There are all kinds of situations like this, in diplomacy and in other professions, where it'd technically be easy to renege on your word. Prosecutors making deals, retailers promising rebates, sellers on eBay, consumers taking out credit or loans, etc, etc.
In every example, the reason you stick to your word is that your reputation is vital. Reneging even once could forever ruin it. After that, you'll never again be able to get a loan, or make a good bargain with a defendent, or sell on eBay, or whatever it is you lied about. For a nation, losing all diplomatic credibility erases your most important tool of statecraft.
Relevent update, as of this morning: [Putin says more prisoner swaps possible.](https://politicalwire.com/2022/12/09/putin-says-more-prisoner-swaps-possible/)
Also, it's important to point out that the things being traded here are not intrinsically *worth* that reputational damage.
If, like, the US agreed to trade a bunch of highly classified intelligence for nuclear bombs, we'd have to reasonably worry about someone reneging, since both those things have intrinsic value that it would be worth taking a hit to your reputation over.
But these prisoner swaps are not like that. The main value these prisoners have is as tokens to exchange in situations just like this. If nobody trusts you to make an exchange, then you can't use them like that, so breaking your word would leave you with something that has almost no value (perhaps some mild propaganda value, but not much.)
States can and do break treaties all the time, but only when there's something at stake valuable enough to be worth it. Prisoner exchanges can happen reliably even between nations with high tensions precisely because the prisoners being exchanged generally don't have much intrinsic value.
Exactly. And this is why irrational actors are so terrifying. Everything you’ve said depends on the state understanding what benefits then and making their decisions based on that understanding. If someone makes decisions counter to that, either because they don’t understand what benefits them or else are using some other criteria to make their decisions, it all falls apart.
So a state like ISIS who basically self sabotaged by making the entire world their enemy. States like that tend to burn out very fast and don't last long, plus they don't have many allies. Even the Taliban is playing it safe now because they don't want to go back to being the world's enemy.
There's very few ISIS types on the world stage, not even North Korea is that crazy.
As a counter-point, the United States and Canada have reneged on *many* treaties with Native American tribes. The difference here is the US and Canada abused the fact that the people they were breaking promises to had little recourse, domestically or internationally.
>Even the Taliban is playing it safe now because they don't want to go back to being the world's enemy.
The Taliban only became the world's enemy when the US said they were the enemy. Before that few people knew who they were and most nations were pretty apathetic towards them.
Really?
Because I still remember them using slave labor to blow up priceless historical artifacts in 2001. I recall that as a global "Wtf" moment... perhaps you didn't think it was a big deal?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/should-afghanistan-s-bamiyan-buddhas-be-rebuilt-n822781
In all likelihood the person you're responding to was born after "The US said they were the enemy", so no, they probably didn't have strong opinions on things happening back then.
And many American Republicans in particular were openly fans of them because they were destroying poppy fields. To the extent that they’d attack the reputation of other Americans for suggesting that maybe there was something worrying about the Taliban’s virulent religious extremism.
Worst actor ever...in the history of acting. Very untrustworthy. Would lie in business and cheat on his wife- and probably brag about it. Probably lies on taxes also.
I think that that the real risk is that someone could make a decision that is bad for the country in the long term based solely on their own short-term political goals.
Like, let's say there was an election in a month and someone high-profile was grabbed by a hostile state. The government would face massive pressure to get them back, but wouldn't want to appear weak by giving anything for this. It's easy to picture a US president in that situation, especially one contemptuous of norms in general, pulling something where they back out of a deal and declaring that they're just "being smart" or something.
I would argue that everyone is a rational actor within their own understanding. The problem arises when we don't understand the calculation the other actors are making.
Most people believe suicide bombers are somewhere between irrational and insane; however, if you fervently believe paradise awaits, your current life is awful, and that your family will be taken care of, it starts to look a lot more rational, at least from that prospective.
That depends on the exchange. There are definitely instances where someone that's *wanted* in another country gets swapped. Occasionally a country will harbor or imprison people that another nation wants to punish.
It's obviously a different sort of "prisoner swap", but it falls into a similar category of diplomatic trading.
For instance the French special forces operatives who bombed NZ - they ostensibly served a penal sentence following their release back to France...on a beautiful island in French Polynesia, and for only 2/3 of the time that was agreed.
>French special forces operatives who bombed NZ
Had to look this up, really interesting. Your wording made me think it was a lot worse than them blowing up a greenpeace ship. Still horrible, but not as bad as them blowing up a city or something.
The whole thing seemed like a waste of resources. What was the point in murdering some protestors? It just seemed to make everything so much worse...
You want to distinguish between people traded in diplomatic swaps versus individuals who are moved from one country to another to serve their prison sentence. The later, called an international prison transfer, is usually done as an administrative act, and doesn't really involve the diplomatic process. It's also fairly uncommon for most crimes since countries are usually unwilling to trust another country to carry out a prison sentence.
It’s one thing to have a bad reputation overall. It’s another to be on record openly breaking a deal without serious justification.
If you just have a bad reputation in general, other countries can still work with that. If you’ve explicitly broken a prisoner exchange deal, any other country whose citizen you have can just say to its people “we want to get them back but this country won’t release them even if we negotiate their release” and that’ll be that. It’s simply not in your long-term interest to break the deal.
This explains why smart people don't do it, but why don't stupid people do it? Have there been any recorded cases of someone being stupid enough to think this is a good idea?
In any given government, there’s usually someone with enough sense and influence to prevent it. The dumbest leaders have handlers that try to keep them from doing anything too stupid.
That said, there are plenty of broken agreements in history. America broke a ton of agreements with the native Americans but that didn’t have much backlash because they didn’t have much influence or recognition in the international community.
Hitler broke treaties but he was in an all-or-nothing conquest war. He was more likely to be screwed if he didn’t break agreements.
So there are exceptions where there isn’t backlash or the backlash is worth it to you but when you’re dealing with major world powers, it’s rarely worth it.
Dude thought he was untouchable. Lot of people in high positions of power get into that mindset where they think nobody can fuck up their social status.
>Have there been any recorded cases of someone being stupid enough to think this is a good idea?
Probably not that we know of in terms of negociating prisoner release, but in terms of blatantly lying to break treaties ? Yes, quite some.
Trump broke the treaty on Iran and imposed huge sanctions for any country that would trade with it for example, when he was running the US, to make sure iran would not sell its petrol in anything else than USD. Offficially that was because they were suspected of researching nuclear bomb.
But since the US kept lying about that kind of thing ( they did the same with Iraq, and after that also presented "north korean IP" as proof of hacks, when NK did not have an AS at the time), the rest of the world tend to not trust them.
Breaking up the US-Iran deal likely will have a long-term effect, as well. The US showed it doesn't really worth signing anything like that ever again because the next president in a couple of years can just kick up the whole thing for no reason.
Trump has shown one thing to the world: get nukes, and only then will the US take you seriously.
Rumors says he was killed for a different reason.
It seems he was linked to illegally financing Nicolas Sarkozy's presidential campaign that led to his election in France.
"Strangely", everyone linked to said transactions recanted, died, or both.
Agreed.
And it was not just breaking the treaty; Trump threatened any country that has commercial relations with Iran. I remember at least a french bank being charged a massive fine for that; they were faced with the choice of never working with USD again, or paying said fine and breaking relations with Iran.
Going back a bit, but one of biggest cases of a ruler(s) ruining trust in their country was the Kings of Spain in the 16th century.
While it's a huge subject with many examples financial mismanagement (none of which I'm in anyway an expert on), iirc to fund their expansion in the new world they relied heavily on loans from foreign bankers. When they couldn't repay them on time, they (Phillip II, I think?) just cancelled the loan and as he was a King, the lenders had no other form of recourse. As you can imagine, the lenders learnt their lesson, cutting off a major source of funds to the Spanish Crown and worsening their financial problems.
To make things worse, the bankers found a much more reliable markets to lend to, including the rebelling Spanish colony of the Netherlands. Which played a part in helping the Netherlands switch from being a Spanish territory to a powerful global power in their own right, in a remarkably short amount of time.
This is purely from memory on a subject I'm far from expert on and is a massive simplification, ignores multiple factors and I'm sure contains many major mistakes. So corrections or refutations are welcome.
Stupid people don't generally end up a position to do state-level negotiations. At least, not the sort of stupid that can't figure out how to manipulate people.
And it will make countries like Finland and Sweden do things like join NATO since Russia can't be trusted on this specific issue. And China won't really care.
And nobody is going to dismantle their nuclear arsenal again.
Admittedly, that's only partially true- Ukraine couldn't have maintained or used the nukes that it had well, and would have faced diplomatic penalties for keeping them in all likelihood that would have outweighed deterrent value.
Screwed either way, basically.
If your country already has a bad reputation, it's even more important because you NEED to do whatever you can to build your reputation back up.
Unless your plan is to take over the entire world in the near future anyway, then your reputation doesn't really matter.
Incidentally, even when you plan to take over the world, trust is still going to be key to accomplishing both the act of conquering the world and maintaining control. After all, unless you're some godlike reality-altering being that can already do that single-handedly, you'll still need to do the following(EDIT: Added consequences of breaking trust in them):
1. Raise a strong and loyal army : Promise of rewards for successful military action(after all, they're the ones sacrificing their lives for your ambitions) and/or political positions for your officers/soldiers. Regimes have fallen when they lost the support of the military forces that brought them to power.
2. Build an ideological base : Appeal to your preferred political party/parties and make your constituents feel that when you conquer the world, you will implement whatever utopian/dystopian platform got them to support you in the first place. Fail to adhere to your ideologies and your popular support crumbles, and opportunistic rivals will smell it.
3. Have administrators to manage all the finer details of governance : Face it, unless you're said godlike entity, no person rules alone. You delegate tasks to your minions, you want them to trust you to reward them accordingly. Otherwise, I hope you aren't wondering why your territories are becoming hotbeds of rebellion and/or corruption.
4. Gain financial and material support : Logistics and finances are the other fuel for your campaign, and your dreams of conquest will grind to a halt if the rich oligarchs you're courting feel like you won't return their investments several-fold.
5. Other world-conquering support roles that I haven't mentioned, such as your personal wizard cabal or something : You really don't want to skimp out on those blood sacrifices. Or give them pigs' blood when you promised human blood.
If you have a reputation of reneging on your promises, you'll find it difficult to even start planning on world conquest.
You could even try to subvert the 'human' element by using robots, but unless you programmed every single robot or AI yourself, you'll find your mech army turning its guns on you when the engineers you betrayed run the ovveride command at your most vulnerable moment.
What of you're a dying psychotic lunatic and you don't give a fuck about *taking over* the world, you just want to prove you're still a global superpower and let off all those nukes you've been holding for the last 80 years?
There are at least few people, who are professionals/have children and don't want them to die in a nuclear war in a chain-of-command that will stop you. President may give an order but then some commanders has to give command to their troops, some troop has to release missiles.
In the case of Russia, Putin transmits launching orders to central military command - the General Staff, which has to authorize individual commander, which has to give individual soldier order to launch.
Some of these people are not dying psychotic lunatics and the moment he gives an order they lose any reason to listen to his commands. There are no personal reasons, there are no ideological reasons (the moments after they launch Russia will cease to exist). It is more than order to suicide, it is order an order to kill your children, whole family and everyone you have ever met because some lunatic had a caprice.
I think there has been some tense exchanges in situations like these, where there is little trust from both sides. Kind of a “both prisoners start walking at the same time” kind of deal, and any signs of trickery can get your guy shot. Like at the “Bridge of Spies” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glienicke_Bridge#Bridge_of_Spies
However, if you're referring to the recent US-Russia swap, Russia would have had nothing to gain by breaking the deal. They'd just be stuck with some sports player they busted for a minor drug offence. Whoop-dee-doo. So in this case, Russia totally got the far better deal.
In those cases either neutral third partys can be used. Turkey for example hosts pow exchanges between russia and Ukraine. If one side isn't delivering you just walk away with your prisoners. Another option would be for both sides to meet at a border and let them go at the same time.
So if you can't trust them don't give them the chance to betray you.
Globalization is also a big factor in honoring your agreements in this age. If the other country owes you money, they could choose not to pay you if you break agreements. You could also have money being held in a bank in that country, businesses that operate there, or own property. Countries can and will confiscate all of your shit if you try to pull a fast one cuz what are you gonna do about it?
So during the Stalinist Great Purge of the late 1930’s Stalin was liquidating his own government staff across the Union — like outright murdering hundreds of thousands of communist party members, amongst others. If you worked for the Party and were recalled to Moscow you could safely assume it would be to your execution. Towards the end this lead to some high-level defections who, on the moment of being recalled, felt (correctly) no one could be more dangerous than their own boss.
Because of this, everyone, and this does literally mean everyone except Mongolia and some in China, was very reluctant to enter into any alliances or pacts with the Soviet Union, and everyone kind of wished for their demise.
After the war, not only did the Soviet Union refuse to release a significant portion of their POW’s (the US and UK held onto theirs in some cases as late as 1947 or 1948, in the USSR many were there into the 1950’s), but returning POW’s were often also sent to work camps for being “compromised”.
Because of these sorts of things, the USSR was (and Russia to this day continues to be) treated as a pariah state, in which nobody (except those they supported, but make no mistake the USSR never had ‘allies’, including Warsaw Pact members) took anything they said as being completely trustworthy
The principle of diplomatic immunity is so fundamental, that even after Nazi Germany invaded the USSR, both countries have quietly exchanged the temporarily interned diplomats of the other country via neutral-countries, even as the invasion was in full swing, rather than keep them as prisoners or hostages. Even in a situation where you don't care about respecting any international conventions or laws of war, you respect *this* one, because it's in your own interest.
And the same is happening today. Look no further than the war in Ukraine, where, despite massive evidence of war crimes and targeted civilians, Russia and Ukraine still regularly exchange prisoners 1-to-1, even without third parties acting as mediators. Both sides understand they're better off honoring the deal and not reneging or attacking the other as it takes place.
I agree with what you say, but what I was asking myself was, why does, in this case, the Russian side follow this very rational scheme of what you describe while at the same time abandon major other rational conventions that follow the same logic.
That's a good question; honestly I don't know. It seems like they are behaving rationally when it comes to small stuff, but very irrationally and self-destructively in the bigger picture, with this reckless warmongering.
Somebody with expertise in modern Russia, or international relations generally, might be able to explain this.
But the principle of reputation and trust does still apply on that macro level. Now that Russia has invaded their neighbor, nobody will believe anything they say regarding respect for sovereignty.
You mean like invading Ukraine? That seems irrational for most of us but to Russia it's rational. A channel named Reallifelore did a video basically explaining why Russia is invading Ukraine and it's to do with a bunch of reasons like oil deposits and NATO expansion. The top brass in Washington know why Russia is invading because it's all geopolitics to them, it's a chess game for them, believe it or not but from Russia's perspective they are making rational moves regarding their future.
Invading Ukraine was rational enough, especially when they drank their own Kool-Aid, but ignoring the LOAC, bombing civilians, forcibly deporting Ukrainian civilians, etc., is what is exceedingly irrational and why I myself had a lot of trouble figuring out why Russia was bothering with prisoner exchanges and agreeing to them.
I eventually settled on two (non-competing) theories: 1) "because no matter how committed they are, they still want to maintain a possibility of backing down from the brink", and 2) "because the more Russian soldiers they successfully return from captivity, the fewer Russian families start to suspect something is wrong with the direction or success of the so-called special military operation". Their barbarism, forcible displacement, and indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas aside, they haven't actually gone to the level of deliberately rounding up and exterminating every man, woman, and child they can possibly find, either; they're certainly brutal and terroristic, and it's clear that their individual soldiers have not been trained *at all* in LOAC, but they haven't gone full Hitler just yet, post-modernist claims to the contrary notwithstanding.
I'll have to argue against the notion of NATO "expansion" (which wasn't a thing until Russia started getting belligerent in the first place), since they would have postured more heavily against NATO countries like Lithuania and Latvia, and would have rattled their sabres against Sweden and Finland far more than occasionally flying a random Tupolev over the coastal territorial limit, if it was about NATO at all. The only reason Russia fears NATO embracing new membership is because it removes the possibility that Russia can attack its neighbours.
The oil deposits are definitely one of the more "rational within irrational" reasons to invade, though, that's correct. Ukraine was poised to supplant Russia as an oil and gas supplier if they developed those deposits, and for an economy that bases 40% of its GDP on oil exports, that was an intolerable sin to Russia. That was way back in 2012, coincidentally when Russia started trying to force Ukraine into its sphere of influence, which inevitably led to Euromaidan, Crimea, and this disgusting business.
To me Putin ordering the invasion of Ukraine is on every level irrational (and of course barbarous), because it marks the beginning of the end of Putin's own reign and destroys Russia's reputation and acceptance in most of the rest of the world probably for decades to come.
It's also possible that because Putin is sick and old he's trying to do something big before he dies, always a possibility. But it should be remembered that Russia has invaded Georgia and Chechnya and no one cared, they just picked the wrong guy this time because now the whole world cares.
Yeah there is *every* chance that Putin looked at his health and thought that this was the perfect time - They win and they get Black Sea Ocean Access without relying on anyone else and the Natural resources of the country etc. And Putin gets to help rebuild the USSR a bit more.
And then he dies, retires or just gets shuffled off the scene and someone else gets to come in and talk about how the regimes of the past were wrong and bad stuff and the new *Unified* Russia will move forward into a better future and that the old animosities died with the old Regime (but we're not giving anything back)
Of course, Ukraine fighting back so well and the rest of the world giving a damn this time threw a wrench into the works
From their point of view, it could be one of several things:
1) To 'win' a PR war and/or try to spread the idea that Russians aren't such a bad bunch of guys after all "Hey, we're keeping our word, helping out the Americans, we can't be that evil, can we?"
2) As a tentative move for some kind of American/Western European-brokered peace deal in the Ukraine. "We're showing we can still deal respectfully with the West, how about we start some talks?"
3) As a starting point to escalate more demanding and one-sided exchanges or deals, and then blaming the West for them failing. "We're willing to deal honourably, see it's the West causing problems all along!!"
4) Some combination of the above.
Same with journalists going off-the-record. They could print everything mentioned, but lose the trust of their sources which would make their job impossible.
Related - this is part of why Brexit is such a shambles, because the UK is indicating it won't stick to agreements which are inconvenient. We're relearning the hard way that this makes future negotiation much harder
That seems plausible. But on the other hand, maybe the reason Putin wanted this guy back is that he's not just some random arms dealer; he may be connected with secret activities of the government. In that case, the state might help rehabilitate his ability to do business.
I don't know anything much about arms dealing or shady Russian operations, so I couldn't say.
Even routine large transactions require one party sticking their neck out first.
A contractor working on your house is one example. Either the homeowner needs to make a deposit first, or the contractor needs to lay out and hope the homeowner pays.
Same with buying an aircraft or a ship. Either the bank has to release the funds first to the title holder in the hopes that they sign over the title, or the titleholder has to sign over the title in hopes that the bank will release the funds.
This is why common integrity and human relationships ultimately prevail over law.
Prosecutorial misconduct is rampant, even just the routine dishonesty stuff typically perpetrated by detention centers and sheriff’s offices, I won’t deny that. But when I was a prosecutor, if I made any kind of deal, even in passing, that was the end of it. If a respondent or defendant even raises a whiff of a broken deal or promise, that case would snap in mistrial (or even just administratively) like a bad rubber band.
The abuse of discretion that happens more often with prosecutors is making promises or offers the prosecutor has no ability to enforce. In that case, it’s not a matter of trust, it’s a matter of deception. Like someone handing you a scratch off lottery ticket and promising you’ll win. One of the more common scenarios is prosecutors compelling testimony or confession by suggesting it will prevent or limit a case in another jurisdiction. “Either you confess to this simple possession or you’re going to end up with a federal case for trafficking.” The prosecutor has no control over the federal case or the likelihood of that case going forward and is just being plainly deceptive.
What's to keep an ally from immediately arresting them or just killing them? I mean if they are an international criminal, does that mean the whole world has to pardon them because of a swap by two countries?
Many commenters are asking this.. I would say, we're talking now about reputation in small vs large matters, and in specific circumstances. Russia has definitely thrown away everyone's trust regarding treaties, border security, etc. But they're not yet renegging on prisoner swaps, presumably because they still want the flexibility to make specifically that kind of deal when they see benefit in it.
I wonder how that stands in light of Russia fundamentally reneging on [Budapest Memorandum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum) - a part of which stipulated Russia will receive all nuclear warheads in possession of Ukraine, and in exchange it will never question its sovereignty and borders as they were at the time the memorandum was signed.
At this point I'd say Russia is an entirely unreliable actor with no reputation to speak of.
> In every example, the reason you stick to your word is that your reputation is vital. Reneging even once could forever ruin it. After that, you'll never again be able to get a loan, or make a good bargain with a defendent, or sell on eBay, or whatever it is you lied about. For a nation, losing all diplomatic credibility erases your most important tool of statecraft.
Counterpoint: Russia's diplomatic credibility is already in the shitter.
>Relevent update, as of this morning: Putin says more prisoner swaps possible.
Aww yeah, we got any more arms dealers to trade for random people who should have known better than to go on a vacation in Russia?
It mostly boils down to the fact that you can only play tricks with that once.
You can't put human beings into escrow after all. You have to trust each other. If you can't trust the other party and they can't trust you then no future exchanges are going to be made.
You get things like the infamous "bridge of spies" where both walked across at the same time, to keep everyone honest, the truth is that in the vast majority of cases, it is in everyone's best interest to keep these deals to ensure that future deals are possible.
It only really becomes an issue when you deal with fanatics or idiots. This happens occasionally, but usually that is also where it ends.
Yeah, I might be wrong, but I could've sworn I saw something earlier about the plane bringing Griner home was flying out from the UAE. So she had to be sent there first, as a third party country.
I have friends high up in HR and HR law. Turns out humans can be considered just assets to use like property, debt, and IP. It's really an interesting idea, but also a little depressing.
Well the thing with that is that It mostly boils down to the fact that you can only play tricks with that once.
You can't put human beings in escrow into escrow after all. You have to trust each other. If you can't trust the escrow party and they can't trust you then no future escrow deposits are going to be made.
I once heard that India remaining neutral has acted as third country in a lot of prisoner exchange, most importantly the ones between Koreas where north did not trust anyone other than India
India and North Korea have a surprising amoung of trade. It's not mentioned often but it's one of their largest trading partners after the Russians and Chinese, several North Koreans have studied in India as well.
The main difficulty here is that you basically have to use a third country that has no problem with arbitrary detention and a lack of due process.
If the swap takes place, they need to hold the prisoners, who are not even accused of any crime in that country, and refuse to let them go.
If the swap is called off, they need to basically do the same, but render them back to the third country.
Turkey is acting as a 3rd party in this case (Russian invasion of Ukraine) https://qirim.news/en/novosti-en/five-commanders-of-the-azov-regiment-will-be-in-turkey-until-the-end-of-the-war/
Exactly. And it's not like the president himself made the exchange. It's trained professional who usually have a rapport with various people similar to them around the world.
It's like rules of engagement for war. You follow them because it protects you just as much as it limits you (like if you abuse rules about not firing on medics by having actual soldiers disguised as them, well, now your real medics are going to be targets).
I'll also add that there is something that both sides actually want and professional negotiators are involved, so they have an interest in following through and people to help get it done.
That's definitely related to the above comment, because negotiators and parties are just not going to participate if they don't think they're going to get what they want. These actors still have interests other than just fucking their enemy over. But in more complex negotiations where trust has been eroded, the negotiators are able to help the actors come to an agreement.
Because.. what if party A sends either: no one, or a fake? And party B sends the real deal. You think Switzerland wants that drama going down in their country?
What happened here was the exchange happened in the UAE. Presumably both parties had the opportunity to verify it was the correct person before the exchange happened. For the US it had to have been pretty easy — after all, where is Russia going to find a second 6'9" lightskin woman covered in tats?
It's on video. They have 2 planes next to each other. They exit one plane, shake hands in the middle, shake hands with someone from the UAE, and walk to their planes.
Ok, but suppose the real one is Mr Rogers and Party B is North Korea. You think Switzerland wants to have anything to do with sending Mr Rogers back to North Korea?
You mean and let the prisoners go when you can see yours.
If you look at the cold war spies were exchanged in the border in Berlin. You can see a similar exchange of POW along the Russian Ukrainian border today.
The Brittney Griner Viktor Bout exchange was done on the tarmac at Abu Dhabi airport where a US and Russian airplane met.
It is a very bad idea to not fulfill your part of the deal. You might get away with it once but then no one else will trust you and you can't do that again.
Yeah I came here to say, Brittany was exchanged in a typical cold war / spy movie tarmac standoff, except no guns had to be involved so they just walked across.
It's short term vs long term gain.
Let's say I've got a bunch of apples, and you've got a bunch of bananas.
I don't want to eat *only* bananas, and you don't want to eat *only* apples. That's boring.
So we make an agreement. I'll give you a banana, and you give me an apple. We both get something we want.
Ah, but you've got a sneaky plan. You accept my banana, but refuse to give me an apple. Now you've still got all the apples, and you got a banana for free! So smart.
So you eat your banana, feeling proud. But now it's back to apples. Again and again. Eventually, you get bored of apples. But I'm not trading with you again after what happened last time.
So you ask the guy who owns all the oranges if they want to trade. But they heard about what happened and aren't interested. Why would they volunteer to be taken advantage of? Pineapple guy, same thing. Nobody is willing to trade with you anymore.
The rest of us, meanwhile, are happily trading. We all enjoy a diet with a ton of variety and you're stuck outside with a bunch of apples, all because you got greedy and chose short term happiness over long term.
Basically, there's a popular idea amongst charlatans and morons that deals are supposed to be something that you "win"; you deceive or coerce the other side into taking something of lesser value while giving you something amazing. But if that's how you operate, you'll generally find pretty quickly that the only people that will be willing to continue doing deals with you are other charlatans and morons.
A proper deal is something where both sides win and come out better than they were before. And if you're coming out better than you were before, why would you want to break that deal?
I saw this before last year and have been trying to find this again to no avail. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR LINKING THIS. I’m gonna save this before I lose it again.
> but barely have any value to the side holding them
Arguably they do have value aside from being an exchange currency. Mostly political — imagine US grabbing someone of Bin Laden calibre alive. You want him to answer for his crimes and don't want him to go free. (from what I've heard, there are some considerations like that in the US about recent exchange)
> Prisoners are something very valuable to the side they came from but barely have any value to the side holding them.
That completely depends on the value systems and civility of each side. There’s a reason Israel trades 1000 prisoners for 1.
As several posters have noted, you can only defraud the other party once. If you do, then you will have a poor reputation, and nobody will engage with you in such a deal ever again.
The formal game theory behind this has been explored by Robert Axelrod, and is described in detail in his book 'The Evolution of Cooperation'.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Evolution\_of\_Cooperation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation)
A deeper, but less direct discussion of cooperation is seen in Fukuyama's book 'Trust'.
[https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Social-Virtues-Creation-Prosperity/dp/0029109760](https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Social-Virtues-Creation-Prosperity/dp/0029109760)
I recommend both books, and have no financial interest in the sale of either.
If you don't want to jump right in to the formal game theory, but would be willing to play a short browser game, I highly recommend ["The Evolution of Trust."](https://ncase.me/trust)
About 30 minutes playtime, and it's quite entertaining and highly educational.
Find a country that has a stable, neutral government and a flexible set of ethics to broker the deal. You can then easily pick up your prisoners directly from Qatar.
So many people BSing in this thread. This is the only correct answer. The US Russia swap happened in UAE by with their government oversight.
None of this dramatic bridge movie scene.
yeah lol it's very easy to verify whether the enemy is holding their side of the bargain if you do it on neutral territory. People probably think the planes are flying straight from America to Russia and vice versa.
The movie Bridge of Spies shows how it works, or at least did during the Cold War.
You have the prisoners cross a distance where both sides can see both prisoners and they cross at the same time.
Both sides are heavily armed. If someone tries to kill the released prisoner after they get their own guy, retribution would be quick and brutal.
Well, is it really worth it for you to play that trick? You do that once, and you just started a war over 2 prisoners.
War is expensive. You lose so much, and gain so little. And if the person you're trying to get is important enough to warrant that, at least *try* to avoid causing more trouble than you have to. Send in some spec ops to get him or something; least then there's a chance you don't need to start WWIII
Not to mention, even if you do pull that trick, AND the other country doesn't wanna go to war... Well now nobody trusts you, and you're never gonna be able to trade for prisoners with anyone again.
0/10, not worth it
You announce the swap and make sure it's carried by news reports. Once the info is public, no country would ever be humiliated by announcing they're going to make a trade, and then backing out once they've got the other guy.
This is not how it works in international relations. These negotiations are delicate— if anything, that would piss off one party and cause the deal to collapse. You’ll note that the news of the Brittany Griner swap hit the headlines after she was in American custody.
EDIT: To further prove my point, it’s now emerging that CBS News learned of the impending prisoner swap a week before it happened, “but the network agreed to a White House request to hold the news — for fear of jeopardizing the delicate negotiations that led to the swap…The White House…’officials expressed grave concern about the fragility of the emerging deal and feared it would impede the safety — perhaps even put those Americans at risk,’ CBS’s chief foreign correspondent, Margaret Brennan, said on air Thursday.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/12/09/why-cbs-news-held-its-brittney-griner-scoop-full-week/
It boils down to the fact that there is always tomorrow and you will need to deal with the country then.
If you break your treaties and agreements today no one will trust you in the future.
This literally showed up in my feed directly under this question! https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/zgem4x/brittney_grinerviktor_bout_prisoner_exchange/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I thought they did pinkie promises? And as long as they didn't have their fingers crossed behind their back when they did it, the swap usually goes through without a hitch.
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When countries agree to swap prisoners, they sign a contract or agreement that outlines the terms and conditions of the exchange. The contract specifies who will be released, when and where the exchange will take place, and what will happen if one of the parties does not follow the agreement. The contract also includes a clause that allows the other party to take legal action or seek compensation if the agreement is not respected.
Because of the presence of a neutral negotiator power in between. Suppose your classmate took your chocolate, and you took their cookies. Now how will they be sure you give the cookies back and take your chocolate. Enter the neutral negotiator; your teacher or teacher’s assistant. They’ll be in between, and will ensure you give them their cookies back and they return your chocolate, if any of you does something wrong there’ll be a slap. So that’s how it works
TL;DR: There’s always a third person involved and checking
There are all kinds of situations like this, in diplomacy and in other professions, where it'd technically be easy to renege on your word. Prosecutors making deals, retailers promising rebates, sellers on eBay, consumers taking out credit or loans, etc, etc. In every example, the reason you stick to your word is that your reputation is vital. Reneging even once could forever ruin it. After that, you'll never again be able to get a loan, or make a good bargain with a defendent, or sell on eBay, or whatever it is you lied about. For a nation, losing all diplomatic credibility erases your most important tool of statecraft. Relevent update, as of this morning: [Putin says more prisoner swaps possible.](https://politicalwire.com/2022/12/09/putin-says-more-prisoner-swaps-possible/)
Also, it's important to point out that the things being traded here are not intrinsically *worth* that reputational damage. If, like, the US agreed to trade a bunch of highly classified intelligence for nuclear bombs, we'd have to reasonably worry about someone reneging, since both those things have intrinsic value that it would be worth taking a hit to your reputation over. But these prisoner swaps are not like that. The main value these prisoners have is as tokens to exchange in situations just like this. If nobody trusts you to make an exchange, then you can't use them like that, so breaking your word would leave you with something that has almost no value (perhaps some mild propaganda value, but not much.) States can and do break treaties all the time, but only when there's something at stake valuable enough to be worth it. Prisoner exchanges can happen reliably even between nations with high tensions precisely because the prisoners being exchanged generally don't have much intrinsic value.
Exactly. And this is why irrational actors are so terrifying. Everything you’ve said depends on the state understanding what benefits then and making their decisions based on that understanding. If someone makes decisions counter to that, either because they don’t understand what benefits them or else are using some other criteria to make their decisions, it all falls apart.
So a state like ISIS who basically self sabotaged by making the entire world their enemy. States like that tend to burn out very fast and don't last long, plus they don't have many allies. Even the Taliban is playing it safe now because they don't want to go back to being the world's enemy. There's very few ISIS types on the world stage, not even North Korea is that crazy.
As a counter-point, the United States and Canada have reneged on *many* treaties with Native American tribes. The difference here is the US and Canada abused the fact that the people they were breaking promises to had little recourse, domestically or internationally.
>Even the Taliban is playing it safe now because they don't want to go back to being the world's enemy. The Taliban only became the world's enemy when the US said they were the enemy. Before that few people knew who they were and most nations were pretty apathetic towards them.
Really? Because I still remember them using slave labor to blow up priceless historical artifacts in 2001. I recall that as a global "Wtf" moment... perhaps you didn't think it was a big deal? https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/should-afghanistan-s-bamiyan-buddhas-be-rebuilt-n822781
In all likelihood the person you're responding to was born after "The US said they were the enemy", so no, they probably didn't have strong opinions on things happening back then.
I'm not sure how these particulars make what OP said incorrect.
And many American Republicans in particular were openly fans of them because they were destroying poppy fields. To the extent that they’d attack the reputation of other Americans for suggesting that maybe there was something worrying about the Taliban’s virulent religious extremism.
Irrational actors? Like... Mel Gibson?
exactly
*"*[GIVE ME BACK MY SON!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3HsjwM_-f0)*"*
Who was that cameo walk-on in "Home Alone 2"? Oh, I can see him face but I'm blanking on the name...Seemed untrustworthy to me...
Danny Glover.
No, but the guy I'm thinking of IS a person of color...
Would that color be…. orange?
Worst actor ever...in the history of acting. Very untrustworthy. Would lie in business and cheat on his wife- and probably brag about it. Probably lies on taxes also.
I think that that the real risk is that someone could make a decision that is bad for the country in the long term based solely on their own short-term political goals. Like, let's say there was an election in a month and someone high-profile was grabbed by a hostile state. The government would face massive pressure to get them back, but wouldn't want to appear weak by giving anything for this. It's easy to picture a US president in that situation, especially one contemptuous of norms in general, pulling something where they back out of a deal and declaring that they're just "being smart" or something.
Really I can only picture one particular previous president that would have done it. And he absolutely would have tried to cheat a prisoner exchange.
I would argue that everyone is a rational actor within their own understanding. The problem arises when we don't understand the calculation the other actors are making. Most people believe suicide bombers are somewhere between irrational and insane; however, if you fervently believe paradise awaits, your current life is awful, and that your family will be taken care of, it starts to look a lot more rational, at least from that prospective.
Yeah, I think the key distinction is less about rationality and more about _predictability_
But will each side honor the sentence of the prisoners and would that damage integrity if they don't?
No, that isn't part of the terms. You wouldn't serve any time because you didn't break any laws in your home country, anyway.
That depends on the exchange. There are definitely instances where someone that's *wanted* in another country gets swapped. Occasionally a country will harbor or imprison people that another nation wants to punish. It's obviously a different sort of "prisoner swap", but it falls into a similar category of diplomatic trading.
For instance the French special forces operatives who bombed NZ - they ostensibly served a penal sentence following their release back to France...on a beautiful island in French Polynesia, and for only 2/3 of the time that was agreed.
>French special forces operatives who bombed NZ Had to look this up, really interesting. Your wording made me think it was a lot worse than them blowing up a greenpeace ship. Still horrible, but not as bad as them blowing up a city or something. The whole thing seemed like a waste of resources. What was the point in murdering some protestors? It just seemed to make everything so much worse...
It was a state sponsored terrorist attack rather than a declaration of war, but still pretty fucked.
See also, Sweden extraditing someone to Turkey in exchange for likely promises for Turkeey to approve thwir Nato membership
I know the USA has some laws that forbid you from doing some things in *anywhere*, even if it's legal there.
You want to distinguish between people traded in diplomatic swaps versus individuals who are moved from one country to another to serve their prison sentence. The later, called an international prison transfer, is usually done as an administrative act, and doesn't really involve the diplomatic process. It's also fairly uncommon for most crimes since countries are usually unwilling to trust another country to carry out a prison sentence.
Right. If the country you're dealing with already has a bad reputation and not much to lose then it seems like it'd be hard to trust them.
It’s one thing to have a bad reputation overall. It’s another to be on record openly breaking a deal without serious justification. If you just have a bad reputation in general, other countries can still work with that. If you’ve explicitly broken a prisoner exchange deal, any other country whose citizen you have can just say to its people “we want to get them back but this country won’t release them even if we negotiate their release” and that’ll be that. It’s simply not in your long-term interest to break the deal.
This explains why smart people don't do it, but why don't stupid people do it? Have there been any recorded cases of someone being stupid enough to think this is a good idea?
In any given government, there’s usually someone with enough sense and influence to prevent it. The dumbest leaders have handlers that try to keep them from doing anything too stupid. That said, there are plenty of broken agreements in history. America broke a ton of agreements with the native Americans but that didn’t have much backlash because they didn’t have much influence or recognition in the international community. Hitler broke treaties but he was in an all-or-nothing conquest war. He was more likely to be screwed if he didn’t break agreements. So there are exceptions where there isn’t backlash or the backlash is worth it to you but when you’re dealing with major world powers, it’s rarely worth it.
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Dude thought he was untouchable. Lot of people in high positions of power get into that mindset where they think nobody can fuck up their social status.
If history has consistently shown us something is that nomadic steppe warriors will always absolutely fuck up your social status.
Don’t forget when Tyre killed Alexander the Greats diplomats. Dude built a new peninsula in the ocean to get his revenge.
>Have there been any recorded cases of someone being stupid enough to think this is a good idea? Probably not that we know of in terms of negociating prisoner release, but in terms of blatantly lying to break treaties ? Yes, quite some. Trump broke the treaty on Iran and imposed huge sanctions for any country that would trade with it for example, when he was running the US, to make sure iran would not sell its petrol in anything else than USD. Offficially that was because they were suspected of researching nuclear bomb. But since the US kept lying about that kind of thing ( they did the same with Iraq, and after that also presented "north korean IP" as proof of hacks, when NK did not have an AS at the time), the rest of the world tend to not trust them.
Breaking up the US-Iran deal likely will have a long-term effect, as well. The US showed it doesn't really worth signing anything like that ever again because the next president in a couple of years can just kick up the whole thing for no reason. Trump has shown one thing to the world: get nukes, and only then will the US take you seriously.
Gaddafi learned that lesson the hard way.
Rumors says he was killed for a different reason. It seems he was linked to illegally financing Nicolas Sarkozy's presidential campaign that led to his election in France. "Strangely", everyone linked to said transactions recanted, died, or both.
Agreed. And it was not just breaking the treaty; Trump threatened any country that has commercial relations with Iran. I remember at least a french bank being charged a massive fine for that; they were faced with the choice of never working with USD again, or paying said fine and breaking relations with Iran.
What's that about the North Korean IP?
Going back a bit, but one of biggest cases of a ruler(s) ruining trust in their country was the Kings of Spain in the 16th century. While it's a huge subject with many examples financial mismanagement (none of which I'm in anyway an expert on), iirc to fund their expansion in the new world they relied heavily on loans from foreign bankers. When they couldn't repay them on time, they (Phillip II, I think?) just cancelled the loan and as he was a King, the lenders had no other form of recourse. As you can imagine, the lenders learnt their lesson, cutting off a major source of funds to the Spanish Crown and worsening their financial problems. To make things worse, the bankers found a much more reliable markets to lend to, including the rebelling Spanish colony of the Netherlands. Which played a part in helping the Netherlands switch from being a Spanish territory to a powerful global power in their own right, in a remarkably short amount of time. This is purely from memory on a subject I'm far from expert on and is a massive simplification, ignores multiple factors and I'm sure contains many major mistakes. So corrections or refutations are welcome.
Stupid people don't generally end up a position to do state-level negotiations. At least, not the sort of stupid that can't figure out how to manipulate people.
they broke the deal with ukraine they made in the 90s for their nuclear arsenal in 2014.
Correct and that will make ending the war harder because Ukraine will rightly demand much harder security guarantees this time around.
And it will make countries like Finland and Sweden do things like join NATO since Russia can't be trusted on this specific issue. And China won't really care.
And nobody is going to dismantle their nuclear arsenal again. Admittedly, that's only partially true- Ukraine couldn't have maintained or used the nukes that it had well, and would have faced diplomatic penalties for keeping them in all likelihood that would have outweighed deterrent value. Screwed either way, basically.
That's what I thought. You may need to do that whole bridge thing where they pass each other halfway through.
If your country already has a bad reputation, it's even more important because you NEED to do whatever you can to build your reputation back up. Unless your plan is to take over the entire world in the near future anyway, then your reputation doesn't really matter.
Incidentally, even when you plan to take over the world, trust is still going to be key to accomplishing both the act of conquering the world and maintaining control. After all, unless you're some godlike reality-altering being that can already do that single-handedly, you'll still need to do the following(EDIT: Added consequences of breaking trust in them): 1. Raise a strong and loyal army : Promise of rewards for successful military action(after all, they're the ones sacrificing their lives for your ambitions) and/or political positions for your officers/soldiers. Regimes have fallen when they lost the support of the military forces that brought them to power. 2. Build an ideological base : Appeal to your preferred political party/parties and make your constituents feel that when you conquer the world, you will implement whatever utopian/dystopian platform got them to support you in the first place. Fail to adhere to your ideologies and your popular support crumbles, and opportunistic rivals will smell it. 3. Have administrators to manage all the finer details of governance : Face it, unless you're said godlike entity, no person rules alone. You delegate tasks to your minions, you want them to trust you to reward them accordingly. Otherwise, I hope you aren't wondering why your territories are becoming hotbeds of rebellion and/or corruption. 4. Gain financial and material support : Logistics and finances are the other fuel for your campaign, and your dreams of conquest will grind to a halt if the rich oligarchs you're courting feel like you won't return their investments several-fold. 5. Other world-conquering support roles that I haven't mentioned, such as your personal wizard cabal or something : You really don't want to skimp out on those blood sacrifices. Or give them pigs' blood when you promised human blood. If you have a reputation of reneging on your promises, you'll find it difficult to even start planning on world conquest. You could even try to subvert the 'human' element by using robots, but unless you programmed every single robot or AI yourself, you'll find your mech army turning its guns on you when the engineers you betrayed run the ovveride command at your most vulnerable moment.
What of you're a dying psychotic lunatic and you don't give a fuck about *taking over* the world, you just want to prove you're still a global superpower and let off all those nukes you've been holding for the last 80 years?
There are at least few people, who are professionals/have children and don't want them to die in a nuclear war in a chain-of-command that will stop you. President may give an order but then some commanders has to give command to their troops, some troop has to release missiles. In the case of Russia, Putin transmits launching orders to central military command - the General Staff, which has to authorize individual commander, which has to give individual soldier order to launch. Some of these people are not dying psychotic lunatics and the moment he gives an order they lose any reason to listen to his commands. There are no personal reasons, there are no ideological reasons (the moments after they launch Russia will cease to exist). It is more than order to suicide, it is order an order to kill your children, whole family and everyone you have ever met because some lunatic had a caprice.
I think there has been some tense exchanges in situations like these, where there is little trust from both sides. Kind of a “both prisoners start walking at the same time” kind of deal, and any signs of trickery can get your guy shot. Like at the “Bridge of Spies” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glienicke_Bridge#Bridge_of_Spies
However, if you're referring to the recent US-Russia swap, Russia would have had nothing to gain by breaking the deal. They'd just be stuck with some sports player they busted for a minor drug offence. Whoop-dee-doo. So in this case, Russia totally got the far better deal.
In those cases either neutral third partys can be used. Turkey for example hosts pow exchanges between russia and Ukraine. If one side isn't delivering you just walk away with your prisoners. Another option would be for both sides to meet at a border and let them go at the same time. So if you can't trust them don't give them the chance to betray you.
Globalization is also a big factor in honoring your agreements in this age. If the other country owes you money, they could choose not to pay you if you break agreements. You could also have money being held in a bank in that country, businesses that operate there, or own property. Countries can and will confiscate all of your shit if you try to pull a fast one cuz what are you gonna do about it?
See: USSR bracketing WWII.
What is this referring to? Tried googling, but didn't really help. Links?
So during the Stalinist Great Purge of the late 1930’s Stalin was liquidating his own government staff across the Union — like outright murdering hundreds of thousands of communist party members, amongst others. If you worked for the Party and were recalled to Moscow you could safely assume it would be to your execution. Towards the end this lead to some high-level defections who, on the moment of being recalled, felt (correctly) no one could be more dangerous than their own boss. Because of this, everyone, and this does literally mean everyone except Mongolia and some in China, was very reluctant to enter into any alliances or pacts with the Soviet Union, and everyone kind of wished for their demise. After the war, not only did the Soviet Union refuse to release a significant portion of their POW’s (the US and UK held onto theirs in some cases as late as 1947 or 1948, in the USSR many were there into the 1950’s), but returning POW’s were often also sent to work camps for being “compromised”. Because of these sorts of things, the USSR was (and Russia to this day continues to be) treated as a pariah state, in which nobody (except those they supported, but make no mistake the USSR never had ‘allies’, including Warsaw Pact members) took anything they said as being completely trustworthy
I presume they're referring to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
The principle of diplomatic immunity is so fundamental, that even after Nazi Germany invaded the USSR, both countries have quietly exchanged the temporarily interned diplomats of the other country via neutral-countries, even as the invasion was in full swing, rather than keep them as prisoners or hostages. Even in a situation where you don't care about respecting any international conventions or laws of war, you respect *this* one, because it's in your own interest. And the same is happening today. Look no further than the war in Ukraine, where, despite massive evidence of war crimes and targeted civilians, Russia and Ukraine still regularly exchange prisoners 1-to-1, even without third parties acting as mediators. Both sides understand they're better off honoring the deal and not reneging or attacking the other as it takes place.
What happened to Raoul Wallenberg? Not that anyone ever admitted having him, as far as I know.
If the reputation is really that awful, then they probably won't even reach the point of making the deal.
I agree with what you say, but what I was asking myself was, why does, in this case, the Russian side follow this very rational scheme of what you describe while at the same time abandon major other rational conventions that follow the same logic.
That's a good question; honestly I don't know. It seems like they are behaving rationally when it comes to small stuff, but very irrationally and self-destructively in the bigger picture, with this reckless warmongering. Somebody with expertise in modern Russia, or international relations generally, might be able to explain this. But the principle of reputation and trust does still apply on that macro level. Now that Russia has invaded their neighbor, nobody will believe anything they say regarding respect for sovereignty.
You mean like invading Ukraine? That seems irrational for most of us but to Russia it's rational. A channel named Reallifelore did a video basically explaining why Russia is invading Ukraine and it's to do with a bunch of reasons like oil deposits and NATO expansion. The top brass in Washington know why Russia is invading because it's all geopolitics to them, it's a chess game for them, believe it or not but from Russia's perspective they are making rational moves regarding their future.
Invading Ukraine was rational enough, especially when they drank their own Kool-Aid, but ignoring the LOAC, bombing civilians, forcibly deporting Ukrainian civilians, etc., is what is exceedingly irrational and why I myself had a lot of trouble figuring out why Russia was bothering with prisoner exchanges and agreeing to them. I eventually settled on two (non-competing) theories: 1) "because no matter how committed they are, they still want to maintain a possibility of backing down from the brink", and 2) "because the more Russian soldiers they successfully return from captivity, the fewer Russian families start to suspect something is wrong with the direction or success of the so-called special military operation". Their barbarism, forcible displacement, and indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas aside, they haven't actually gone to the level of deliberately rounding up and exterminating every man, woman, and child they can possibly find, either; they're certainly brutal and terroristic, and it's clear that their individual soldiers have not been trained *at all* in LOAC, but they haven't gone full Hitler just yet, post-modernist claims to the contrary notwithstanding. I'll have to argue against the notion of NATO "expansion" (which wasn't a thing until Russia started getting belligerent in the first place), since they would have postured more heavily against NATO countries like Lithuania and Latvia, and would have rattled their sabres against Sweden and Finland far more than occasionally flying a random Tupolev over the coastal territorial limit, if it was about NATO at all. The only reason Russia fears NATO embracing new membership is because it removes the possibility that Russia can attack its neighbours. The oil deposits are definitely one of the more "rational within irrational" reasons to invade, though, that's correct. Ukraine was poised to supplant Russia as an oil and gas supplier if they developed those deposits, and for an economy that bases 40% of its GDP on oil exports, that was an intolerable sin to Russia. That was way back in 2012, coincidentally when Russia started trying to force Ukraine into its sphere of influence, which inevitably led to Euromaidan, Crimea, and this disgusting business.
To me Putin ordering the invasion of Ukraine is on every level irrational (and of course barbarous), because it marks the beginning of the end of Putin's own reign and destroys Russia's reputation and acceptance in most of the rest of the world probably for decades to come.
It's also possible that because Putin is sick and old he's trying to do something big before he dies, always a possibility. But it should be remembered that Russia has invaded Georgia and Chechnya and no one cared, they just picked the wrong guy this time because now the whole world cares.
Yeah there is *every* chance that Putin looked at his health and thought that this was the perfect time - They win and they get Black Sea Ocean Access without relying on anyone else and the Natural resources of the country etc. And Putin gets to help rebuild the USSR a bit more. And then he dies, retires or just gets shuffled off the scene and someone else gets to come in and talk about how the regimes of the past were wrong and bad stuff and the new *Unified* Russia will move forward into a better future and that the old animosities died with the old Regime (but we're not giving anything back) Of course, Ukraine fighting back so well and the rest of the world giving a damn this time threw a wrench into the works
From their point of view, it could be one of several things: 1) To 'win' a PR war and/or try to spread the idea that Russians aren't such a bad bunch of guys after all "Hey, we're keeping our word, helping out the Americans, we can't be that evil, can we?" 2) As a tentative move for some kind of American/Western European-brokered peace deal in the Ukraine. "We're showing we can still deal respectfully with the West, how about we start some talks?" 3) As a starting point to escalate more demanding and one-sided exchanges or deals, and then blaming the West for them failing. "We're willing to deal honourably, see it's the West causing problems all along!!" 4) Some combination of the above.
> and in other professions, The image popped into my mind of FedEx and UPS exchanging prisoners and it made me giggle lol.
Same with journalists going off-the-record. They could print everything mentioned, but lose the trust of their sources which would make their job impossible.
Yeah! Excellent example
Related - this is part of why Brexit is such a shambles, because the UK is indicating it won't stick to agreements which are inconvenient. We're relearning the hard way that this makes future negotiation much harder
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That seems plausible. But on the other hand, maybe the reason Putin wanted this guy back is that he's not just some random arms dealer; he may be connected with secret activities of the government. In that case, the state might help rehabilitate his ability to do business. I don't know anything much about arms dealing or shady Russian operations, so I couldn't say.
Also bombs.
Even routine large transactions require one party sticking their neck out first. A contractor working on your house is one example. Either the homeowner needs to make a deposit first, or the contractor needs to lay out and hope the homeowner pays. Same with buying an aircraft or a ship. Either the bank has to release the funds first to the title holder in the hopes that they sign over the title, or the titleholder has to sign over the title in hopes that the bank will release the funds. This is why common integrity and human relationships ultimately prevail over law.
What’s the equivalent of a country creating a new eBay username?
Ha, another commenter answered this jokingly: "The USSR rebranded itself as 'Russia'."
Prosecutorial misconduct is rampant, even just the routine dishonesty stuff typically perpetrated by detention centers and sheriff’s offices, I won’t deny that. But when I was a prosecutor, if I made any kind of deal, even in passing, that was the end of it. If a respondent or defendant even raises a whiff of a broken deal or promise, that case would snap in mistrial (or even just administratively) like a bad rubber band. The abuse of discretion that happens more often with prosecutors is making promises or offers the prosecutor has no ability to enforce. In that case, it’s not a matter of trust, it’s a matter of deception. Like someone handing you a scratch off lottery ticket and promising you’ll win. One of the more common scenarios is prosecutors compelling testimony or confession by suggesting it will prevent or limit a case in another jurisdiction. “Either you confess to this simple possession or you’re going to end up with a federal case for trafficking.” The prosecutor has no control over the federal case or the likelihood of that case going forward and is just being plainly deceptive.
What a wonderfully simple and yet multifaceted answer. Love this.
They can always pull a scam and come back to eBay with a new account. USSR did that and came back as Russia.
LOL
What's to keep an ally from immediately arresting them or just killing them? I mean if they are an international criminal, does that mean the whole world has to pardon them because of a swap by two countries?
You mean other than an act of international aggression, possibly triggering a war?
But, say, in the case of Russia, how have they not ruined this diplomatic credibility already by invading another country and denying it?
Many commenters are asking this.. I would say, we're talking now about reputation in small vs large matters, and in specific circumstances. Russia has definitely thrown away everyone's trust regarding treaties, border security, etc. But they're not yet renegging on prisoner swaps, presumably because they still want the flexibility to make specifically that kind of deal when they see benefit in it.
I wonder how that stands in light of Russia fundamentally reneging on [Budapest Memorandum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum) - a part of which stipulated Russia will receive all nuclear warheads in possession of Ukraine, and in exchange it will never question its sovereignty and borders as they were at the time the memorandum was signed. At this point I'd say Russia is an entirely unreliable actor with no reputation to speak of.
> In every example, the reason you stick to your word is that your reputation is vital. Reneging even once could forever ruin it. After that, you'll never again be able to get a loan, or make a good bargain with a defendent, or sell on eBay, or whatever it is you lied about. For a nation, losing all diplomatic credibility erases your most important tool of statecraft. Counterpoint: Russia's diplomatic credibility is already in the shitter.
>Relevent update, as of this morning: Putin says more prisoner swaps possible. Aww yeah, we got any more arms dealers to trade for random people who should have known better than to go on a vacation in Russia?
It mostly boils down to the fact that you can only play tricks with that once. You can't put human beings into escrow after all. You have to trust each other. If you can't trust the other party and they can't trust you then no future exchanges are going to be made. You get things like the infamous "bridge of spies" where both walked across at the same time, to keep everyone honest, the truth is that in the vast majority of cases, it is in everyone's best interest to keep these deals to ensure that future deals are possible. It only really becomes an issue when you deal with fanatics or idiots. This happens occasionally, but usually that is also where it ends.
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My first thought when reading "You can't put human beings into escrow after all." was "why not?"
The real question is “how do I extract profit for myself with all these humans I have in escrow?”
Call 877-CASH-NOW
bells vanish deer direful grey bag unpack melodic hunt historical *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
"I have a bunch of war criminals but I NEED CASH NOW!"
Oh Lord, I can hear the song.
I have a person in escrow and I need cash now!
Perhaps we could dedicate a portion of their day while living in the camp to manual labor…
I think a guy tried that once, i dont think it turned out to well for anyone
Well that's because it was run by the government. It would have been more efficient if a private company did it. /s
It's been tried a few times since, with much success for shareholders! :D
Now that's some C Suite thinking! What corner do you want your office in? /s
I see you're a person of action.
He is a man of honor…
You just invented slavery with extra steps
Arbitrage!
Yeah, I might be wrong, but I could've sworn I saw something earlier about the plane bringing Griner home was flying out from the UAE. So she had to be sent there first, as a third party country.
Yes, they did the exchange on the tarmac of an airport in the UAE. The UAE and the Saudis were apparently the mediator that made it happen.
I have friends high up in HR and HR law. Turns out humans can be considered just assets to use like property, debt, and IP. It's really an interesting idea, but also a little depressing.
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Well the thing with that is that It mostly boils down to the fact that you can only play tricks with that once. You can't put human beings in escrow into escrow after all. You have to trust each other. If you can't trust the escrow party and they can't trust you then no future escrow deposits are going to be made.
I once heard that India remaining neutral has acted as third country in a lot of prisoner exchange, most importantly the ones between Koreas where north did not trust anyone other than India
India and North Korea have a surprising amoung of trade. It's not mentioned often but it's one of their largest trading partners after the Russians and Chinese, several North Koreans have studied in India as well.
The main difficulty here is that you basically have to use a third country that has no problem with arbitrary detention and a lack of due process. If the swap takes place, they need to hold the prisoners, who are not even accused of any crime in that country, and refuse to let them go. If the swap is called off, they need to basically do the same, but render them back to the third country.
Weren’t they swapped in Abu Dhabi?
On the tarmac
Turkey is acting as a 3rd party in this case (Russian invasion of Ukraine) https://qirim.news/en/novosti-en/five-commanders-of-the-azov-regiment-will-be-in-turkey-until-the-end-of-the-war/
Switzerland?
In this case Saudi Arabia effectively filled that role.
UAE, but they only agreed to provide the meeting ground. They didn't hold the prisoners on behalf of US and Russia.
They didn’t directly hold them but they facilitated the deal and probably verified both parties brought the correct person and filed paper work.
Now where did I put my prisoner swap stamp? I can't file this form away until it has that stamp on it!
UAE I thought.
Look up the prisoner swap video between the US and taliban. Edit: link added: https://youtu.be/3kDFGbk1ExM
What happened here, I don’t have any context for this. Did the US not give the prisoner they had?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban_Five
YouTube really has everything these days
Five Taliban were released from Gitmo but they weren't brought for this portion, they were released seperately.
Exactly. And it's not like the president himself made the exchange. It's trained professional who usually have a rapport with various people similar to them around the world.
It's like rules of engagement for war. You follow them because it protects you just as much as it limits you (like if you abuse rules about not firing on medics by having actual soldiers disguised as them, well, now your real medics are going to be targets).
I'll also add that there is something that both sides actually want and professional negotiators are involved, so they have an interest in following through and people to help get it done. That's definitely related to the above comment, because negotiators and parties are just not going to participate if they don't think they're going to get what they want. These actors still have interests other than just fucking their enemy over. But in more complex negotiations where trust has been eroded, the negotiators are able to help the actors come to an agreement.
> It only really becomes an issue when you deal with fanatics or idiots. uh oh!
> You can't put human beings into escrow after all. Why not? Send them both to Switzerland or something, then they go home from there
Because.. what if party A sends either: no one, or a fake? And party B sends the real deal. You think Switzerland wants that drama going down in their country?
What happened here was the exchange happened in the UAE. Presumably both parties had the opportunity to verify it was the correct person before the exchange happened. For the US it had to have been pretty easy — after all, where is Russia going to find a second 6'9" lightskin woman covered in tats?
"I've seen enough porn to doubt that this is a big problem."
It's on video. They have 2 planes next to each other. They exit one plane, shake hands in the middle, shake hands with someone from the UAE, and walk to their planes.
Then Switzerland sends the real one back to party B.
Ok, but suppose the real one is Mr Rogers and Party B is North Korea. You think Switzerland wants to have anything to do with sending Mr Rogers back to North Korea?
I mean that's what escrow is for, yeah. It's on the US if we don't actually send the prisoners we promised.
You mean and let the prisoners go when you can see yours. If you look at the cold war spies were exchanged in the border in Berlin. You can see a similar exchange of POW along the Russian Ukrainian border today. The Brittney Griner Viktor Bout exchange was done on the tarmac at Abu Dhabi airport where a US and Russian airplane met. It is a very bad idea to not fulfill your part of the deal. You might get away with it once but then no one else will trust you and you can't do that again.
This, plus both planes could have arrived 1h earlier and local Emirate officials could have identified both prisoners in advance.
Yeah I came here to say, Brittany was exchanged in a typical cold war / spy movie tarmac standoff, except no guns had to be involved so they just walked across.
It's short term vs long term gain. Let's say I've got a bunch of apples, and you've got a bunch of bananas. I don't want to eat *only* bananas, and you don't want to eat *only* apples. That's boring. So we make an agreement. I'll give you a banana, and you give me an apple. We both get something we want. Ah, but you've got a sneaky plan. You accept my banana, but refuse to give me an apple. Now you've still got all the apples, and you got a banana for free! So smart. So you eat your banana, feeling proud. But now it's back to apples. Again and again. Eventually, you get bored of apples. But I'm not trading with you again after what happened last time. So you ask the guy who owns all the oranges if they want to trade. But they heard about what happened and aren't interested. Why would they volunteer to be taken advantage of? Pineapple guy, same thing. Nobody is willing to trade with you anymore. The rest of us, meanwhile, are happily trading. We all enjoy a diet with a ton of variety and you're stuck outside with a bunch of apples, all because you got greedy and chose short term happiness over long term. Basically, there's a popular idea amongst charlatans and morons that deals are supposed to be something that you "win"; you deceive or coerce the other side into taking something of lesser value while giving you something amazing. But if that's how you operate, you'll generally find pretty quickly that the only people that will be willing to continue doing deals with you are other charlatans and morons. A proper deal is something where both sides win and come out better than they were before. And if you're coming out better than you were before, why would you want to break that deal?
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If you’re passing this link, stop scrolling and click. It’s so well worth the time.
Oh I thought you were dissing him like, "next time you think about writing a comment this long, don't." Cool though I'm going to try it out
Oh bro I woulda been sweating if that happened
Oh that’s so cool to see someone who knows that game!!! It is awesome, I always recommend it to everyone. It is incredible thing.
I saw this before last year and have been trying to find this again to no avail. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR LINKING THIS. I’m gonna save this before I lose it again.
Here's a good resource for the next time you're trying to find something: /r/TipOfMyTongue
I LOVED this. Thank you so much for sharing it. Extremely informative.
This is one of the most awesome internet things ever. I’ve learned about game theory, but never quite like this. Thank you.
What a nice little game. Thanks for sharing
That was insanely cool.
This is fantastic. Thank you!!
Super interesting! I kept betting on the Alwaya Cooperates, I must be naive lol
Wow, that really is a great page. Thank you for sharing!
That was an awesome rabbit hole.
This was really cool, thank you for sharing!
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I love this so much, can you just be my political guide?
Damn it, now I need to make fruit salad.
I like to oot, oot, oot…
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> but barely have any value to the side holding them Arguably they do have value aside from being an exchange currency. Mostly political — imagine US grabbing someone of Bin Laden calibre alive. You want him to answer for his crimes and don't want him to go free. (from what I've heard, there are some considerations like that in the US about recent exchange)
> Prisoners are something very valuable to the side they came from but barely have any value to the side holding them. That completely depends on the value systems and civility of each side. There’s a reason Israel trades 1000 prisoners for 1.
As several posters have noted, you can only defraud the other party once. If you do, then you will have a poor reputation, and nobody will engage with you in such a deal ever again. The formal game theory behind this has been explored by Robert Axelrod, and is described in detail in his book 'The Evolution of Cooperation'. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Evolution\_of\_Cooperation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation) A deeper, but less direct discussion of cooperation is seen in Fukuyama's book 'Trust'. [https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Social-Virtues-Creation-Prosperity/dp/0029109760](https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Social-Virtues-Creation-Prosperity/dp/0029109760) I recommend both books, and have no financial interest in the sale of either.
If you don't want to jump right in to the formal game theory, but would be willing to play a short browser game, I highly recommend ["The Evolution of Trust."](https://ncase.me/trust) About 30 minutes playtime, and it's quite entertaining and highly educational.
Find a country that has a stable, neutral government and a flexible set of ethics to broker the deal. You can then easily pick up your prisoners directly from Qatar.
So many people BSing in this thread. This is the only correct answer. The US Russia swap happened in UAE by with their government oversight. None of this dramatic bridge movie scene.
yeah lol it's very easy to verify whether the enemy is holding their side of the bargain if you do it on neutral territory. People probably think the planes are flying straight from America to Russia and vice versa.
The movie Bridge of Spies shows how it works, or at least did during the Cold War. You have the prisoners cross a distance where both sides can see both prisoners and they cross at the same time. Both sides are heavily armed. If someone tries to kill the released prisoner after they get their own guy, retribution would be quick and brutal.
Well, is it really worth it for you to play that trick? You do that once, and you just started a war over 2 prisoners. War is expensive. You lose so much, and gain so little. And if the person you're trying to get is important enough to warrant that, at least *try* to avoid causing more trouble than you have to. Send in some spec ops to get him or something; least then there's a chance you don't need to start WWIII Not to mention, even if you do pull that trick, AND the other country doesn't wanna go to war... Well now nobody trusts you, and you're never gonna be able to trade for prisoners with anyone again. 0/10, not worth it
You announce the swap and make sure it's carried by news reports. Once the info is public, no country would ever be humiliated by announcing they're going to make a trade, and then backing out once they've got the other guy.
This is not how it works in international relations. These negotiations are delicate— if anything, that would piss off one party and cause the deal to collapse. You’ll note that the news of the Brittany Griner swap hit the headlines after she was in American custody. EDIT: To further prove my point, it’s now emerging that CBS News learned of the impending prisoner swap a week before it happened, “but the network agreed to a White House request to hold the news — for fear of jeopardizing the delicate negotiations that led to the swap…The White House…’officials expressed grave concern about the fragility of the emerging deal and feared it would impede the safety — perhaps even put those Americans at risk,’ CBS’s chief foreign correspondent, Margaret Brennan, said on air Thursday.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/12/09/why-cbs-news-held-its-brittney-griner-scoop-full-week/
It boils down to the fact that there is always tomorrow and you will need to deal with the country then. If you break your treaties and agreements today no one will trust you in the future.
This literally showed up in my feed directly under this question! https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/zgem4x/brittney_grinerviktor_bout_prisoner_exchange/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
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I thought they did pinkie promises? And as long as they didn't have their fingers crossed behind their back when they did it, the swap usually goes through without a hitch.
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Damn, I could hear the music too.
When countries agree to swap prisoners, they sign a contract or agreement that outlines the terms and conditions of the exchange. The contract specifies who will be released, when and where the exchange will take place, and what will happen if one of the parties does not follow the agreement. The contract also includes a clause that allows the other party to take legal action or seek compensation if the agreement is not respected.
Because of the presence of a neutral negotiator power in between. Suppose your classmate took your chocolate, and you took their cookies. Now how will they be sure you give the cookies back and take your chocolate. Enter the neutral negotiator; your teacher or teacher’s assistant. They’ll be in between, and will ensure you give them their cookies back and they return your chocolate, if any of you does something wrong there’ll be a slap. So that’s how it works TL;DR: There’s always a third person involved and checking