Charles Pritchard, Visiting Fellow for Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution and former Ambassador and Special Envoy for Negotiations with North Korea, writes: The U.S. presidential election is behind us. President Bush will lead the United States for the next four years. He faces many challenges, but none more dangerous than the situation in North Korea.

John J. Tkacik Jr, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., writes: “In these important foreign-policy matters, a candid, clear dialogue between Washington and Beijing is essential if both sides are to avoid stumbling into a crisis.”

Peter D. Zimmerman, professor of science and security at King’s College London and a former chief scientist of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, writes: While Bush looked for nonexistent nuclear weapons in Iraq – as Condoleezza Rice suggested, to ensure that the next warning did not come as a mushroom cloud – the capability to generate plenty of mushroom clouds was being acquired by North Korea.

Gavan McCormack, professor in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University and (2003 to 2005) visiting professor at International Christian University in Tokyo,writes: the Japanese convention of serving the empire loyally and unquestioningly has been sanctified by a half-century of evolution as an affluent imperial dependency. In the 20th century, the benefits were large and the costs acceptable. However, the blueprints for the 21st century call for a new level of subjugation.

G. Pascal Zachary, the author of The Diversity Advantage: Multicultural Identity in the New World Economy, writes: the influence of migrants is not limited to themselves. In short, migrants have a multiplier effect and it is only by understanding the broader social reality of migrants that we can begin to understand their actual influence.