Jiri Pehe

Nonproliferation treaties are not about birth control.

Director, New York University in Prague

Susan Moeller

Strong, effective, independent media are your allies around the world, not your enemies. The health of a civil society is better measured by how free and robust the media sector is than by whether there are elections. There are a lot of elected dictatorships.

Director of the International Center for Media and the Public Agenda at the University of Maryland

Alex de Waal

Chad is the name of a country in central Africa as well as her son’s buddy.

There have been more homicides per capita in her would-be home of Washington, D.C., so far this year than in Darfur.

Fellow of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and program director at the Social Science Research Council

Sung-Yoon Lee

Kim Jong Il never served a day in the military, but his people address and refer to him reverently as “general.”

Trying to persuade North Korea to give up its nukes through negotiations is a bit like trying to capture a black bear with a mouse trap; the intention might be earnest, but the application is thoroughly misplaced.

Adjunct assistant professor of international politics at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and translator for Kim Hyun Sik’s “The Secret History of Kim Jong Il” in the September/October issue of FP

Peter Baker

Turkey is not the same country as Turkmenistan. Yes, they are both predominantly Muslim countries. But Turkey is a NATO ally struggling with its secularity and anxious to join the European Union, while Turkmenistan is a former Soviet republic run until not long ago by the world’s most megalomaniacal dictator (he renamed the months after himself and his family).

Reporter with the New York Times and coauthor of Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the End of Revolution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005)

G. Pascal Zachary

Although the Bush administration has concentrated on Christian-inspired humanitarian aid and militarized social work in Africa, the new administration ought to pay much more attention to Africa’s dynamic cities and economies, as they are growing faster than most parts of the world.

Freelance journalist

Joshua Keating

“Undemocratic” Vladimir Putin would win hands down in a fair election. His approval ratings hover around 80 percent.

The majority of the Toyotas on the U.S. market were built in the United States.

It’s “Ukraine,” not “the Ukraine.” Same for Sudan.

Real Americans don’t play hockey. It’s a sport for Canadians and communists.

Editorial assistant, FOREIGN POLICY

Robert L. Strauss

The word “plenipotentiary” does not refer to someone who necessarily has difficulty controlling his Viagra habit.

Management consultant in Madagascar and author of “Think Again: The Peace Corps”

William F. Schulz

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If the United States expects to be a human rights leader around the world, it has to abide by human rights standards here at home.

According to the great scholar of comparative religion, Huston Smith, “The definition of a holy war in Islam is virtually identical with that of a just war in Christianity” (Huston Smith, The World’s Religions, New York: HarperCollins, 1991, p. 237). Neither faith has a monopoly on practitioners who ignore its sacred tenets.

Senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and former head of Amnesty International USA

Nathan Brown

When Sen. John McCain proclaimed in August, “we are all Georgians,” he meant no disrespect to the other 49 states.

In the Middle East, America’s room for maneuver has generally been hampered by resentment of U.S. policies and suspicions of U.S. intentions—even on the part of its friends. The incoming administration, however, will have to deal with a new challenge: a feeling that the United States is simply a spent force in regional affairs.

Nonresident senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

K. Anthony Appiah

America’s real power is soft power.

Laurance S. Rockefeller university professor of philosophy at the Center for Human Values at Princeton University

Shuja Nawaz

Read some history and never EVER follow Henry Kissinger’s advice about relying on dictators as friends of the United States. Dictators tend to fall as soon as America pronounces their regimes “an island of calm in a sea of instability.” We then lose the faith and friendship of their people for decades to come!

Author of Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008)

Justin Logan

Deterrence is not the same thing as compellence. Although it is easy for a big, powerful country like the United States to deter foreign countries from threatening its core interests, it is terribly difficult for Washington to compel foreign countries to govern themselves in accordance with American desires.

Type 1 errors can be equally dangerous as Type 2 errors, even in foreign policy. The potential costs of false positives (i.e., doing something where there is no cause) should be weighed the same way as the potential costs of false negatives (doing nothing where there is cause).