The most enthusiastic Western advocates of removing Assad form a liberal tendency and have been arguing for some form of intervention in Syria ever since the war began in earnest. They are opposed by more realist voices, who exhort them to remember the lessons of Iraq before getting militarily involved. Those on this side point to Syria’s fractured and often radical opposition, the regime’s formidable and battle-hardened forces, and the risks of starting a proxy conflict between the world’s great powers. In combination, these two tendencies have landed United States and United Kingdom foreign policy in an awkward gap between ends and means: Assad must go, but the military means required to remove him are off limits. It feels good to demand that a brutal dictator should no longer be allowed to rule, but insisting on it while failing to back it up with action has helped to prolong unimaginable suffering. Assad is clearly despicable, but the only atrocities worse than those his government has already committed are those yet to come. There are two ways to avert them: either Assad is deposed, probably via U.S.-led military intervention, or some political accord is struck to allow him to stay in exchange for a permanent ceasefire.

Since most people who hold radical views do not become terrorists, what are the factors that drive some to violent extremism? Is there a connection between mental illness and terrorist involvement? And why do some interrogators resort to torture when the body of evidence shows building rapport with suspects is more effective? These questions and others are addressed in a special issue of American Psychologist, the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association.

“There’s a long list of Syrian officials with blood on their hands — but the culpability goes all the way to the top,” Gregory Koblentz writes in one of the more important analyses of the Assad regime’s strategic use of chemical weapons (“Syria’s Chemical Weapons Kill Chain,” Foreign Policy, 7 April 2017). Koblentz, the author of Living Weapons: Biological Warfare and International Security, explains that the Syrian chain of command for chemical weapons is composed of four tiers: the senior leadership, which authorizes the use of these weapons and provides strategic guidance; the chemists, who produce, transport, and prepare the chemical weapons for use; the coordinators, who provide intelligence on targets and integrate chemical weapons with conventional military operations; and the triggermen, who deliver the weapons to their targets. “Together, these individuals and organizations form a chemical-weapons kill chain,” Koblentz writes.

The terrorist attack in Stockholm on Friday mimicked previous attacks in Europe, in which terrorists used vehicles to kill civilians. Among the cities in which such attacks were carried out are London, Nice, Glasgow, Berlin, and more. More and more cities are considering the use of bollards to protect not only buildings – but other, “softer” urban areas. The Whole Building Design Guide (WBDG) program of the National Institute of Building Sciences offers a detailed Resource Page with useful analysis of and information about crash- and attack-resistant bollards.

The United States has struck the Syrian airbase used to launch a suspected sarin gas attack against Khan Sheikhun that killed more than eighty civilians. The rebel commander whose district was hit by the suspected chemical weapon attack has said he hopes the strike will be a “turning point” in the war — but the long-running conflict has had many such apparently pivotal moments. A shift of U.S. foreign policy on Syria could have been the game-changer. But the U.S. airstrike is more likely to reinforce the balance of power between the combating factions rather than lead to a turning point.

At least nine people have been killed and about fifty more injured when a bomb exploded on a train in St. Petersburg. An explosive device went off at 2:20 p.m. local time on a train leaving the Technology Institute station and heading to the Sennaya Ploshchad station. All train travel in the St. Petersburg area has been suspended, and Russian security services found and defused another explosive device at the Ploschad Vosstaniya station.

A tragedy is unfolding in Mosul, the northern Iraqi city that Islamic State (IS) has brutally occupied since June 2014. The spike in civilian deaths – the result of an intensification of bombing by the international coalition during February and March — has been so dramatic, it has prompted speculation that the U.S. military has changed its rules of engagement. It has also sparked debate about whether deaths caused by the West are held to a different standard than those caused by countries like Russia. The impacts of Mosul’s brutal occupation and painful liberation are compounding Iraq’s seemingly endless list of social and economic problems. The tragedy of Mosul is that while IS’s territorial project in Iraq is coming to an end, it is creating new problems – destruction, displacement, trauma – that exacerbate the country’s existing challenges. The West must acknowledge its role in stoking this crisis, just as Russia and Iran have been responsible for suffering in Syria. Mosul, it seems, is the West’s Aleppo.

A French court found Carlos the Jackal – the Venezuelan-born Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, a leftist urban terrorist who carried out terrorist attacks in France in the 1970s and 1980s – guilty of killing two and injuring thirty-four in a 1974 grenade attack on a Paris drugstore. Sánchez, who is already serving two life sentences for a 1975 terrorist attack, was at one time one of the world’s most wanted criminals. Sometime in the mid-1980s he escaped to Khartoum, Sudan, and led a quiet life until 1994, when French special forces, in a daring commando raid, captured him and brought him back to France.

A battle between national security and privacy is brewing. Governments and secret services are asking encrypted messaging services such as WhatsApp to allow them access to users’ data, arguing that access to messages will allow authorities to thwart future terror attacks. Ultimately, though, if someone thinks that removing WhatsApp encryption would be the solution to the problem of terrorism or crime, then they don’t understand the actual problem. Even if you were to remove the end-to-end encryption from WhatsApp, criminals could create their own, similar, software that would allow them to communicate securely, while ordinary users would lose the ability to send genuinely private messages.