Korea is holding us all to ransom. And, so, now and again we pay them off. In this American case with the unfortunate personal involvement of a former President and an added soap-opera spin of portraying this bizarre capitulation as a human-interest story negotiating triumph.

Has Bill Clinton just made the world a more dangerous place?

Sure looks that way.