Walter Russell Mead on the Past and Future of American Foreign Policy (Ep. 161)

What do I mean by that?

我这么说是什么意思？

If you think about what it’s like to do foreign policy, or even think about foreign policy in today’s world, what are we looking at?

如果你想想制定外交政策是什么样子，甚至想想当今世界的外交政策，我们在看什么？

Existential threats to human existence.

对人类生存的生存威胁。

You led us off with nuclear weapons.

你用核武器引走了我们。

In the book, I talk about how, as a 10-year-old, my friends and I used to stand around on the playground, debating whether our town, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, would be destroyed in a nuclear attack.

在书中，我讲述了十岁的时候，我和朋友们如何站在操场上讨论我们的小镇——北卡罗来纳州教堂山是否会在核攻击中被摧毁。

In any case, the fear of nuclear war has been around since the time of Hiroshima, but also, there are other fears.

无论如何，自广岛核事故以来，对核战争的恐惧就一直存在，但也存在其他恐惧。

If we don’t get climate policy right, will we all be cooked?

如果我们的气候政策不正确，我们都会被煮熟吗？

Or will climate-induced disruptions lead to great power war, nuclear conflict?

或者气候引起的破坏会导致大国战争、核冲突吗？

Will changing technology — the AIs — take over?

不断变化的技术 ——人工智能—— 会接管一切吗？

Whatever, we live in a time of existential fear, and foreign policy and all kinds of national policy questions get invested with these ultimate questions.

不管怎样，我们生活在一个充满生存恐惧的时代，外交政策和各种国家政策问题都充满了这些终极问题。

Politics is less about, if we raise the sales tax half a percent, is that a good thing or a bad thing on balance?

政治不那么重要，如果我们将销售税提高半个百分点，总的来说这是好事还是坏事？

It’s more about, can we save the planet?

更重要的是，我们能拯救地球吗？

Can we save human civilization?

我们能拯救人类文明吗？

When people face those kinds of questions without some kind of grounding in some kind of religion, faith, it’s actually .

当人们面对这类问题时，实际上并没有某种宗教、信仰的基础。

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There are individual people who can keep their psychological balance in the face of that.

有些人能够在面对这种情况时保持心理平衡。

There are not many.

数量并不多。

In terms of mass societies and democracies and large cultural groups, it’s profoundly destabilizing.

就大众社会、民主国家和大型文化群体而言，它正在严重破坏稳定。

You have that problem, that existential fear, which some people respond to by denial, some people fall into extremism — lots of responses, but you can see that.

你有这样的问题，即存在主义的恐惧，有些人的反应是否认，有些人陷入极端主义——有很多反应，但你可以看到这一点。

Then the other thing is that, in a large democratic society like ours — 300-plus million people — if political power was divided equally among all 300 million Americans, it would mean that no one had any power.

那么另一件事是，在我们这样一个大的民主社会——“三百多万人”——如果政治权力平均分配给所有三亿美国人，那就意味着没有人拥有任何权力。

And American society, the American government would simply be a force that you couldn’t impact no matter what you did.

而美国社会、美国政府就是一股无论你做什么都无法影响的力量。

There are just too many of us.

我们人数太多了。

What makes democracy work under those circumstances tends to be senses of identification with elites, with different social-political groups.

在这种情况下，民主得以发挥作用的往往是对精英和不同社会政治群体的认同感。

The glue that holds a democratic society — the cultural glue, intellectual glue, spiritual glue — becomes much more important.

维持民主社会的粘合剂——文化粘合剂、知识粘合剂、精神粘合剂——变得更加重要。

I think, in our society, the ebbing of religion among some, certainly not all, Americans has tended to dissolve these bonds and leads, in all kinds of ways, both on the left and the right, to some of the sense of suspicion, of paranoia, a lack of trust, and declining support for democracy.

我认为，在我们的社会中，宗教在一些美国人（当然不是全部美国人）中的衰落往往会瓦解这些纽带，并以各种方式（无论是左翼还是右翼）导致一些怀疑、偏执、缺乏信任以及对民主的支持下降。

All of that together makes it much harder for the United States to do foreign policy well, at least in my judgment.

所有这些加在一起使美国更难做好外交政策，至少在我看来是这样。

Of course, again, both parties are contested.

当然，双方再次存在争议。

There are different groups in both parties.

两党都有不同的群体。

The Republicans — Vietnam did not have as great a consequence for Republicans.

共和党——越南并没有给共和党带来那么大的后果。

If you think about people like James Baker, George Shultz, the great Republican foreign policy figures of the last 30, 40 years, the legacy of Vietnam for them was quite different, that sort of cultural impact.

如果你想想詹姆斯·贝克（James Baker）、乔治·舒尔茨（George Shultz）这样的人，他们是过去 30 年、40 年里伟大的共和党外交政策人物，越南给他们留下的遗产是完全不同的，这种文化影响。

Democrats tended to lose .

民主党往往会失败。

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A class of liberal Democrats saw their faith in American ideology permanently wounded by Vietnam.

一群自由民主党人看到他们对美国意识形态的信心因越南战争而永久受到伤害。

I don’t think that was as true among Republicans.

我认为共和党人的情况并非如此。

Certainly, in the Arab world, the Middle East, Islamism, and jihad — just call it jihadi ideology more broadly — is seen to have failed.

当然，在阿拉伯世界、中东，伊斯兰主义和圣战——“更广泛地称之为圣战意识形态”——被认为是失败的。

Like socialism, like Arab nationalism, it’s one more in a long list of failed ideological movements.

就像社会主义、阿拉伯民族主义一样，它也是一长串失败的意识形态运动中的一个。

Not that there still aren’t terrorists, or for that matter, Arab socialists, but it’s not the same.

并不是说仍然没有恐怖分子，也不是说没有阿拉伯社会主义者，但情况不一样了。

However, if you look at sub-Saharan Africa, what we’re seeing is state after state — and these are fragile states to begin with — they’re being undermined or being assaulted.

然而，如果你看看撒哈拉以南非洲地区，我们会看到一个又一个国家 ——这些国家本来就是脆弱的国家—— 它们正在受到破坏或攻击。

We’re seeing larger-scale conflicts developing.

我们看到更大规模的冲突正在发展。

These are not of no interest to us.

这些并不是我们不感兴趣的。

For example, many of the resources that you need for any kind of EVs and battery technology are in places where these conflicts are very real.

例如，任何类型的电动汽车和电池技术所需的许多资源都位于这些冲突非常现实的地方。

So, we are not winning against jihadism on a global scale, but it’s also true that a reduced American military presence in the Middle East is not the worst thing I can imagine.

因此，我们并没有在全球范围内战胜圣战主义，但美国在中东的军事存在的减少并不是我能想象的最糟糕的事情，这也是事实。

I would think nobody really thought, in 2008, as George W.

我想在 2008 年，没有人真正像乔治·W·布什 (George W.

Bush left office, that you could possibly mess up the Middle East worse than the Bush administration.

布什卸任后，你可能会把中东搞得比布什政府更糟糕。

But President Obama proved that that was wrong and that you could actually take the Middle East at the end of 2008 and make it almost infinitely worse, both for American interests and for the safety and happiness of the people in the region.

但奥巴马总统证明这是错误的，而且你实际上可以在 2008 年底占领中东，使情况变得几乎无限糟糕，无论是为了美国的利益，还是为了该地区人民的安全和幸福。

So, I think probably President Obama wins the crown.

所以，我认为奥巴马总统可能会赢得桂冠。

But institutionally, to some degree, I think both institutions are troubled by a problem that goes far beyond them, the problem of the bureaucratization of knowledge.

但在某种程度上，我认为这两个机构都受到一个远远超出它们范围的问题的困扰，即知识官僚化问题。

If you compare the world of American foreign policy today with what it was like, say, before World War II, in those days you had really quite small institutions where an individual genius or someone like George Kennan could really have an influence.

如果你将今天的美国外交政策世界与二战前的情况进行比较，就会发现，在那些日子里，你的机构规模非常小，个别天才或像乔治·凯南这样的人可以真正发挥影响力。

With the ballooning of the national security bureaucracies in the Cold War and then even beyond, we now have these ossified institutions.

随着冷战时期乃至以后国家安全官僚机构的不断膨胀，我们现在有了这些僵化的机构。

There’s always the question, how many analysts of China do you need?

总是有一个问题，你需要多少中国分析师？

The answer is one — if you can find the right one.

答案是一个 ——如果你能找到合适的。

Bureaucratic groupthink, I think, tends to dominate the products of both the State Department and the CIA in ways that often obscure the best of the thinking that’s being done inside them.

我认为，官僚群体思维往往主导着国务院和中央情报局的产品，其方式往往掩盖了他们内部正在进行的最好的思考。

The problem is that mass immigration to the United States, which really begins around 1880 .

问题在于美国的大规模移民实际上始于 1880 年左右。

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We’ve always been a country of immigrants, but in 1790, the immigrants who got here got here on very small sailing vessels that required several weeks to cross the Atlantic and couldn’t come during whole seasons of the year because of the weather.

我们一直是一个移民国家，但在 1790 年，来到这里的移民是乘坐非常小的帆船来到这里的，这些船只需要几周的时间横渡大西洋，而且由于天气原因，一年四季都无法到来。

Once you had these steam-powered ships that were much, much larger and could travel much more quickly, it became much cheaper for immigrants.

一旦有了这些体积大得多、行驶速度快得多的蒸汽动力船，对于移民来说就变得便宜得多。

Plus, you started having railroad networks across Europe so that people could get from central Russia to Hamburg and to the United States in 1880 in a way they just couldn’t in 1820.

另外，你开始在欧洲建立铁路网络，这样人们就可以从俄罗斯中部到达汉堡，然后在 1880 年到达美国，这是 1820 年无法做到的。

This mass immigration, which changed the demographics of the US, came at just the time US society was experiencing a major economic shift.

大规模移民改变了美国的人口结构，恰逢美国社会正在经历重大经济转变。

The Industrial Revolution and the decline of the family farm were leading a lot of people to think that the era of American affluence was over, that American institutions couldn’t cope with these new things.

工业革命和家庭农场的衰落让很多人认为美国富裕的时代已经结束，美国的机构无法应对这些新事物。

You have the combination of the cultural pressure, the economic pressure of immigrants.

你面临着移民的文化压力和经济压力。

Labor unions originally were very much in favor of immigration because many of the members of the labor unions were from these countries and wanted their friends and relatives to come over.

工会本来是非常支持移民的，因为工会的很多成员都来自这些国家，希望他们的朋友和亲戚过来。

But by 1920, labor had shifted strongly against immigration because of cost competition from new immigrants.

但到了 1920 年，由于新移民的成本竞争，劳工已强烈反对移民。

So, you had this long controversial immigration culminating in really draconian restrictions in 1923, 1924.

因此，长期备受争议的移民最终在 1923 年和 1924 年实行了非常严厉的限制。

Then, once you hit the Depression, as European persecution of the Jews gets worse, and the Depression with unemployment in the United States of 25 percent, it’s really, really hard to get any political consent for migration generally.

然后，一旦遭遇大萧条，欧洲对犹太人的迫害变得更加严重，而大萧条导致美国失业率高达 25%，一般来说，要获得对移民的政治同意真的非常非常困难。

Meanwhile, you might say, “Well, okay, fine, but what about Jews in a special category because of their persecution?” What you then have is, people would say, “Well, wait a minute, my relatives are in Greece, and things are terrible in Greece, and they’re starving in Greece.

与此同时，你可能会说，“好吧，好吧，但是犹太人因为受到迫害而被归入特殊类别呢？”然后人们会说：“好吧，等一下，我的亲戚在希腊，希腊的情况很糟糕，他们在希腊挨饿。

Are the Jews going to jump the line?” That was the expression a lot of people used.

犹太人会插队吗？”这是很多人使用的表达方式。

There was zero support for more immigration and even less than zero support for prioritizing Jewish immigration in the ’20s and ’30s in the United States.

在 20 世纪 20 年代和 30 年代的美国，对更多移民的支持为零，对优先犹太移民的支持甚至不到零。

First place, the US, at that time, was not actually a major Middle Eastern power.

第一，当时的美国实际上还不是中东大国。

We were a global superpower, but in the Middle East, Britain was far more important than the United States.

我们是全球超级大国，但在中东，英国比美国重要得多。

We had a good relationship with Saudi Arabia, but the other Gulf states — Iran, Egypt, Iraq, and others — were essentially almost British colonies at that time.

我们与沙特阿拉伯关系良好，但其他海湾国家——伊朗、埃及、伊拉克等——当时基本上几乎都是英国的殖民地。

The Soviets correctly saw the British Empire as the weak point in the potential of a containment from the West.

苏联正确地将大英帝国视为西方遏制潜力的弱点。

They also saw that, in the US, political opinion was sharply divided between people who were worried about the Soviet Union and thought we needed an alliance with Britain and France in order to counter the Soviet Union, and people who thought that, actually, an alliance with Britain and France would commit us to colonialism, imperialism, and basically wreck our future in the developing world, open doors to communism, but also thought that we could win Stalin over, could gain Stalin’s trust, and thought that the United Nations should replace great power politics.

他们还看到，在美国，政治观点存在严重分歧：一派担心苏联，认为我们需要与英法结盟才能对抗苏联；另一派则认为，实际上，与英法结盟将使我们陷入殖民主义、帝国主义，基本上破坏我们在发展中国家的未来，为共产主义打开大门，但也认为我们可以赢得斯大林的支持，可以赢得斯大林的信任，并认为联合国应该取代大国政治。

We had World War I and then World War II, which ended with nuclear weapons.

我们经历了第一次世界大战，然后是第二次世界大战，最后以核武器结束。

World War III would be a disaster.

第三次世界大战将是一场灾难。

The UN is the only possible place to fight it, to prevent it.

联合国是唯一可能与之抗争、预防的地方。

Instead of engaging in imperial schemes with Great Britain against the Soviet Union, we needed to work with the Soviet Union in the UN to make peace possible.

我们需要在联合国与苏联合作，使和平成为可能，而不是与英国一起参与针对苏联的帝国计划。

That was the big controversy in America.

这在美国引起了很大争议。

Stalin saw that, by pushing the question of the emergence of a Jewish state in the Middle East, he could drive a wedge between the US and Britain and basically destroy British power in the Middle East.

斯大林认为，通过推动中东出现犹太国家的问题，他可以挑拨美国和英国之间的关系，并从根本上摧毁英国在中东的权力。

On the one hand, in America, support for Zionism was pretty strong among Jews and non-Jews at that time.

一方面，在美国，当时犹太人和非犹太人对犹太复国主义的支持相当强烈。

There was real support for it.

它得到了真正的支持。

When Britain is seen as banning the desperate survivors of Nazi concentration camps pleading to go to Palestine, and the British are literally turning them away and keeping them, essentially, in concentration camps, this was so damaging to US-British relations that Stalin was rubbing his hands in glee.

当英国被视为禁止纳粹集中营的绝望幸存者恳求前往巴勒斯坦时，英国实际上将他们拒之门外，并将他们本质上关在集中营中，这对美英关系造成了如此大的损害，以至于斯大林高兴得搓着手。

At the same time, the fact that the British were basically unable to prevent the rise of a Jewish state in Palestine radicalized Arab public opinion throughout the Middle East and resulted, ultimately, in Egypt in the fall of the pro-British monarchy, and everywhere undermined the British Imperial position.

与此同时，英国基本上无法阻止犹太国家在巴勒斯坦的崛起，这使得整个中东的阿拉伯舆论变得激进，最终导致埃及亲英君主制的垮台，并在各地削弱了大英帝国的地位。

Stalin hoped to gain quite a bit from it, and he did.

斯大林希望从中得到不少好处，他也做到了。

The United States sells a lot of weapons around the world.

美国在世界各地出售大量武器。

Russia sells a lot of weapons around the world.

俄罗斯在世界各地出售大量武器。

India sells a lot of weapons.

印度出售大量武器。

Do we always control the way these things are used effectively?

我们是否始终控制这些东西的有效使用方式？

No. I would say it’s pretty much in the ballpark with the rest of us.

不，我想说，这与我们其他人的情况差不多。

In both cases, what you have is people supporting the state, not necessarily for traditional foreign policy reasons, but because they think it’s a sign of God working in the world.

在这两种情况下，人们都支持国家，不一定是出于传统的外交政策原因，而是因为他们认为这是上帝在世界上工作的标志。

And this both reassures them in our very dangerous and terrifying world that there is a benign, omnipotent deity is in charge of our destinies, but also, “Well, we believe that in these latter days, God is doing great things and new things.” If you’re a Mormon, a member of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, it means the LDS is on the right track.

这既让他们在这个非常危险和可怕的世界中放心，有一位仁慈、全能的神掌管着我们的命运，而且，“好吧，我们相信，在最近的日子里，上帝正在做伟大的事情和新的事情。”如果您是摩门教徒，是后期圣徒教会的成员，这意味着摩门教正走在正确的道路上。

That’s also what American evangelicals, going back 200 years, have been arguing, that the Bible prophesies a return of the Jews to Palestine at the climax of history.

这也是美国福音派 200 年前一直在争论的，即《圣经》预言犹太人将在历史的顶峰回归巴勒斯坦。

In a time that feels a lot like the climax of history — nuclear bombs, et cetera, et cetera — the Jews return.

在一个感觉很像历史高潮的时代——“核弹等等”——犹太人回归了。

Whoa, whoa, whoa, this Bible, written 2,500 years ago, must know something.

哇，哇，哇，这本写于 2500 年前的圣经，一定知道些什么。

Only a supernatural intelligence could have revealed 2,500 years ago what’s happening today.

只有超自然智慧才能揭示 2500 年前今天发生的事情。

In both cases, the rise of Israel is seen as underwriting the truth of their core religious faith.

在这两种情况下，以色列的崛起都被视为其核心宗教信仰的真理。

Also, Biden comes into office saying, “I’m going to make MBS, by name, a pariah.

此外，拜登上任时还表示：“我会让 MBS 成为贱民。

I’m going to end our relationship.

我要结束我们的关系。

This relationship with Saudi Arabia is a disaster.

与沙特阿拉伯的关系是一场灾难。

It needs to fundamentally change.” Then a few months later, he looks at the price of gas, and this is the key to his reelection.

它需要从根本上改变。”然后几个月后，他看汽油价格，这是他连任的关键。

He comes to the Saudis: “Help me stay in office.

他对沙特人说：“帮助我继续留任。

Return to our eternal friendship.” They don’t trust him at all, nor should they, really.

恢复我们永恒的友谊。”他们根本不相信他，也不应该真的相信他。

Also, we should look at the way that two developments have changed the relationship.

此外，我们还应该看看两项事态发展如何改变了两国关系。

One is fracking, where the US is now a price competitor with the Saudis in a way it didn’t used to be, where our production, actually, in some years is higher than their production.

其中之一是水力压裂，美国现在以一种前所未有的方式与沙特进行价格竞争，实际上，我们的产量在某些年份高于他们的产量。

But also, the Biden administration’s attempt to be a leader in climate-change action, which is aimed specifically at driving fossil fuels out of the market.

而且，拜登政府还试图成为气候变化行动的领导者，该行动的具体目标是将化石燃料赶出市场。

If American policy is to make Saudi Arabia’s one valuable source of income worthless as quickly as possible, what are the reasons for them to help bail us out?

如果美国的政策是尽快让沙特阿拉伯这一宝贵的收入来源变得一文不值，那么他们有什么理由帮助我们摆脱困境呢？

I actually think we need Saudi Arabia.

我实际上认为我们需要沙特阿拉伯。

We need a balance of power in the Middle East, and they’re an essential part of that balance.

我们需要中东的力量平衡，而他们是这种平衡的重要组成部分。

I think the relationship can be reconfigured, but we’ve got some work to do on our end.

我认为这种关系可以重新配置，但我们还有一些工作要做。

Look, I think it’s a combination of two things.

看，我认为这是两件事的结合。

One is that the monarchical tradition in Saudi Arabia and in some other Arab countries has been one of the king acting as a power broker among different tribes and clans, maintaining a balance of power more like a feudal leader in medieval Europe than a modern dictator or something like that.

一是沙特阿拉伯和其他一些阿拉伯国家的君主制传统是国王作为不同部落和氏族之间的权力掮客，维持权力平衡，更像是中世纪欧洲的封建领袖，而不是现代独裁者或类似的人。

They’re very good at understanding, “Oops, the people in the northeast are unhappy,” or “Oops, this tribe is unhappy.” And they figure out, “How do we rebalance?

他们很善于理解“哎呀，东北人不高兴”，或者“哎呀，这个部落不高兴”。他们发现，“我们如何重新平衡？

What do we do?”

我们该怎么办？

Then when you add that political sensitivity to a large flow of oil income, so that you actually have the resources that you need to respond to people’s grievances, it’s not that surprising that they’ve lasted this long.

然后，当你将政治敏感性加入到大量石油收入中时，这样你实际上就拥有了回应人们的不满所需的资源，他们持续这么久也就不足为奇了。

I think the UAE is worried when it looks at the world, and that gives them an edge.

我认为阿联酋在放眼世界时感到担忧，这给了他们优势。

The war in Syria today, the war in Libya today.

今天的叙利亚战争，今天的利比亚战争。

It’s moving past its old heartline.

它正在超越它的旧心线。

The wars in Ethiopia and Sudan today, the conflicts in Nigeria today are all reflecting the reality that, as societies develop, different groups of people are less content to live in large, multicultural, multiethnic units and want to be ruled by people who they feel understand them.

今天埃塞俄比亚和苏丹的战争，今天尼日利亚的冲突都反映了这样一个现实：随着社会的发展，不同的人群越来越不满足于生活在大型的、多文化的、多民族的单位中，并希望由他们认为理解他们的人来统治。

Now, Pakistan is an interesting case, where they’ve tried to hold the very disparate elements of Pakistani culture.

现在，巴基斯坦是一个有趣的例子，他们试图保留巴基斯坦文化中截然不同的元素。

Pakistan had never been a geographical unit before partition, and the tribal differences are enormous.

巴基斯坦在分治之前从来不是一个地理单位，部落差异巨大。

Again, it’s a little racist to say “tribal differences.” If these people were in Europe, we would call the Punjabis a nation, not an ethnic group or something.

再说一次，说“部落差异”有点种族主义。如果这些人在欧洲，我们会称旁遮普人为一个民族，而不是一个民族或其他什么。

These national differences were deep.

这些民族差异是深刻的。

In Pakistan, they tried to overcome them by emphasizing Islam as the unifying factor of Pakistani national identity.

在巴基斯坦，他们试图通过强调伊斯兰教作为巴基斯坦民族认同的统一因素来克服这些问题。

As the strains in Pakistan have grown greater, there’s been a fanaticization among some elements of Pakistani society around Islam, again, trying to double down on this point of unity.

随着巴基斯坦的压力越来越大，巴基斯坦社会的一些人再次对伊斯兰教产生了狂热，试图加倍努力加强这一团结。

Now, what we are seeing is that none of this has prevented a massive failure of governance in Pakistan.

现在，我们看到的是，这一切都未能阻止巴基斯坦治理的大规模失败。

It’s not all their fault.

这不全是他们的错。

The Afghan war brought a lot of trouble, a lot of refugees to them, but Pakistan has been badly governed for a very long time.

阿富汗战争给他们带来了很多麻烦，给他们带来了很多难民，但巴基斯坦却长期治理不善。

Now, the schools don’t work, the flood control doesn’t work, the economy is in terrible shape.

现在，学校不能开学，防洪不起作用，经济状况很糟糕。

For a long time, their relationship with the United States was keeping them afloat.

长期以来，他们与美国的关系使他们得以维持下去。

They had turned to China, hoping that China would keep them afloat.

他们转向中国，希望中国能让他们维持下去。

China doesn’t seem that interested in propping up expensive, money-losing regimes.

中国似乎对支持昂贵且赔钱的政权并不感兴趣。

Now they’re in real trouble.

现在他们遇到了真正的麻烦。

Where this goes, I can’t tell you.

这会去哪里，我不能告诉你。

It’s a constellation of factors, but we should not forget that the strongest single institution in Pakistan is its nuclear-armed military.

这是一系列因素的结果，但我们不应忘记，巴基斯坦最强大的单一机构是其拥有核武器的军队。

This military has a strong institutional sense of coherence and a strong loyalty to the Pakistani state.

这支军队具有强烈的制度凝聚力和对巴基斯坦国家的强烈忠诚。

We can’t keep that out of the mix when we try to think about what’s going to happen in Pakistan.

当我们试图思考巴基斯坦将要发生的事情时，我们不能将其排除在外。

It remains a really complicated part of the country — very sensitive set of issues there.

它仍然是这个国家的一个非常复杂的地区——那里有一系列非常敏感的问题。

But I think the Indian interest in preventing China from moving in there, and in supporting its own national sovereignty, plus the very sound argument you can make to a lot of people in the northeast.

但我认为印度有兴趣阻止中国进入那里，并支持其自己的国家主权，再加上你可以向东北地区的很多人提出非常合理的论点。

“You may not be happy with New Delhi.

“你可能对新德里不满意。

Do you think Beijing is going to pay better attention to you?” That’s likely to keep northeast India in the fold, but I don’t know — it’s the future.

你认为北京会更加关注你吗？”这可能会让印度东北部留在其中，但我不知道——这就是未来。

If we think about how China has gone from “Oh, we’re just going to build a few peaceful islands in the South China Sea.

如果我们想想中国是如何从“哦，我们只是要在南中国海建造一些和平的岛屿。

Don’t worry, there’s nothing there,” to militarizing those bases, to then using those to further extend Chinese power that we now see in the Solomon Islands, where they’ve recently refused to receive new naval visits from the US or Australia.

别担心，那里什么也没有”，将这些基地军事化，然后利用这些基地进一步扩大中国的实力，就像我们现在在所罗门群岛看到的那样，中国最近拒绝接受美国或澳大利亚的新海军访问。

China is now basically emerging as the lead partner of a strategically located set of islands that would cut Australia off from the US to some degree and from the rest of the region.

中国现在基本上正在成为一系列战略位置岛屿的主要合作伙伴，这些岛屿将在一定程度上切断澳大利亚与美国以及该地区其他国家的联系。

We’re seeing very incremental opportunistic moves.

我们看到了非常渐进的机会主义举动。

I think we can say that the future of Chinese policy toward Taiwan will reflect that same kind of thinking, which would suggest nibbling and nibbling before you finally take the big bite.

我想我们可以说，中国未来的对台政策将反映出同样的思维，这意味着在最终咬下一口之前，会不断地蚕食。

Look, I think Germany is a country whose basic economic model is now under question.

你看，我认为德国是一个基本经济模式现在受到质疑的国家。

The German model — and it’s very important in understanding that country — is based on the availability of cheap energy from Russia and large markets in China.

德国模式——这对于理解该国非常重要——是基于俄罗斯廉价能源和中国庞大市场的基础上的。

Again, let’s remember that the German establishment is more terrified of ordinary German public opinion than even the American liberal establishment is terrified of the Trumpists.

让我们再次记住，德国建制派对德国普通公众舆论的恐惧甚至比美国自由派建制派对特朗普主义者的恐惧还要可怕。

You don’t have to look all that deeply into history to see why that would be the case.

你不必深入研究历史就能明白为什么会出现这种情况。

Providing stability, affluence, and employment for the mass of the German people is a key test of the legitimacy of the German state.

为德国广大人民提供稳定、富裕和就业是对德国国家合法性的关键考验。

Really, ever since we failed to break up the large German corporations after World War II, that German establishment has been the motor of the astonishing success of postwar Germany.

事实上，自从我们在二战后未能拆分德国大公司以来，德国的企业就一直是战后德国取得惊人成功的动力。

Now, suddenly, that engine is running out of fuel on the one hand, and its key customer, China, regardless of anything about human rights or geopolitics, the goal of the Chinese economic development strategy is to end its dependency on capital goods imported from countries like Germany by becoming an exporter of high-tech capital goods.

现在，一方面，这个引擎突然耗尽了燃料，而它的主要客户中国，无论人权或地缘政治如何，中国经济发展战略的目标是通过成为高科技资本货物出口国来结束对德国等国家资本货物进口的依赖。

China’s development plans, much more than its Taiwan policy or its human rights, is a gun pointed at the head of German business.

中国的发展计划，远比其台湾政策或人权更重要，是指着德国商界领袖的枪。

So, where do they go?

那么，他们去哪里呢？

It’s not clear where they go.

目前尚不清楚他们去了哪里。

I don’t think it’s clear to them where they go.

我认为他们不清楚自己要去哪里。

That means that a fundamental element of the American alliance system is in a completely new place.

这意味着美国联盟体系的一个基本要素处于一个全新的位置。

I think what we have to be doing in terms of analyzing where German foreign policy goes is to think a little bit less about ideology or things like the German anti-war sentiment or these kinds of things.

我认为，在分析德国外交政策走向时，我们必须做的就是少考虑意识形态或德国反战情绪等问题。

Yes, these are all there, the Russian soul, all of that.

是的，这些都在那里，俄罗斯灵魂，所有这些。

It’s there, but really, how is Germany going to make a living?

确实如此，但实际上，德国将如何谋生？

That’s the question that has to be answered, and that will drive Germany’s orientation in foreign policy.

这是必须回答的问题，它将决定德国的外交政策方向。

When I think of all the people that die in the DRC due to medical problems that simple medical treatment could fix, this seems to me, frankly, an insane misuse of resources, a murderous fetishization of ideology over reality.

当我想到刚果民主共和国所有因简单的医疗就可以解决的医疗问题而死亡的人时，坦率地说，在我看来，这是对资源的疯狂滥用，是对意识形态对现实的致命迷恋。

I think the key to sub-Saharan African development is economic success.

我认为撒哈拉以南非洲发展的关键是经济成功。

Not that this will make all problems go away.

但这并不是说所有问题都会消失。

It’ll make, I think, things like tribalism potentially get worse.

我认为，这会让部落主义等事情变得更糟。

But giving people more opportunity to improve the quality of their lives through their own efforts — so far as our foreign policy can do it — I think is a very positive thing.

但是让人们有更多的机会通过自己的努力来改善他们的生活质量 ——“就我们的外交政策可以做到的范围来说”—— 我认为是一件非常积极的事情。

We do also need to look a little bit more seriously at the potential of jihadi groups to destabilize large sections of the continent.

我们确实还需要更认真地审视圣战组织破坏非洲大陆大部分地区稳定的潜力。

There are places where you can do it — great.

有些地方你可以做到 —— 很棒。

Eastern Europe after the Cold War — a lot of good things happened, but I never believed in the end of history thesis.

冷战后的东欧——发生了很多好事，但我从不相信历史终结论。

In that sense, I was never enchanted, so I was never disenchanted.

从这个意义上说，我从来没有着迷过，所以我也从来没有失望过。

I think you do get some gains from that, but you see, over time, the focus of the discipline has this tendency to shift.

我认为你确实从中得到了一些收获，但你会发现，随着时间的推移，该学科的焦点有这种转移的趋势。

The discipline tends to become more inward navel-gazing.

该学科往往变得更加内向。

“What’s the history of our efforts to systematize our thinking about this?” The discipline becomes more and more, in a sense, ideological and internally focused and less pragmatic.

“我们努力系统化对此问题的思考的历史是什么？”从某种意义上说，该学科变得越来越意识形态化和内部关注，而越来越不务实。

I think that some of the problem, though, is not so much in the intellectual weaknesses of a lot of conventional postgrad education, but simply almost the crime against humanity of having whole generations of smart people spend the first 30, 35 years of their lives in a total bubble, where they’re in this academic setting, and the rule .

不过，我认为，部分问题并不在于许多传统研究生教育的智力弱点，而在于让整整几代聪明人在一个完全的泡沫中度过他们生命的前30年、35年，他们处于这种学术环境和规则中，这几乎是反人类罪。

.

。

.

。

They become socialized into the academy, just as much as prisoners get socialized into the routines of a prison.

他们融入了学院，就像囚犯融入了监狱的日常生活一样。

The American academy is actually a terrible place for coming to understand how world politics works.

对于了解世界政治如何运作来说，美国学院实际上是一个糟糕的地方。

Recently, I had a conversation with an American official who was very proud of the way that the US had broken the mold by revealing intelligence about Russia’s plans to invade Ukraine, and pointed out how that had really helped build the NATO coalition against Russian aggression, and so on.

最近，我与一位美国官员进行了交谈，他对美国打破常规，披露有关俄罗斯入侵乌克兰计划的情报感到非常自豪，并指出这如何真正帮助建立了北约联盟以对抗俄罗斯的侵略，等等。

So far as he goes, it’s true.

就他而言，这是真的。

But I said, however, if you really look at the total message the US was projecting to Russia in those critical months, there were two messages.

但我说过，如果你真正看看美国在这关键的几个月里向俄罗斯传达的全部信息，就会发现有两个信息。

One is, “We’ve got great intelligence on you.

一是，“我们有关于你的大量情报。

We actually understand you much better than you think.” It was shocking.

事实上，我们比你想象的更了解你。”太令人震惊了。

I think it shocked the Russians.

我认为这震惊了俄罗斯人。

But on the other hand, we’re saying, “We think you’re going to win quickly in Ukraine.

但另一方面，我们说，“我们认为你们会在乌克兰很快获胜。

We’re offering Zelenskyy a plane ride out of Kyiv.

我们为泽伦斯基提供从基辅出发的飞机。

We’re pulling out all our diplomats and urging other countries to pull out their diplomats.”

我们正在撤出我们所有的外交官，并敦促其他国家撤出他们的外交官。”

The message, actually the totality of the message that we sent to Putin is, “You are going to win if you do this.” It would certainly undercut — not that there may have been any — but any voices inside Russia telling Putin, “No, no, no, this thing is a lot harder than you think.

我们向普京传达的信息，实际上是整个信息是：“如果你这样做，你就会赢。”这肯定会削弱——并不是说可能有任何——而是俄罗斯内部的任何声音告诉普京，“不，不，不，这件事比你想象的要困难得多。

It may not work.” What they’re hearing is, “The Americans, whose intelligence is really, really good, and they know us better than we think — they certainly know the Ukrainians better than we do — and they think we’re going to win fast.”

这可能行不通。”他们听到的是，“美国人的智力真的非常非常好，他们比我们想象的更了解我们——他们当然比我们更了解乌克兰人——而且他们认为我们会很快获胜。”

That is a miserable, miserable combination of policies.

这是一个非常非常非常糟糕的政策组合。

The thing is, there was no political mind in the administration that thought in terms of, what’s the overall impact of what we do?

问题是，政府中没有政治头脑思考我们所做的事情的总体影响是什么？

That’s, I think, what comes of people who’ve spent their lives in universities rather than spent their lives in the real world.

我认为，这就是那些在大学度过一生而不是在现实世界度过一生的人的结果。

One thing is that the government has grown.

一件事是政府已经成长。

It has its own in-house think tanks.

它有自己的内部智囊团。

This really starts with the policy planning in the State Department after World War II.

这其实要从二战后国务院的政策规划说起。

Once you set that thing up, which is basically where the Marshall Plan comes from, you don’t need the Council on Foreign Relations when you have your own little in-house thing.

一旦你建立了这个东西，这基本上就是马歇尔计划的来源，当你有自己的小内部东西时，你就不需要外交关系委员会了。

The institutionalization of these internal think tanks, I think, has a lot to do with it.

我想，这些内部智库的制度化有很大关系。

What is the CIA if not a very large think tank, at least the analyst side of it?

如果中央情报局不是一个非常大的智囊团，至少是它的分析师方面，那它是什么？

And naturally, these folks have access to classified information that we humble think tankers don’t.

当然，这些人可以获得我们卑微的智库所无法获得的机密信息。

So there’s that, but also, I think it’s partly .

就是这样，但我也认为这是部分原因。

.

。

.

。

but the role of think tanks was less, I think, in terms of influencing government than of influencing public opinion.

但我认为，智库的作用与其说是影响政府，不如说是影响公众舆论。

Here, it’s just the generic decline in the ability of the educated American professional elite.

在这里，这只是受过教育的美国职业精英能力的普遍下降。

the fact that the folks out there don’t believe in us or trust us very much.

事实上，人们不太相信我们或不太信任我们。

Again, the message from the think tank world was, “Free trade will make China democratic and Americans rich.” That was the message.

来自智库界的信息再次是：“自由贸易将使中国民主，让美国富裕。”这就是信息。

Americans look at that, and they think, “Really?” They also think, “So why should we listen to you now?”

美国人看到这一点，他们会想：“真的吗？”他们还会想：“那我们为什么现在要听你的呢？”

What you don’t hear from people in think tanks much is, “This is why we, the educated elite, were so wrong about so many things for so long.

你很少从智囊团的人那里听到这样的话：“这就是为什么我们这些受过教育的精英长期以来在很多事情上都犯了错误。

We’ve done a lot of soul searching.

我们进行了大量的自我反省。

We’ve really hashed into it.

我们真的已经深入研究了。

We’ve actually gotten rid of a lot of people who haven’t changed their thinking, and so, here’s why we are now credible in a way we didn’t used to be.” I think this is fundamentally it.

事实上，我们已经解雇了很多没有改变想法的人，因此，这就是为什么我们现在比以前更加可信。”我认为从根本上来说就是这样。

The American educated elite has gotten so much wrong for so long that public trust in it has declined across the board in both the left and the right.

美国受过教育的精英长期以来犯了太多错误，以至于左翼和右翼公众对他们的信任度全面下降。

But there’s also this: that the South and the White South — which, of course, is where I come from — has had the experience of both being defeated and being wrong.

但还有一点：南方和白人南方——当然，我来自那里——都经历过失败和错误。

That’s something that a lot of American political culture doesn’t have — your WASP Yankee patricians.

这是许多美国政治文化所没有的东西——你们的 WASP 洋基贵族。

I think neoconservatism reflected a sense of people who’ve never been wrong and never been beaten, at least in their own minds.

我认为新保守主义反映了人们从未犯过错、从未被打败的感觉，至少在他们自己看来是这样。

There’s a hubris that comes with that.

随之而来的是一种傲慢。

Historically, one of the roles of Southern politics — think of William Fulbright during the Vietnam War — both for good and bad reasons, doubt that this American ideological project can be transferred, partly because they know America is bad at reconstruction.

从历史上看，南方政治的角色之一——“想想越南战争期间的威廉·富布赖特”——无论出于好还是坏的原因，都怀疑美国的意识形态项目是否可以转移，部分原因是他们知道美国不擅长重建。

The failure of reconstruction, both in terms of the White South and the Black South after the Civil War, is a lesson that you get growing up in the South.

内战后重建的失败，无论是南方白人还是南方黑人，都是在南方长大的一个教训。

And so you have an inherent sense of the limits of America’s ability to transform societies.

因此，你对美国改变社会的能力的局限性有一种固有的认识。

That’s important.

这很重要。

You got the sense of being part of a tradition, and you got the inside view.

你会感觉到自己是传统的一部分，并且了解了内部情况。

The way we were taught American history was in no way idealized.

我们教授美国历史的方式绝不是理想化的。

Just, say, reading something like the 1619 Project didn’t come to me as a shock.

只是，读到像 1619 计划这样的东西并没有让我感到震惊。

“Oh my gosh, there was slavery, there was injustice in America.”

“天哪，美国有奴隶制，有不公正。”

In fact, one of the teachers at Groton used to take aside some of the boys — it was an all-boys school at the time — and explain to them how their family fortune was made.

事实上，格罗顿学校的一位老师曾经把一些男孩拉到一边——“当时这是一所男子学校”——并向他们解释他们的家庭财富是如何创造的。

He might say, “Well, George, we’ve been reading a lot about war profiteers in World War I.

他可能会说：“好吧，乔治，我们读了很多关于第一次世界大战中战争奸商的文章。

You need to know that your grandfather .

你需要知道你的祖父。

.

。

.” Et cetera, et cetera.

”。等等等等。

Unfortunately, none of my grandparents had participated in such things, so there was no need to explain to me the family fortune, as there wasn’t one.

可惜我的祖父母都没有参与过这样的事情，家底也就不用跟我解释了，因为根本就没有。

You got a sense of the American system from the inside, and a much less ideologically blinkered one than I think that many people have in public education.

你可以从内部了解美国的制度，而且比我认为许多人在公共教育中所感受到的意识形态要少得多。

That has meant, for one thing, that I’m less rattled by “America’s got racism.” Yes, now let’s talk about what do we need to do.

一方面，这意味着我不再对“美国存在种族主义”感到不安。是的，现在我们来谈谈我们需要做什么。

More than that, though, I was at Groton ’65 to ’70.

更重要的是，我在 65 至 70 年间在格罗顿工作。

Those were the years of the Vietnam War.

那是越南战争的年代。

The national security adviser at the time, McGeorge Bundy, was the chair of the Groton Board of Trustees, so I had a close-up look at the aggressive self-confidence of the WASP establishment meeting the Vietnam War and beginning to come to grips with what was going wrong.

当时的国家安全顾问麦乔治·邦迪 (McGeorge Bundy) 是格罗顿董事会主席，因此我近距离观察了 WASP 建制派在越南战争中表现出的咄咄逼人的自信，并开始着手解决问题所在。

Those two visions of the inner workings of the American foreign policy elite, and then the ringside seat at the crisis of the old American foreign policy elite, have been profoundly important in my thinking about the world.

美国外交政策精英内部运作的这两种愿景，以及美国旧外交政策精英危机的场边席位，在我对世界的思考中具有极其重要的意义。

That history matters a lot, and that you can’t know too much history.

历史很重要，而且你不能了解太多历史。

Now, you have to digest it, but you can’t know too much history.

现在，你必须消化它，但你不能了解太多历史。

A hunger for travel.

对旅行的渴望。

I think too many foreign policy types don’t actually get out into the field nearly as much as they should.

我认为太多的外交政策类型实际上并没有像他们应该的那样深入到这个领域。

Curiosity about other cultures.

对其他文化的好奇心。

A strong grounding in a faith of your own, which can be a secular ideology, perhaps, in some cases, but more often is likely to be a great religious tradition of some kind.

你自己的信仰有坚实的基础，在某些情况下，这可能是一种世俗意识形态，但更常见的是，它可能是某种伟大的宗教传统。

I’m a Christian.

我是基督徒。

I could wish that everyone was, but my friend Shadi Hamid is a Muslim, and I think his Muslim faith actually helps him navigate and understand the world, and I certainly have lots of Jewish friends in the same circumstance.

我希望每个人都是穆斯林，但我的朋友沙迪·哈米德是穆斯林，我认为他的穆斯林信仰实际上帮助他驾驭和理解世界，而且我当然有很多处于同样情况的犹太朋友。

Again, we’re ending up where we started, maybe, but a religious faith, connected to one of the great historical traditions, gives you a degree of insight and potential for self-criticism that are absolutely crucial to foreign affairs.

再说一次，我们也许会回到起点，但与伟大历史传统之一相关的宗教信仰会给你一定程度的洞察力和自我批评的潜力，这对外交事务绝对至关重要。