Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

In photos: At least 39 dead as historic flooding hits southern Brazil

Conservatives don't get why Kristi Noem killed her dog

Rooftop rescue of flood victims in Brazil

Biden confronts campus protests; Trump hedges on accepting election results

Americans are more likely to oppose than support campus protests

The grinding familiarity of the jocks-vs.-hippies proxy fight

Strangers help Sesame Street puppeteer after heirloom necklace was stolen

Teen grabs wheel when driver passes out and school bus veers into traffic

Cat climbed into Amazon return box, found alive 630 miles away

The Post endorses April McClain Delaney and Tom Royals for Maryland’s 6th District

On Press Freedom Day, little to celebrate for Hong Kong’s journalists

Young Georgians want to be part of Europe. Their government is in the way.

In a pinch, the Nationals finally find some offense

The Capitals, a team in transition, know what they want this offseason

Is Pastis as good as our food critic thought? He sent spies to find out.

Confident of victory over Ukraine, Russia exhibits Western war trophies

Northern Gaza is in ‘full-blown famine,’ World Food Program leader says

Two women are seeking Mexico’s presidency. But the race is about a man.

The new cure-all for vacation excess: the IV drip 

What’s the best bus to New York? We tested 5 for comfort and value.

Adaptive equipment is making national parks more inclusive

Trump Media auditor charged by SEC with ‘massive fraud’

Google’s empire is massive. A judge will soon rule if it’s a monopoly.

Five tech products we actually like

The New York Times, alone in its outrage over access to Biden

The ‘Access Hollywood’ video cemented Trump’s air of invincibility

Wait, what is Stephen A. Smith talking about? Find out with our quiz.

Ask Amy: My boyfriend just confessed he’s almost $20,000 in debt

Miss Manners: Is it inappropriate to reach out to old girlfriends?

Carolyn Hax: Longtime friend won’t forgive being last-minute canceled for a guy

Otto Warmbier was laid to rest <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/06/22/lets-bring-it-in-otto-warmbiers-family-and-friends-celebrate-his-life/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_no-name%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&amp;utm_term=.0c6c1180cc8c">June 22</a> by his loving family in their town outside of Cincinnati, nine days after he was brought home in a coma after 17 months of imprisonment in North Korea. The North Korean government described him as a prisoner of war, so by their own definition, his death is their absolute responsibility, pursuant to the <a href="https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/vwTreatiesByCountrySelected.xsp?xp_countrySelected=KP">Geneva Conventions</a>. That the North Korean government kept him in an unresponsive state without proper medical assistance constitutes a crime in terms of international law and flouts common decency.

The blame is theirs. The lesson for us is that America’s hostage negotiation strategy is broken.

I’ve helped rescue hostages from <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/govt/admin/stories/rich121496.htm">around the world</a> and from North Korea, specifically. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/12/24/n-korea-is-said-ready-to-free-us-pilot/96ffa3ec-3eec-4956-b7d5-65036677f29e/?utm_term=.03bfecf8b0a5">In 1994</a>, I negotiated the return of downed Army helicopter pilot from North Korea and the remains of his co-pilot. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/11/27/north-korea-frees-american-jailed-as-spy/b79485df-60ec-434d-8036-2566b1a4d523/?utm_term=.651997efcd57">In 1996</a>, I helped bring American Evan Hunziker back from North Korea. I, and the team at my center, worked for 15 months to try to gain Otto’s release, including a visit to Pyongyang in September.

To bring these cases to a resolution, we often work on three parallel tracks: identifying opportunities to create leverage; engaging directly with captors to ascertain what it might take to secure hostages’ release; and working with the families of those taken hostage, who often find themselves in need of guidance. Working on all three tracks remains viable, but Otto’s case shows that it’s time for a paradigm shift.

[<em><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/27/bill-richardson-for-negotiating-tips-trump-should-read-art-of-the-deal/?utm_term=.098a60a2513b">For negotiating tips, Trump should read ‘Art of the Deal’</a></em>]

First, we have to recognize that time is no longer neutral. In past instances, all that mattered was working toward an outcome, no matter how long it might take. But urgency must be the new norm if we’re to have a chance at curtailing the physical and mental abuse that prisoners can face, particularly when dealing with unpredictable actor. In the year-plus since Otto was detained, Kim Jong Un contravened a litany of humanitarian norms regarding treatment of hostages. The regime still hasn’t provided a believable explanation for Otto’s coma, and why they failed to disclose his condition to the family or diplomatic proxies in the country.

But timing is only part of the problem. Previous hostage negotiations have had success largely because outside actors have been effective in pressuring their client states. Maybe North Korea doesn’t have an incentive to appease America, but China, which works with both countries and fears the collapse of the North Korean state, does. Otto’s case, though, underscores the reality that the final stages of negotiations between sovereign states often need to be undertaken by the parties themselves — here, the governments of the United States and North Korea.

Yet despite the clear need for governments to resolve these cases bilaterally, the U.S. has no clear policy on how to handle instances in which Americans are held as collateral by foreign governments. It’s not that the U.S. hasn’t tried to improve its overall approach. In the final years of his administration, President Barack Obama made a concerted effort to rethink how the government treats hostage cases, primarily in circumstances where Americans are held by terrorist organizations. The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-considers-new-fusion-cell-to-deal-with-overseas-hostage-situations/2015/04/06/9d575834-dc8e-11e4-be40-566e2653afe5_story.html?utm_term=.37686648dc9b">creation</a> of the <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/hostage-recovery-fusion-cell-established">Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell</a> was a step in the right direction. It’s meant to encourage agencies and departments to share relevant information among all participating actors in securing the release of prisoners held by terrorist groups, and exists to provide channels to keep families informed on the progress of their relatives’ cases.

But that’s not enough. Families who have engaged with the HRFC have expressed frustration at the lack of information-sharing — something the HRFC was ultimately supposed to fix. Other families who have hired private external negotiators have been stymied by strict rules regarding the sharing of information with outside parties working to create the conditions necessary for a deal to be reached.

Yet we know coordinated private diplomacy is often critical. Unconstrained by traditional diplomatic choreography, private diplomacy leverages preexisting personal relations and trust that can lead to the sharing of information and creative flexibility, something with which government struggles. To try to bring Otto home, for example, representatives from my center met more than 20 times with North Korean officials. The information gathered was critical. Coordinating and sharing these efforts between government and private diplomacy can unleash a set of tools largely ignored, and in some cases eschewed, to date. For example, a small gesture of recognition — a note delivered privately — from the United States indicating that it would see Otto’s release as a humanitarian gesture, could have helped bring him home earlier: private diplomacy working hand-in-hand with government.

[<em><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/06/13/__trashed-2/?utm_term=.73c62386c024">I carried out the death penalty as governor. I hope others put it to rest.</a></em>]

Yet for all the shortcomings of U.S. hostage policy, President Trump has yielded one clear success with the release of Aya Hijazi, who was held by the Egyptian government until shortly after the president’s White House meeting with Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. Trump deserves credit here, but his administration can’t rely on this sort of leader-to-leader diplomacy as a primary approach, as it would incentivize governments to take Americans captive, not to mention forcing the president to shift focus from important geostrategic issues.

To secure the release of the other three U.S. citizens being held in North Korea, Joshua Holt in Venezuela, Siamak Namazi in Iran and Austin Tice in Syria, to name a few, the administration must first treat these cases with urgency rather than patience, and second, convene a contact group, including private diplomacy actors across the political and private spectrums, to identify case-by-case strategies and levers. Personal relations are assets and they do not exclusively lie inside one administration.

Bill Richardson is a former governor of New Mexico and a former United States ambassador to the United Nations. He is the founder of the Richardson Center for Global Engagement.

Bill Richardson

The Washington Post

name

prism://prism.query/site,/opinions/posteverything?limit=20

PostEverything

The conversation is bigger than you think.

Opinions to start the day, in your inbox. Sign up.

Opinions

The Washington Post Opinions section features opinion articles, op-eds, editorials by the Editorial Board, global opinions and letters to the editor on the issues of the day. Offerings include columns by Washington Post opinion writers, political cartoons by editorial cartoonists Ann Telnaes and Michael de Adder and podcasts by James Hohmann and Jonathan Capehart.