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The second is by a person who has lived and worked a great deal in the country, understands and speaks its language(s) with nuanced, dialect-sensitive precision and who can thus not only listen to “officials” making pronouncements in English designed for the consumption of foreign reporters, but can also garner important amounts of relevant information by engaging in casual and wholly unscripted conversation with people in the country’s cafés, parks and workplaces. He or she can, of course, also read the all the country’s newspapers and, when the need arises, consult scholarship written by the nation’s foremost experts in their own language, and thus within—for better or worse—its own set of dominant critical paradigms. All this in addition to possessing an easy ability to read the New York Times, watch CNN in English and study the latest position papers produced by strategically-minded think tanks in Washington.

I think that most would agree that for any person with a sincere interest in understanding the realities of this particular foreign country, the second option is far and away the best one.