ABOVE: yesterday, Brittney Griner and Viktor Bout crossed paths on an United Arab Emirates airport tarmac in the hours after the United States and Russia agreed to a prisoner swap
9 December 2022 – I am not going to comment on what is or is not acceptable policy for prisoner swaps. When it is beyond spy-for-spy it is a brutal choice. That style of diplomacy is neither within my scope nor expertise. But this was never about the gram of hash oil they found on Brittney Griner. She was caught up in the new geopolitical conflict between Russia and the United States. And I certainly know the geopolitical history and times within which we live.
So I speak within the framework of future risk based on the current and emerging operating environment. With that scope in mind, I’d like to share a bit about Viktor Bout that is not being adequately conveyed in the news cycle.
Bout was indeed the world’s #1 arms trafficker in an era flush with weapons at the collapse of the Soviet Union, but that only begins to tell the story. The Reagan/Thatcher concept of global economic integration via globalization had not fully materialized on a global scale in the black market until Bout came along. His arming of both sides of East African conflicts, support of blood diamond human slavery in West African lands that lacked the ability to laser cut those diamonds, and arming of the Pashtun Talib in their 1994 seizure of Kabul are just the beginning.
Ever wonder why bad guys all over the world use the Soviet AK-47, from Mexican and Colombian Cartels to African warlords, terrorists, and hostile/sanctioned nationstates? Viktor Bout.
Do you think the payment was always in cold hard cash? Ever wonder how human beings (aka human trafficking), weapons, blood diamonds, counterfeit goods, hawala gold/gemstone debt settlements, and drugs became interchangeable commodities on a global underground black market? Viktor Bout played a large part of it.
In the next 6 months, Griner may stay out of the limelight, or go back to playing basketball. U.S. Marine and former cop Paul Whelan will either still be in a Russian cell, dead, or be a free man. As far as what both will be doing, it’s up in the air.
NOTE: Whelan was attending a wedding in Russia in 2018 and then arrested on what the U.S. and his family say are trumped-up espionage charges. The Russians said no swap. On their part, the Russians wanted the release of Vadim Krasikov, a former colonel from Russia’s domestic spy agency who was convicted of murder in Germany last year. It was the murder of a Georgian citizen of Chechen ethnicity in broad daylight in 2019 and German and U.S. intelligence sources said it was a political murder ordered by Russia. Germany said no release. Washington previously secured the release of Trevor Reed, another former marine, via a prisoner swap in April.
Viktor Bout on the other hand, only 9 years removed from the infrastructure of a post-Soviet, Mafia-to-Oligarch state with it’s global networks of hostile criminal, terror, and state connections, will be fully entrenched and engaged with Wagner Group, Russian intelligence and Special Operations. He will likely be renewing his good friendships in Belarus, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, and many others. He will mock the West on the world stage while reconstituting his old networks in real-time for the world to see. This man has a dangerous professional expertise in covert logistics in weapons movement, which he will no doubt employ in the Ukraine conflict. This man’s release didn’t come for free. He’s going back to work.
I’ve seen comments that “It doesn’t matter. Viktor Bout has been out of the loop long enough that someone has displaced him. It would be like someone putting the head of a big cartel in prison for a decade. The moment he leaves the cell, he isn’t going to be the kingpin anymore. Someone else has filled the power vacuum and won’t let him in. The guy selling shit now isn’t going to step aside just because Viktor is out of jail”.
My friends in the intelligence community tell me “it does not work like that. He will be hailed a hero and reintegrated at the highest levels. Despite 9 years in prison, his contacts remain strong”. And apparently he gave nothing away during those 9 years despite relentless interrogation by law enforcement and military intelligence so that is to be rewarded.
The worst part? Adversaries will certainly see a renewed opportunity to conduct Kidnap-for-Ransom (KFR) operations against U.S. citizens traveling abroad. Knowing the U.S. is willing to take the disadvantage in such an unfair exchange it opens a Pandora’s box, incentivizing rogue nations to extort them. What price will the U.S. be willing to pay next time to free an American citizen wrongly held in the future?
There are in these situations, of course, intriguing back-stories. Trading Victor Bout for Brittney Griner might have been the best deal for both Russia and the United States. It just took a little time for each side to realize it. The Biden administration made a version of this framework public about six months ago, offering to trade Bout for Griner and Whelan. But at the time, this deal didn’t appear to gain much traction. So the U.S. upped the ante and began, in recent months, working with its partners to arrest Russians across the world, especially for evading sanctions, taking out the money laundering operations in London used to help finance Russia’s Ukraine operations, etc. The U.S. had to “lean on” its partners globally to convey to the Russians how serious the U.S. was about resolving wrongful detention matters. These things do not get settled by waiting around for the other side to respond to a proposal.
My assumption is there are other elements to the Griner/Bout swap deal. There might be something entirely secret that we don’t know and won’t know, something that it would be both in Russia’s and the US’s interests to keep behind closed doors. After all, that’s how the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved, through quiet diplomacy and other promises, a complete picture of which wasn’t clear until years later.
It’s possible that both sides walked up to the ledge of breaking diplomatic ties and realized they’re not quite ready to throw that relationship away, even if its conditions have been severely hampered by Russia’s brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine. Crucially, the US has not had an ambassador in Russia since September. Biden has nominated career diplomat Lynne Tracy, and she awaits Senate confirmation. But at a certain point, if Russia doesn’t allow her to take up that diplomatic posting at the Moscow embassy, the U.S. would consider kicking out Russia’s ambassador to the US. These things are reciprocal.
But it is a brutal, monstrous world out there. And the screams of “Break diplomatic relations with Russia over Ukraine!” are naive. The only way to protect U.S. citizens in the world is to have diplomatic engagement. It doesn’t necessarily directly contribute to American efforts to bolster Ukrainian defense, and the White House reiterated yesterday that it wouldn’t broach broader negotiations with Russia (that is, talks on the war) without involving key partners (like Ukraine). But it does show how diplomats can work toward U.S. citizen protection – and twist some arms to get it done. This is Realpolitik.
More interesting is another takeaway: middle powers will continue to play an outsized role in the era of increased tensions between great powers with nuclear weapons. The United Arab Emirates, the country where Griner and Bout were swapped, has been a close partner of the U.S. and home to many fleeing Russians. These countries that haven’t picked a side will remain powerful interlocutors.
And one of the broader lessons from the Griner incident is that it’s simply not safe for Americans to visit Russia right now, as the U.S. State Department has repeatedly said in its warnings. And frankly I’d be damn careful in many other parts of the world.
Bottom line: it’s just a raw deal for America. Despite my reluctance to not opine on what is acceptable, to compare these two people is an exercise in brain futility. One played basketball and one was a terrorist threat to the entire world. One entertained on a basketball court, the other killed a massive amounts of lives, including American lives – basically a mass/serial killer. One will eventually go back to the basketball court, the other to killing.
But that’s the trade-off trajectory we’re on in so many other avenues of present geopolitical life so perhaps no surprise.