It was a difficult judgment call.
Many of the world's responsible actors, including Ukraine's President Zelensky, have called for labeling Vladimir Putin's Russia a terrorist state— because it is a terrorist state. Its barbaric acts against Ukrainian citizens decided that diplomatic question long ago. The Biden administration, however, refused to go along with such international demands.
If it had declared Russia a terrorist state, the White House would never have been able to negotiate the release of the American basketball star, Brittney Griner. (AP photo: Griner's wife, Cherelle, at WH announcement.) The administration would have been accused of negotiating with terrorists — an intolerable foreign policy calamity suffered, for instance, by the Reagan administration in its arms deal with Iran.
Although the question of whether Putin's Russia is a terrorist state has been answered conclusively, what remained to be decided by President Biden was the wisdom of following through. I once sided with the world's Zelenskys, while conceding the immensely painful downside of doing so, such as Griner's continued captivity by Putin in the world's most hellish conditions.
She had been transfered to a female penal colony by the name of IK-2, founded in 1931 as part of Stalin's Gulag system. A 2017 article by the Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets reported on the prison's "widespread torture, harsh beatings and slave labor conditions," related The NY Times. "Inmates often work from 7 a.m. until midnight or later and are not allowed to use a washroom."
And so Russia is as much of a terrorist state inside its borders as outside. Nevertheless, Biden refused to declare it so, thus pernitting his administration to keep diplomatic channels open with Putin. A wrenching judgment call, but at least in Ms. Griner's case, it paid off.
Not so, not yet at least, for another wrongly held American, Paul Whelan. Notwithstanding "ceaseless efforts" by U.S. diplomats to secure his release as well, Russian officials have said nyet. And so, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, "Paul Whelan and his family continue to suffer needlessly."
Was the Biden administration's refusal to propoerly label Russia a terrorist state the right call? Was Griner's exchange for Viktor Bout, the arms-dealing "Merchant of Death," an ethical trade? Is it conscionable to allow Putin to exploit Bout's return as a means to distract Russians from his disastous war in Ukraine?
It's a tough call, all of it. What we do know is that Ms. Griner is, at long last, blessedly on her way home.