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美国不会为拯救台湾或乌克兰而战
GERARD BAKER
因此，2月的北京冬奥会将不会有美国、英国或澳大利亚的外交官出现。你几乎可以闻到中国共产党高层的恐慌情绪。没有负责文化事务的副部长在雪橇赛场的行政包厢里碰杯？没有人在长城上与国务院和外交部的官员微笑着自拍Instagram？
这只新羽翼丰满的AUKUS鸟已经飞起来了，而且正打在中国的痛处。这种强硬的抗议迫使北京重新思考，释放维吾尔族人，叫停入侵台湾的部队，恢复香港的法治，这一定只是时间问题。
对本周宣布的对奥运会的 "外交抵制 "很容易让人发笑，而这或多或少就是中国的做法。美国对其决定进行了大量的预演，以至于当它到来时，北京有时间先发制人地撤回正式邀请。你不能抵制你没有被邀请的东西。对于英国，中国政府说它甚至没有首先邀请其外交官。
至于澳大利亚，一个非常特殊的中国蔑视的对象，官方发言人只是用尖锐的嘲笑和百分之百的准确性说："没有人在乎。"
这似乎是一种特别软弱的制裁，对白宫发言人在解释这一决定时所说的中国政府 "正在进行的种族灭绝"、"反人类罪"、"暴行 "和 "恶劣的侵犯人权行为 "作出的奇怪的不相称的反应。
如果这一连串的恶名仅仅引来了对奥运会的外交抵制，那么你到底要做什么才能值得，比如说，召回大使或实际抵制体育赛事，更不用说更有力的行动了？
事实上，这太蹩脚了，你会怀疑它是否会对中国的行为产生与预期相反的效果。如果这就是胆小的西方领导人所能做到的，这可能相当于为各地的独裁者开了绿灯，让他们得逞。
与此同时，在本周与普京的两小时视频对话中，乔-拜登试图在俄罗斯加紧为可能入侵乌克兰做准备时传达更多的力量。
在后来的一次简报会上，拜登的国家安全顾问杰克-沙利文告诉记者，如果俄罗斯采取军事行动，这次美国的反应将比七年前普京夺取克里米亚时更加有力。"我会看着你们的眼睛告诉你们，正如拜登总统今天看着普京总统的眼睛告诉他的那样，我们在2014年没有做的事情，我们现在准备做，"沙利文说。
由于美国在2014年的反应基本上是要求一些寡头通过他们喜欢的美国渠道以外的金融渠道来改变他们的不义之财，这为华盛顿留下了一个非常大的空间，如果俄罗斯的坦克开始在顿巴斯地区滚动，它仍然基本上什么都不做。
美国，似乎不再是一个超级大国了。曾经，外国独裁者在美国对其领土野心的行使作出坚定回应的前景下感到害怕，现在他们嘲笑这个正在衰落、正在老化的前帝国主义大国。在美国和英国军队如此匆忙和混乱地将阿富汗抛弃给胜利的塔利班几个月后，中国、俄罗斯甚至伊朗的领导人都感觉到了美国的最终软弱，一个内部分裂的国家退到了自己的海岸，它在欧洲的盟友躲在他们的扫帚军后面，它在亚洲的朋友向中国世纪的不可避免性低头。
但这是一个太苛刻和太早的判断。尽管美国的内部政治斗争表现得很好，但它实际上正在摸索着走向一个明智的两党战略现实主义的全球政策。在新保守主义者以美国的形象重塑世界的20年灾难性努力之后，我们现在有了一个厌战的、头脑更清醒的方法来确定美国的利益并使其目标与能力相匹配。
奥巴马在2014年受到了很多批评，因为他评估说，最终乌克兰对俄罗斯来说始终是一个比美国更重要的战略重点。但他是对的，正如他的共和党继任者默许的那样，现任总统也知道。
东欧和台湾海峡正在酝酿的危机有一种植根于历史和地理的不对称性，否认这一点是毫无意义的。美国人不会为乌克兰的主权开战，尽管它继续承诺保卫台湾的 "战略模糊性"，但美国极不可能为阻止国家统一而与人民解放军打一场枪战。
这样说并不是绝望的劝告，也不是邀请专制者帮助自己，更不是让他们践踏国际法和国家主权的自由通行证。美国外交的目的是向这些潜在的对手发出信号，任何侵略都要付出比没有外交官参加冰球比赛更大的代价。
正如拜登本周向普京传达的那样，如果欧洲有意愿配合，华盛顿可以切断俄罗斯计划中的天然气出口，全力武装乌克兰人，并从根本上切断莫斯科与全球金融体系的联系。
对北京来说，对台湾动武的代价很可能正是它最反对的美国在亚洲联盟的加强，因为美国吞下了自己对与中国邻国更紧密的经济和政治合作的保留。
最重要的是，美国已经意识到--同样是在政治上的两派，在经历了许多自欺欺人和军事上的过度之后--它必须与亚洲崛起的超级大国进行长期的战略斗争，这就需要做出牺牲，甚至是战术上的退缩，甚至以一点外交上的尴尬为代价。
So there will be no American, British or Australian diplomats in Beijing for the Winter Olympics in February. You can almost smell the panic in the upper reaches of the Chinese Communist Party. No under-secretaries for cultural affairs clinking glasses in the executive boxes at the luge course? No smiling selfies for Instagram at the Great Wall with State Department and Foreign Office functionaries?
The newly fledged AUKUS bird has taken flight and is hitting China right where it hurts. It must be only a matter of time before this muscular demarche forces Beijing to rethink, free the Uighurs, call off the Taiwan invasion force and reinstate the rule of law in Hong Kong.
It’s easy to laugh at the “diplomatic boycott” of the Olympics announced this week, and that’s more or less what China did. The US had so heavily previewed its decision that by the time it came Beijing had had time to pre-emptively withdraw the formal invitations. You can’t boycott something you’re not invited to. For Britain, the Chinese government said it hadn’t even invited its diplomats in the first place.
As for Australia, a very special object of China’s contempt these days, the official spokesman simply said, with withering derision and 100 per cent accuracy: “Nobody cares.”
It does seem an especially limp-wristed sort of sanction, an oddly underproportioned response to what the White House spokesman called, in explaining the decision, the Chinese government’s “ongoing genocide”, “crimes against humanity”, “atrocities” and “egregious human rights abuses”.
If this litany of infamy draws merely a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics, what exactly do you have to do to merit, say, a recall of an ambassador or an actual boycott of a sporting event, let alone something more robust?
It’s so lame, in fact, you wonder whether it might have exactly the opposite effect on Chinese behaviour to the one intended. If this is all the timorous leaders of the West can manage, it may amount to a green light to autocrats everywhere to have their way.
Meanwhile, in a two-hour video conversation with Vladimir Putin this week, Joe Biden was trying to convey a little more brawn as Russia stepped up its preparations for a possible invasion of Ukraine.
At a briefing later, Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, told reporters that the US response would be more forceful this time if Russia took military action than it was when Putin seized Crimea seven years ago. “I will look you in the eye and tell you, as President Biden looked President Putin in the eye and told him today, that things we did not do in 2014 we are prepared to do now,” Sullivan said.
America, it seems, is a superpower no more. Where once foreign dictators quailed at the prospect of a firm US response to the exercise of their territorial ambitions, now they mock the declining, ageing ex-imperial power. Months after US and British forces abandoned Afghanistan so hastily and chaotically to a triumphant Taliban, leaders in China, Russia and even Iran sense terminal American weakness, an internally divided country retreating to its own shores, its allies in Europe sheltering behind their broomstick armies and its friends in Asia bowing to the inevitabilities of the Chinese century.
But this is too harsh and too premature a judgment. For all its well-displayed internal political strife, America is actually fumbling towards a sensible bipartisan global policy of strategic realism. After two disastrous decades of neo-conservative efforts to remake the world in America’s image, we now have a war-weary, harder-headed approach to identifying American interests and matching its objectives to its capabilities.
Barack Obama received much criticism in 2014 for his assessment that in the end Ukraine was always a more important strategic priority for Russia than it would ever be for the US. But he was right, as his Republican successor tacitly acknowledged and as the current incumbent is also aware.
There’s an asymmetry rooted in history and geography to the brewing crises in eastern Europe and the Taiwan Strait that it’s pointless to deny. Americans aren’t going to go to war for Ukrainian sovereignty, and despite the “strategic ambiguity” with which it continues to promise a defence of Taiwan, the US is highly unlikely to get into a shooting war with the People’s Liberation Army to prevent the reunification of the country.
To state that is not a counsel of despair, or an invitation to the autocrats to help themselves, or a free pass for them to trample all over international law and national sovereignty. The aim of US diplomacy is to signal to these potential adversaries that any aggression will bear a cost somewhat greater than the absence of diplomats at the ice hockey.
As Biden communicated to Putin this week, Washington can, if there’s a European will to match, cut off Russia’s planned gas exports, arm Ukrainians to the hilt and essentially disconnect Moscow from the global financial system.
For Beijing the price of force against Taiwan could well be precisely the strengthening of US alliances in Asia that it most objects to, as the US swallows its own reservations about closer economic and political co-operation with China’s neighbours.
Above all, there’s a realisation in the US – again on both sides of the political aisle, and after much self-delusion and military overreach – that the long strategic struggle it must conduct with the rising superpower in Asia demands sacrifices and even tactical retreats, even at the cost of a little diplomatic embarrassment. |
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管理人员评分BOC 在2021-12-14 10:28 +24分 并说
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当爱已成往事 － 观《霸王别姬》有感 (2005-6-14) leeshine 
发表于 2021-12-10 16:11
