Hostage-taking by nation-states is emerging as an overlooked consequence of the more unstable and dangerous world that’s been created by the fracturing rules-based order.

In an increasingly might-is-right system of international relations, malign actors have become even more emboldened to take the citizens of Western democracies hostage.

Once primarily the domain of non-state actors, including terror groups, drug cartels and armed gangs, hostage-taking has become a lucrative bargaining chip in the hands of countries like Iran, Russia, China, North Korea and Venezuela. (I was imprisoned by Iran for more than two years on false charges of espionage.)

It has become an unorthodox yet highly effective means of forcing concessions, including prisoner swaps, financial payments and the removal of sanctions.

The unfortunate truth is that hostage diplomacy works, and there is usually a lot to gain and not much to lose for the countries that practice it.

However, very little scholarly research has examined the phenomenon. The data we do have on cases is patchy. This is in part because the governments whose citizens have been taken hostage usually prefer to negotiate in the shadows. We only tend to hear about select cases that attract media coverage.

Part of the challenge in proposing ways to tackle an amorphous problem like state hostage-taking is that, while out-of-the-box thinking is required, some approaches may not be feasible or may not work at all. We shouldn’t shy away from this.

Treating state hostage-taking as a consular issue to be solved via traditional diplomacy hasn’t worked. Bad actors haven’t been deterred; rather the opposite. An innovative new approach is long overdue.

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