By Bilal Y. Saab, Special to CNN

Editor’s note: Bilal Y. Saab is visiting fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Bilal Y. Saab.

The Washington Post ran a story Thursday with the headline “Suicide attack in Syria makes international action less likely.” The author concludes that the recent upswing in terrorist violence actually decreases the chances of U.S., NATO or Arab-Turkish military intervention in Syria.

I argue it may well be the opposite. FULL POST

Editor's Note: Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former director of policy planning in the US State Department (2009-2011), is Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. For more from Slaughter, visit Project Syndicate or follow it on Facebook and Twitter. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Anne-Marie Slaughter.

By Anne-Marie Slaughter, Project Syndicate

The conventional wisdom last week on whether Syria would comply with former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s ceasefire plan was that it was up to Russia. We were reverting to Cold War politics, in which the West was unwilling to use force and Russia was willing to keep arming and supporting its client. Thus, Russia held the trump card: the choice of how much pressure it was willing to put on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to comply with the plan.

If this view were correct, Iran would surely be holding an equally powerful hand. Annan, after all, traveled to Tehran as well. Traditional balance-of-power geopolitics, it seems, is alive and well.

But this is, at best, a partial view that obscures as much as it reveals. In particular, it misses the crucial and growing importance of regional politics and institutions. FULL POST

Editor's Note: The following is reprinted with the permission of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Fifty-seven representatives of the so-called Friends of Syria–countries that have imposed sanctions on the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad–met in Paris yesterday to discuss ways to maintain financial pressure on the embattled Syrian regime (NYT). The conference comes amid a fragile UN-Arab League-engineered cease-fire between the Syrian military and opposition forces, which both sides claim has been undermined by the other. At the same time, a small team of UN observers is in Syria "setting up operating headquarters" before a total of 250 peacekeepers are deployed to monitor the cease-fire. FULL POST

Editor's Note: The following is reprinted with the permission of the Council on Foreign Relations.

A fragile cease-fire seems to be holding in Syria, but in defiance of the UN-backed deal, President Bashar al-Assad has failed to pull back troops (Reuters) and heavy artillery from many towns. Opposition activists and Western powers remain highly skeptical of the regime's intentions. Kofi Annan, who helped broker the agreement, is scheduled to update the UN Security Council at 2 p.m. GMT. Western governments are trying to persuade Russia to drop its veto and allow the Council to ratchet up the diplomatic push for Assad's ouster. Annan has proposed a team of about 250 unarmed UN personnel to observe the cease-fire. A Norwegian general who has been in Damascus the past week negotiating plans for a UN peace-keeping mission said he was "cautiously optimistic" on the prospect. FULL POST

Editor's Note: The following is reprinted with the permission of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Violence continues in parts of Syria despite the passing of a UN-backed deadline for a total withdrawal of government troops and heavy weaponry. The development does not bode well for a full cease-fire set to come into force on Thursday. Opposition groups reported violence in Homs (BBC) and areas of the northern Aleppo province, as well as conflict in Damascus. Syria's Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said the Assad regime has tried to comply with the scheduled withdrawal, but blamed "armed gangs" for the ongoing hostilities. Muallem said a cease-fire could only occur when a team of international observers arrived. The UN estimates that more than 9,000 people have been killed in the rebellion against the Assad's regime, which started more than a year ago. FULL POST

Editor's Note: Soner Cagaptay is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a GPS contributor. You can find all his blog posts here. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Soner Cagaptay.

By Soner Cagaptay - Special to CNN

Turkish-Syrian ties are slowly unraveling. Each day, thousands of Syrian refugees cross into Turkey, fleeing persecution. Ankara has been hinting that it will take action against Bashar al-Assad by setting up a safe haven across its border with Syria to protect civilians. On April 1, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the international community has to defend Syrian people's “right to self-defense.”

With Syrian soldier firing across the border, wounding Syrian refugees as well as Turks, all eyes are on the Turkish-Syrian border for a potential confrontation between the two countries. Yet there is another area where Turkey and Syria meet: A little-known Turkish exclave, Caber Kalesi (Qal’at Ja’bar in Arabic), a sliver of sovereign Turkish territory that is smack in the middle of Syria. On April 4, Turkish daily Today’s Zaman wrote about Caber Kalesi, drawing attention to its unique character as Turkey’s only exclave. FULL POST

By Fareed Zakaria, CNN

In late March, former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan persuaded Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad to agree to a sensible plan to stop the killing in Syria and start a process of genuine dialogue. Unfortunately, that plans seems highly unlikely to succeed.

That is because the Syrian regime is not fundamentally interested in dialogue with the political opposition. It seeks instead to brutally eradicate that opposition.

Unfortunately, such a strategy can be effective if a government is fully willing to be as brutal as Bashar al-Assad has been.

In this context, it is not clear to me that a plan like Kofi Annan’s could work unless it had some muscle behind it. But there is a limit to what people on the outside can do for Syria.  Syria is not Libya, where the opposition was able to gain geographic control of certain parts of the country, including the key city of Benghazi. Libya had an east-west division that allowed the opposition to coalesce and then retrieve supplies through Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea. FULL POST

Editor's Note: The following is reprinted with the permission of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Reports of renewed tank fire in several Syrian cities have left the international community with serious doubts about the sincerity of President Bashar al-Assad's commitment to a full cease-fire by April 12 (Reuters). The news comes just one day after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon cited ongoing violence in civilian areas as an indication of the deteriorating situation, despite guarantees from Damascus that regime forces were beginning their withdrawal. Thousands of refugees have been pouring over the border into Turkey (BBC) to escape the bloodshed–some 2,300 on Wednesday alone. Analysts say the real test of the truce will come next Tuesday, the deadline by which Assad has agreed to halt the use of heavy weapons and pull forces back from population centers. FULL POST

Editor's Note: The following is reprinted with the permission of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Syrian political opposition accused President Bashar al-Assad of accelerating a military crackdown on four cities Tuesday, in defiance of Assad's pledge to begin implementing a UN-Arab League cease-fire. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, criticized the Syrian government, saying its actions were "not encouraging" (NYT). A team from the UN peacekeeping department is expected in Damascus within twenty-four hours to discuss the potential deployment of unarmed observers to Syria (al-Jazeera), said a spokesman for UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan. FULL POST