r/IntlScholars

archive link:

https://archive.is/bjRnJ

Excerpts:

He hadn’t set foot outside the United States since he was 12, when he arrived on a fishing boat as part of the 1980 Mariel boatlift from Cuba with his mother, a sister and her infant daughter. As a teenager, he joined a Miami gang, and in his 20s, he took a plea deal after being charged with attempted murder for shooting a rival gangster in the leg. That would have been grounds to deport him had he been from almost any other country. But Cuba wasn’t cooperating with the United States on deportations, so Mosquera was allowed to stay, provided he checked in with the authorities each year. He built a new life for himself, becoming a specialty plumber and a born-again Christian; he married and had four daughters.

Then one day in June of last year, Mosquera, who is 59, went to renew his work permit at an immigration office. The appointment was usually short; Mosquera had borrowed the company truck so that he could head to a job when he was done. But it didn’t turn out that way. An immigration official told him that his time in America was up. With President Trump now back in office, Mosquera knew these were not empty words. But if the United States couldn’t send him to Cuba, where would he go?

They were transferred to a military cargo plane at a U.S. air base in the East African nation Djibouti, and more than a day later, the five men landed in Eswatini. Before they could make sense of the situation, they were forced inside a metal cage that was fitted onto a transport truck and driven to the Matsapha Correctional Complex, Eswatini’s maximum-security prison. In a post on X, the Department of Homeland Security had called Mosquera and the four other men “depraved monsters” who were “so uniquely barbaric their home countries refuse to take them back.” Now they were met by dozens of guards wielding large sticks.

That was more than a year ago. Mosquera still sits in that same maximum-security prison with nowhere to go. No charges against him. No way to appeal his predicament. No sign that he will ever be freed. Cuba has not signaled any willingness to take him, and Mosquera says he has no desire to go there. Eswatini will not release him from prison, even though he served his time in the United States and committed no crime in Africa.

Mosquera is one of a growing number of people whom the Trump administration has put into a global administrative limbo. For more than a year, it has been offering millions of dollars — often without disclosing the payments — to foreign governments to take immigrants the United States was having trouble deporting to their countries of origin. This includes not only people with criminal pasts like Mosquera but also deportees who were under court protections not to be returned to their homelands because they faced threats there.

Excerpts:

May the United States take a person who is living freely under American supervision and deliberately transfer him into potentially indefinite foreign maximum-security confinement, without a new judicial determination authorizing that deprivation of liberty?

It is in the selfish interest of the United States to send people away with as much goodwill toward the United States as circumstances permit.

Why are we paying to imprison a plumber when we could be helping put the plumber back to work?

Excerpt:

Strategically, I believe we are in the most perilous hour of the modern era, and it is peril of our own president’s making. Donald Trump’s real National Security Strategy has been to get revenge against countries that criticize him, to advance his own self interests, and to build bridges to dictators with whom he can work once he leaves office. The great dealmaker has sold us out to the most dangerous nations on earth.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraine-cannot-defeat-putins-ballistic-blitz-by-defensive-measures-alone/

Excerpts:

The recent surge in missile attacks comes as Ukraine runs short of air defense ammunition, leaving the country virtually defenseless against the Kremlin’s ballistic blitz. Russian President Vladimir Putin clearly aims to exploit Ukraine’s vulnerability and bomb the country into submission.

Ukraine’s only effective protection against Russian ballistic missiles is the US-made Patriot air defense system. However, the country’s Patriot interceptor missile stocks have now been almost entirely depleted, while Kyiv’s efforts to secure fresh supplies are currently failing.

Possibilities:

The situation is increasingly dire. Some measures that could reduce the destruction and, above all, protect civilian lives:

• Move civilian life underground. Rapidly expand permanent underground shelters into usable living areas, schools, clinics, communications centers, and other essential services.

• Harden and disperse civilian infrastructure. Protect and duplicate power, water, heating, communications, hospitals, and emergency services so that individual strikes do less harm.

• Create extensive decoy or "ghost" targets. Give Russian targeting systems large numbers of convincing false military, industrial, radar, storage, and infrastructure targets on which to waste expensive missiles.

• Confuse missile targeting and guidance. Use electronic warfare, camouflage, obscuration, decoys, altered visual signatures, relocation, and other defensive deception so that even missiles penetrating air defenses are increasingly likely to strike the wrong place.

• Move essential production underground or disperse it. Defense production, repair facilities, ammunition storage, and communications should become progressively harder to locate and destroy.

• Expand direct European defense of Ukrainian airspace. European fighters could intercept drones and cruise missiles, while European ground-based systems help defend against more difficult threats.

• Reserve scarce Patriot-class interceptors for ballistic missiles. Use aircraft, electronic warfare, guns, and less expensive systems against drones and cruise missiles whenever possible.

• Find and destroy ballistic missiles before launch. Concentrate allied satellite, airborne, signals, and Ukrainian reconnaissance capabilities on launchers, missile concentrations, storage, and supporting infrastructure.

• Target the vulnerabilities of the North Korean missile supply. Imported missiles, their limited launchers, transport routes, storage, support equipment, and personnel may be more vulnerable before they disperse.

• Deny Russian forces advanced communications while preserving Ukrainian access. Systems such as Starlink should remain unavailable to Russian forces while authenticated Ukrainian military use is protected and, where possible, expanded.

• Deny Russia access to foreign satellite technology and services, civilian as well as military. Suspend commercial satellite communications, imagery, navigation support, terminals, components, technical services, and related foreign-provided capabilities available inside Russia. Close third-country channels used to circumvent these restrictions. This would constitute a major technological sanction intended to increase the economic and operational cost of continuing the war.

• Reduce future Russian missile production. Tighten restrictions on electronics, machine tools, guidance components, and third-country supply routes supporting missile manufacture.

The central principle should be simple: protect the people first, make real targets harder to destroy, create many false targets, confuse enemy targeting, destroy missiles before they fly, and intercept what remains.

Gifted Read:

https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/08/shortage-weapons-shaping-war-iran/688201/?gift=9raHaW-OKg2bN8oaIFlCoqFny3RfN3D6aJA2m_zuDq0&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Excerpts:

The U.S. raced to develop cheaper ways to tackle the Iranian-supplied drones that Russia deployed, and has made some progress. But the stores of interceptors such as Patriots and THAADs were rapidly expended. “There are no good alternatives for stopping ballistic missiles,” .... “Without these defensive missiles, attacking missiles will land unopposed. That is what is happening in Ukraine.”

Before Russia’s invasion, the U.S. produced roughly 300 Patriot missiles a year, half of which went to allies. Production has since doubled, but badly trails wartime demand.

Had the Iran war been over in a matter of several weeks, as the administration initially predicted, the U.S. munitions problem would not be so dire. “The real problem is that there is no long-term strategy—and we can’t plan around that.”

Excellent visualization of a very disturbing global reality.

Exclusive: Analysis shows 55% of accounts were located overseas – and seven of 12 most-read posts came from US

More than half the accounts that posted on Elon Musk’s X about the rioting in Belfast and the civil disorder in Southampton in June were based outside the UK, an analysis by the Guardian can reveal.

Of the 8,672 accounts whose combined posts about the events exceeded 1,000 views, just 45.3% were shown as from the UK, according to the social media platform’s own location function.

One in six (16.8%) came from the US, 4.5% from Ireland, and about a quarter from all European countries other than the UK.

Seven of the 12 most-read tweets about Belfast and Southampton came from the US – including one from Musk himself and two other US “alt-right” commentators – while an eighth was linked to North America.

The analysis underlines that US rightwing actors are seeking to influence the UK and boost their position on X in moments of disorder – an exploitation of flashpoint events that has only intermittently attracted political attention in Britain.

Nearly a third of all 43,000 posts on X relating to the two incidents contained racist or anti-immigration comments. Almost one in 10 relating to Belfast contained calls for violence or paramilitary or vigilante action.

Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, said the data demonstrated that X had become “a weapon of choice” for hostile foreign actors seeking to manipulate shocking and divisive content.

Read more…