If this trajectory continues, hostage diplomacy will not remain an aberration. It will become part of the operating logic of a more transactional and more coercive international order.
Documents: 📂 Source Document
Hostage Diplomacy
The return of Coercion in International Relations
Key Insights
Why are foreign nationals increasingly detained not as criminals, but as leverage? Hostage diplomacy endures because it delivers strategic returns often enough to make repetition rational in a fragmented international system. What is taking shape is not simple disorder, but a harder political landscape in which human vulnerability itself becomes a currency of negotiation.
Cite this brief
Crespi, E. (2026). Hostage Diplomacy. EPIS Insight · International Relations & Diplomacy.