A Hostage Situation
It took 444 days. Some of you may remember it well: one full year, plus two months and 19 days. From their capture at the American Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979 to their liberation on January 20, 1981, 52 men and women became the face of America, our individual and collective faces. America had been held hostage by those wishing to both humiliate us and manipulate our political options. Those held captive in Iran were not the only ones whose hands were tied, however. Our beleaguered, one-term President from Georgia seemed at a loss to know what to do. As if to underscore our impotence, he had to inform the nation that his daring rescue mission of April 1980, had failed due to poor coordination, blowing sands and aircraft collisions that took eight American lives. It was a dark moment for all of us.
ABC seized upon our national frustrations by launching its Nightline broadcasts, Ted Koppel reporting on our shared paralysis before we settled into fitful sleep. While our country was being hamstrung by a dictatorial religious cleric in Iran, the former USSR—the empire that former KGB operative Comrade Putin is now trying to restore—sponsored upheavals in Ethiopia, Angola, and Mozambique while launching a major invasion to assist its Soviet allies in neighboring Afghanistan. But more on that later.
I’ve seen enough TV police dramas to know that hostage situations sometimes come to a resolution in the release of captives and punishment of the perpetrators. Such happy endings usually require patience, time, and a slow wearing down of those trying to forcefully exert their will on others. But sometimes hostages are killed or tortured, and whatever the outcome, they pay a high price for the greed or delusion of their assailants.
We are now almost twenty days into what will either be the first of many Putin-directed military reclamations of his beloved Soviet empire or the preliminary engagements about which future historians—if there be any—will write the opening chapters of World War III. So far he hasn’t been able to offer much credible justification for either his aggressive posturing or his military assault on his southern neighbor. But he appears to be holding the strongest hand in this game of global poker that he’s been dealing. For in his hand is a card marked with mushroom clouds, giving everyone in the world some pause in wondering if, or when he might play it. Putin has thus created a global hostage situation. The Ukrainians have the most at stake and the most to lose, their sufferings both unwarranted and inexcusable. But every country with the heart and inclination to support and assist them is a hostage too, whether Ukraine’s near-neighbors in Europe or the democratic peoples beyond the oceans who stand with them. In what is perhaps the ultimate irony, by taking himself and his country out onto a limb—one which may not be able to support the weight of his claims or his designs—he is also a hostage—to his own arrogance and delusional ambitions.
It is hard to look at hostages and see anything but victims. Yet those held against their will often hold cards that frustrate bullies and wear out oppressors. Putin, like Hitler before him, has built his campaign on intimidation and terror to bring about the swift, unchallenged collapse of his opponents. But in Ukraine he is not fighting a war of liberation supported by an underground sympathetic to his designs. He is the interloper, and his armies are fighting on turf that offers them little sympathy or refuge. With each passing day, every rocketed Russian tank, interrupted convoy, severed supply line or unexpected pocket of resistance diminishes Putin’s ability to exert his will on a country with Ukraine’s resources and resolve. And then there is their not-so-secret weapon, President Zelenskyy. Not only hasn’t Putin ever faced such a stalwart, spit-in-your-eye adversary, few of us have seen his likes in recent history either. If he is channeling some of the moxy that inspired Churchill to keep freedom’s light burning against all odds, then Ukraine, and the rest of the world, have good reason to hope, and endure.
It would be one thing if this were a matter of waging yet another conventional war. We’ve certainly had no hesitancy doing this all over the world, from Asia to South America to Africa, from the Mid East to the Indian subcontinent, Central America to Europe. If that were the case today I’m sure our soldiers would be fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with the Ukrainians, other NATO forces and freedom-loving mercenaries from all over the world. But as long as the memory of Hiroshima and Nagaski reminds us what mushroom clouds over Europe would mean, and how quickly the rest of the world would become engulfed in a holocaust from which life on this planet would be forever changed, we have no other recourse but to stand by, at a safe distance, and wisely play the cards we do have. So we exert economic pressure, send money, food, clothing and weapons, and these have an impact. And we offer asylum and helping hands to those displaced in this ruthless and inexcusable assault on a free people. But will these efforts make a significant difference in turning the tide in Putin’s invasion? The Ukrainian resistance is as tenacious as it is courageous. Time will tell if these Eastern-European patriots with whom we so identify will be able to hang on and hold on, forcing a stalemate that might convince even one as obsessed as Putin to cease and desist? My greatest fear, however, is when Putin’s limb begins to crack, he will choose taking down the entire tree, and the entire forest, rather than suffer the ignominy of his own failure and defeat.
Once upon a time JFK played a game of poker with then Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev over missiles he was secretly installing in Cuba, just off our southern coast. For ten days in October, 1962, they stared each other down with warnings and threats, until one of them blinked. JFK negotiated a face-saving treaty with him, but the bottom line was that the missiles were removed, the blockade was ended and the world breathed a sigh of relief. I sense we are at such a moment again, with just as much at stake but with more allies and adversaries in the nuclear club who be drawn in if all hell breaks loose. Bold talk about no-fly zones and NATO jets clearing the skies of Russian planes—are all so easily uttered by those enjoying life in safe havens on the other side of the world. The crown of responsibility weighs heavily on the world’s leaders, including our own, for each human life must be factored into every decision, sanction and counter-measure to Putin’s violence. Nuclear war cannot be one of our options any more than a loaded gun with cocked trigger and pointed at a hostage can be an option in police negotiation. If that is too graphic and close to home, then so be it. World War III will be even more so, for everyone.
In 1981 our hostages came home from Iran. The Reagan-Bush administrations took a more forceful stance towards countries viewed as threats, strengthening the nation’s military arsenal. They also sent military aid to the Afghan rebels fighting a war of attrition against the Soviet invaders who, after a decade in which thousands of their soldiers lost their lives, came to the realization that this was a misguided adventure. If only we had been taking notes! By 1992 the USSR was exhausted, its economy and spirit succumbing to a political death of a 1,000 cuts. General Secretary Gorbachev’s attempts to bring the USSR—then the largest country on the planet (covering 1/6 of the earth’s landscape) with 290 million people representing 100 nationalities—into equivalency with the West, had fallen short of fulfilling his ambitions or realizing their promise. That would be left for others to complete, or for someone named Putin to try to reverse by re-hanging its curtains of lies and iron.
What goes around comes around, or so it often seems. It has certainly proved true for us watching the events in Europe, and it may well become the historical trap that will ultimately prove to be Russia’s undoing in Ukraine as well. That is if we all play our cards right.
