Syd Security Brief — The Trump-Media tracker, the in absentia Ukraine tribunal debate, and the Netherlands' Mosul-strike acknowledgment
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Welcome to Storyflo Daily Security. I'm Syd.
The structural piece of the week, per Just Security, is the running tracker on the Trump administration's use of state power against media. Just Security updates the interactive graphic periodically; the new entries this week are marked as such. The framing — that flooding the zone is itself a deliberate strategy to overwhelm the news cycle — is the right structural lens for analysts. Just Security's argument is that without an explicit tracking discipline, you literally cannot pattern-match the use of state power across federal agencies. Bookmark it.
On international criminal accountability, Just Security explores the debate over in absentia trials at the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression Against Ukraine, currently under preparation in the Netherlands. Amnesty International and other organizations have called inclusion of in absentia provisions a "regressive development." Just Security argues the picture is more nuanced — that for crimes of aggression at the senior-leadership level, the practical alternative to in absentia trials may be no trials at all. The legal-realism case is uncomfortable but worth engaging with.