Editor's Note: Christopher Alessi is an associate staff writer at the Council on Foreign Relations. Jendayi Frazer is an Adjunct Senior Fellow for Africa Studies at CFR.  The following interview is reprinted from CFR.org with permission .

By Christopher Alessi and Jendayi Frazer, CFR.org

Tensions along the oil-rich border that divides Sudan and recently independent South Sudan have escalated in recent weeks, raising the prospect of a full-scale war between the longtime foes. China, which maintains considerable oil interests in both countries, has called for restraint (Reuters) and vowed to work with the United States to bring both sides back to the negotiating table.Jendayi Frazer, the former U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, says while the role of mediation should remain with the African Union, the United States and China are vital players in this conflict that can bring pressure to bear on both parties.

However, Frazer says it is "a strategic mistake and it has never worked" for the international community to treat both sides equally, since the northern Sudan is clearly the aggressor in this latest conflict as well as many of those in the past. "The international community should be united against northern aggression," she says. FULL POST

Editor's Note: Omar R. Quraishi is the Editor of the Editorial Pages of The Express Tribune in Karachi. Follow him @omar_quraishi.

By Omar R. Quraishi, Foreign Affairs

If Pakistani news channels can be taken at face value these days, the country is preparing for war. Retired generals, ambassadors, and professors weigh in on the likelihood of U.S. attack with an unrelenting intensity. The anchor of "Capital Talk," one of the most widely watched news programs on the popular channel Geo, recently asked guests what Pakistan should do when the impending attack occurs. A couple of his guests said that Pakistan should mobilize its forces and respond with full force. Officials have been more circumspect, but have issued the constant refrain that Pakistan's sovereignty must not be compromised.

On Facebook, meanwhile, new groups rally Pakistanis to the defense of the homeland. Just a few hours before sitting down to write this article, I received a text message with a similar call to action from a professional acquaintance. The rambling screed read, "Let them taunt us as an economically failed state, for they know not how thousands of Pakistani workers are currently working in the Middle East, Western Europe, and North America... Let them call us a technologically backward state, for they know not how we are the sole Muslim state with nuclear capability."

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Editor’s note: Blair Glencorse is an expert on governance and development. He was selected as member of the Transatlantic Network 2020 and as a UN Alliance of Civilizations Fellow for the Middle-East and North Africa. You can follow him on Twitter @blairglencorse.

By Blair Glencorse - Special to CNN

The fighting in Libya is coming to an end, but years of dictatorship, repression and brutal violence have left very deep social, economic and political divides within Libyan society. The extent of these problems is only just becoming clear as attention turns from war fighting to post-war reconstruction.

The West feels the urge to support a better future for the Libyan people as it should - both because it is in our interests and is the right thing to do - but if past experience is any guide, our efforts will hurt as much as help this process.

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Editor's Note: Dr. James M. Lindsay is a Senior Vice President at the Council on Foreign Relations and co-author of "America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy." Visit his blog here and follow him on Twitter.

By James M. Lindsay, CFR.org

President Obama caught a lot of flak earlier this year for ordering the U.S. military to carry out airstrikes against Libya without securing congressional authorization, even after the ninety-day clock specified in the War Powers Resolution elapsed. Obama was hardly the first president to push the envelope on his foreign policy powers, essentially daring Congress to stop him. One of the most pivotal exercises of presidential prerogative came seventy-one years ago today, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced the destroyers-for-bases deal with Great Britain. FULL POST

With Libya still in the hands of armed regional and tribal factions - each challenging the other's pretensions to political authority - it seems wishful to believe that the country will enjoy a smooth and quick transition to stable democracy. Even so, Libya's National Transitional Council and the United Nations are already planning for Libya's first elections. FULL POST

Editor's Note: Barak Barfi is a research fellow with the New America Foundation.

By Barak Barfi – Special to CNN's Global Public Square

Throughout the Libyan capital of Tripoli, rebel units have taken over schools, warehouses and factories. They drive around town in pick-up trucks laden with anti-aircraft guns and anti-tank missiles. Tripoli residents honk and flash the victory sign as they fly down coastal roads. But though they are eager to welcome them as liberators today, people here are sure to turn on them if the troops remain holed up in the capital. With the war against the country’s deposed leader Moammar Gadhafi coming to an end, these units will have to be disbanded and sent home. FULL POST

Editor's Note: The following article comes from Worldcrunch, an innovative, new global news site that translates stories of note in foreign languages into English. This article was originally published in the Le Monde.

By Nathalie Nougayrède, Worldcrunch

This is his war. Nicolas Sarkozy wants to know every detail of every battle. He learned the names of the districts of Libyan cities that the rebels still had to capture. He studied the maps of the roads that access Tripoli. He was fascinated by this military operation, which he initiated. He followed the topography of the Brega and Misrata front lines, the heart of a revolutionary fight of which he declared himself to be the spokesman.

He was the one to take the decisions on the deliveries of weapons to the rebels and even appealed to the good offices of his key ally, Qatar. Those weapons included French weaponry destined to the Nafusa Mountains in June; and others, recently delivered, to a rebel group that landed on a beach in Tripoli after having left from Misrata. FULL POST

Editor's Note: Micah Zenko is a fellow for conflict prevention at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he blogs and where this piece originally appeared. You can also follow him on Twitter.

By Micah Zenko

On July 11, when asked about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton answered: “From our perspective, he has lost legitimacy, he has failed to deliver on the promises he’s made,” adding that “we would like to see even more countries speaking out as forcefully as we have.”

Proponents of a low-cost regime change in Damascus seized upon Clinton’s use of the phrase “lost legitimacy” to press the case for the Obama administration to see through Assad’s removal. The Washington Post editorial board, in a piece titled “The U.S. has Gotten Tough with Syria; Now it Needs to Get Tougher,” noted that it was “good that the Obama administration has finally spoken that truth” but that “now it must act on its words.”

Soon after Secretary Clinton’s judgment about who should be the rightful political leader of Syria, the administration has wisely de-escalated its demonization of Assad.  During her trip to Turkey over the weekend, Clinton expressed hope that the Syrian opposition “can provide a pathway, hopefully in peaceful cooperation with the government, to a better future.” FULL POST

The following is a transcript of my discussion with Anderson Cooper last night:

Anderson Cooper: Not only can the Syrian regime kill a 13-year-old boy and mutilate and torture him, they can also force the family of that boy to even deny what happened to their son. It's just a double blow. It is particularly insidious. 

Fareed Zakaria: It's completely Orwellian.... These are classic totalitarian methods.

This regime is probably the most brutal of all the dictatorships in the Middle East and you can see precisely why: Because it is trying to force this kind of mass confession, this kind of implication in its own thuggish behavior. And it uses plenty of pressure, too.

Remember, this is a regime where the father of the current president, Bashar al-Assad, faced an uprising from an Islamic movement over 20 years ago and killed, reportedly, 20,000 people in the town of Hama and then bulldozed the town - bodies and all - to destroy the threat.  FULL POST