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Business News/ Opinion / Online-views/  The devil’s alternative
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The devil’s alternative

The devil’s alternative

Jayachandran/MintPremium

Jayachandran/Mint

On 4 July 1976, 106 Israeli commandos flew 4,000km into Entebbe in Uganda, where Palestinian and German Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) sympathizers were holding Israeli hostages. Within 90 minutes of landing, they killed all seven hijackers and freed all but one of the 103 hostages. For good measure, the commandos also killed 45 Ugandan soldiers who were obstructing them and destroyed 30 aircraft of the Ugandan air force. The raid led by Col Yonatan Netanyahu is considered one of the most daring military operations for its audaciousness, planning and ruthless execution. (Incidentally, Netanyahu was the only fatality among the commandos and was the elder brother of Benjamin Netanyahu, who became Israel’s prime minister.) Operation Thunderbolt as it was known, went a long way in creating the feared reputation of Israeli response to hostage-taking.

Jayachandran/Mint

This seemingly dichotomous behaviour highlights challenges of formulating a textbook “policy" to deal with crises such as hijacking or hostage taking. A potent tool of terror—taking of hostages is actually a psychological weapon. More than the lives of the hostages themselves, it is the seeming helplessness of the authorities which the terrorists seek to exploit. If the authorities stand fast and refuse to succumb, they are viewed as callous and heartless. On the other hand, capitulating to demands paints them as cowardly and spineless and incentivizes other such attempts. It is the ultimate devil’s alternative.

Political leaders often face such “lose-lose" decisions where the objective is to minimize damage, rather than maximize benefits. Winston Churchill, as a newly elected prime minister, faced his devil’s alternative during World War II in the summer of 1940. Hitler’s armies were steamrolling over Europe. Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium had capitulated and France was teetering on the brink. Over 150,000 British troops were still stranded in the continent and the Nazi army was creeping closer each day. The US had still not joined the war and in fact, Joseph Kennedy, the US ambassador to Britain, strongly argued against giving aid to Britain. Britain stood alone against the juggernaut of the Third Reich.

Churchill, Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax huddled for four days to debate an offer of mediation by Mussolini on behalf of Hitler. Churchill finally decided not to negotiate and on 4 June 1940, went out to his nation with his most famous speech “We shall fight on the beaches…we shall never surrender".

Nelson Mandela, on the other hand, was a leader who chose to negotiate. While serving sentence of 20 years for treason, he took the unilateral decision to negotiate with his captors without even consulting his compatriots in jail or the then leader of the African National Congress (ANC)—Oliver Tambo.

In hindsight, both leaders took decisions that were unimaginable at the time. The entire British army was trapped in Dunkirk, and almost all their equipment, tanks and guns had been lost. The US was in no mood to get involved in the continental war and there was a very real threat of capitulation of the island. Hitler seemed to offer immunity to Britain and retention of its colonies as he was focusing on expansion into eastern and southern Europe. And yet Churchill refused to negotiate.

Mandela’s decision to negotiate was equally incredible because of the long history of bitter violence of the anti-apartheid struggle and also especially because Mandela was the founder and the head of the armed wing of ANC which was directly responsible for several terrorist acts, such as the “Church Street Bombing". Nonetheless, he led his party into negotiations over four years and went on to become the president of South Africa and the joint recipient of the Noble Peace Prize along with his predecessor F.W. de Klerk.

Harvard professor Robert Mnookin points out the underlying dilemma of such situations in his aptly titled book Bargaining with the Devil. Negotiating in a lose-lose situation often involves some sacrifice of principle in favour of practicality and decision makers have to, therefore, rely on what is best in the long term rather than the immediate crisis. In the age of terrorism, hostage taking will become a recurring reality.

Perhaps a policy for dealing with it could be found in the rationale that Churchill gave Lord Halifax who was in favour of negotiating with Hitler. Churchill argued that the spirit of British populace was still holding strong. If they learnt that their leadership was forced into negotiations, morale would plummet and if negotiations failed—and there was good chance of that, then as a wartime prime minister; rallying them again would be formidable for him.

In many ways, the policy in such situations should be to allow the leadership on the spot to make choices and appreciate that they may have reasons which only history can judge. For sometimes, leadership is not about making a decision between a right and a wrong—instead it is about choosing between a right and another right.

Raghu Raman is an expert and a commentator on internal security.

Comments are welcome at theirview@livemint.com

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Published: 02 May 2012, 08:25 PM IST
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