eli5 When countries swap prisoners how are they sure the other country will actually do it?
In: 4538
You mean and let the prisoners go when you can see yours.
If you look at the cold war spies were exchanged in the border in Berlin. You can see a similar exchange of POW along the Russian Ukrainian border today.
The Brittney Griner Viktor Bout exchange was done on the tarmac at Abu Dhabi airport where a US and Russian airplane met.
It is a very bad idea to not fulfill your part of the deal. You might get away with it once but then no one else will trust you and you can’t do that again.
It mostly boils down to the fact that you can only play tricks with that once.
You can’t put human beings into escrow after all. You have to trust each other. If you can’t trust the other party and they can’t trust you then no future exchanges are going to be made.
You get things like the infamous “bridge of spies” where both walked across at the same time, to keep everyone honest, the truth is that in the vast majority of cases, it is in everyone’s best interest to keep these deals to ensure that future deals are possible.
It only really becomes an issue when you deal with fanatics or idiots. This happens occasionally, but usually that is also where it ends.
The movie Bridge of Spies shows how it works, or at least did during the Cold War.
You have the prisoners cross a distance where both sides can see both prisoners and they cross at the same time.
Both sides are heavily armed. If someone tries to kill the released prisoner after they get their own guy, retribution would be quick and brutal.
It’s short term vs long term gain.
Let’s say I’ve got a bunch of apples, and you’ve got a bunch of bananas.
I don’t want to eat *only* bananas, and you don’t want to eat *only* apples. That’s boring.
So we make an agreement. I’ll give you a banana, and you give me an apple. We both get something we want.
Ah, but you’ve got a sneaky plan. You accept my banana, but refuse to give me an apple. Now you’ve still got all the apples, and you got a banana for free! So smart.
So you eat your banana, feeling proud. But now it’s back to apples. Again and again. Eventually, you get bored of apples. But I’m not trading with you again after what happened last time.
So you ask the guy who owns all the oranges if they want to trade. But they heard about what happened and aren’t interested. Why would they volunteer to be taken advantage of? Pineapple guy, same thing. Nobody is willing to trade with you anymore.
The rest of us, meanwhile, are happily trading. We all enjoy a diet with a ton of variety and you’re stuck outside with a bunch of apples, all because you got greedy and chose short term happiness over long term.
Basically, there’s a popular idea amongst charlatans and morons that deals are supposed to be something that you “win”; you deceive or coerce the other side into taking something of lesser value while giving you something amazing. But if that’s how you operate, you’ll generally find pretty quickly that the only people that will be willing to continue doing deals with you are other charlatans and morons.
A proper deal is something where both sides win and come out better than they were before. And if you’re coming out better than you were before, why would you want to break that deal?
You announce the swap and make sure it’s carried by news reports. Once the info is public, no country would ever be humiliated by announcing they’re going to make a trade, and then backing out once they’ve got the other guy.
Well, is it really worth it for you to play that trick? You do that once, and you just started a war over 2 prisoners.
War is expensive. You lose so much, and gain so little. And if the person you’re trying to get is important enough to warrant that, at least *try* to avoid causing more trouble than you have to. Send in some spec ops to get him or something; least then there’s a chance you don’t need to start WWIII
Not to mention, even if you do pull that trick, AND the other country doesn’t wanna go to war… Well now nobody trusts you, and you’re never gonna be able to trade for prisoners with anyone again.
0/10, not worth it
As several posters have noted, you can only defraud the other party once. If you do, then you will have a poor reputation, and nobody will engage with you in such a deal ever again.
The formal game theory behind this has been explored by Robert Axelrod, and is described in detail in his book ‘The Evolution of Cooperation’.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation)
A deeper, but less direct discussion of cooperation is seen in Fukuyama’s book ‘Trust’.
[https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Social-Virtues-Creation-Prosperity/dp/0029109760](https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Social-Virtues-Creation-Prosperity/dp/0029109760)
I recommend both books, and have no financial interest in the sale of either.
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There are all kinds of situations like this, in diplomacy and in other professions, where it’d technically be easy to renege on your word. Prosecutors making deals, retailers promising rebates, sellers on eBay, consumers taking out credit or loans, etc, etc.
In every example, the reason you stick to your word is that your reputation is vital. Reneging even once could forever ruin it. After that, you’ll never again be able to get a loan, or make a good bargain with a defendent, or sell on eBay, or whatever it is you lied about. For a nation, losing all diplomatic credibility erases your most important tool of statecraft.
Relevent update, as of this morning: [Putin says more prisoner swaps possible.](https://politicalwire.com/2022/12/09/putin-says-more-prisoner-swaps-possible/)
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