Do European Nations that Pay Kidnappers Undermine the U.S.?

"Kidnapping hostages is an easy spoil," one al-Qaeda leader wrote to another in 2012, marveling over the amount of money terrorist groups can extort from the West with little effort.

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Indeed, al-Qaeda and its franchises have taken in more than $125 million in ransom since 2008, according to an estimate by The New York Times, including $66 million in the last year alone. The money makes terror groups bigger and more difficult to defeat — and more likely to take additional hostages.

This lesson is coming into acute focus at a time when the U.S. is confronting a vicious terror group, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. ISIS has now killed two kidnapped American journalists, James Foley and Steven Sotloff. The al-Qaeda offshoot is believed to hold at least one more American and is demanding $6.6 million in ransom.

What to do? The story of the Somali pirates is instructive. When pirates were first seizing ships off the East African coast, ship owners treated ransom payments as a cost of doing business. But that just encouraged more piracy. Eventually, owners began hardening their vessels and putting armed teams onboard to fight back. The number of hijacked ships fell dramatically.

When paying ransom is the only policy, you'll just pay more of it, enriching and strengthening the kidnappers. What works is refusing to pay. This can seem outrageously callous, but there's evidence that it can reduce the number of kidnappings as long as the target nations stick together.

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That's not happening. The U.S. and British governments refuse to pay, but France, Switzerland, Spain and other European nations make payments or arrange for them to be made, while claiming not to do so. This makes kidnapping a profit center.

The cost of U.S. policy is easy to see: the horrific beheadings of Foley and Sotloff by a masked ISIS thug. The benefits are less visible: fewer hostages taken and less funding for terrorist groups.

Read the rest of the editorial HERE.

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