[译文]美利坚治世行将就木？

The Global Vote of No Confidence in Pax Americana 全球对美利坚治世投下不信任票作者：WRM @ 2016-4-5

译者：焦美淳（@火车入巷）

校对：Drunkplane（@Drunkplane-zny)

来源：The American Interest， http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/04/05/the-global-vote-of-no-confidence-in-pax-americana/ Defense spending is rising around the world, and it’s not because people feel safer. Bloomberg :

世界各地的国防开支都在上升，而这不是因为人们感到越来越安全。彭博社讯： Global military spending has begun rising in real terms for the first time since the U.S. began its withdrawal of troops from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

根据斯德哥尔摩国际和平研究所（SIPRI）的数据，自美军从伊拉克和阿富汗撤军后，全球军事开支第一次有了实际增长。

Defense budgets rose 1 percent to $1.68 trillion in 2015, making up about 2.3 percent of the world’s gross domestic product, Sipri said in a report Tuesday. While the U.S. spent the most at $596 billion, that was down 2.4 percent compared with 2014, while China’s outlay increased 7.4 percent to $215 billion.

SIPRI在周二的报告中指出，2015年全球国防预算增加了1%，达到1.68万亿美元，占世界国内生产总值的2.3%。其中美国以5960亿美元的支出高居首位，这一数据比2014年降低2.4%。而中国的国防经费则提高了7.4%，达2150亿美金。

Concern about a possible advance by Russia into North Atlantic Treaty Organization territory following the Crimea invasion and hostilities in east Ukraine led to a surge in spending in Eastern Europe, as Chinese ambitions in the South China Sea spurred arms purchases among Southeast Asian states.

随着克里米亚的遭受入侵以及发生在东乌克兰的敌对行动，对俄罗斯可能挺进北约领土的担忧已导致东欧的军事支出出现了井喷式的增长。同时中国在南海的野心也刺激了东亚国家的武器采购。 What’s forgotten among all the grousing by President Obama and Donald Trump about ‘free riding’ allies is this basic fact of international life: the Pax Americana was intended to suppress global geopolitical and military competition by providing a framework for international security. That benefitted the world by making countries safer at a lower cost and by assuring people that their national defense and access to world trade and markets did not require them to build huge military establishments.

在奥巴马总统和唐纳德·川普抱怨那些“搭顺风车”的盟国时，他们忘记了国际生活的这一基本事实：美利坚治世【译注：第二次世界大战后美国强权主导之下非共产世界的和平秩序】提供一个国际安全框架，旨在抑制全球地理政治和军事的竞争。美利坚治世让全世界受益，它以更低的开支使各国更加安全，并向人们保证他们不需要去建造大量的军事设施来换取国防安全和世界贸易市场的通行证。

People who don’t know much about history or understand American foreign policy will look at the result—that the U.S. spent more on the military than other countries—and think that we were somehow getting snookered. But they forget—or perhaps they never learned—some vital facts:

不怎么懂历史或者不理解美国外交政策的人只会看结果——美国在军事上的花费比其他国家都多——从而认为我们以前不知怎地就被骗了。但是他们忘记了——或者说也许他们从不知道——一些重要的事实：

The U.S., a country whose economic and security interests extend globally more than those of any other country thanks both to our geography and the nature of our economy, benefits more than any other country from the existence of a global economic and security system
因为我们的地理位置和经济性质，美国的经济和安全利益辐射全球，甚于其他任何一个国家，因此从全球经济和安全体系中的所获利益也甚于其他任何一个国家。
It is actually cheaper for us to maintain this framework when other countries don’t feel the need to spend lots of money on their militaries—when the U.S. spends less than 4% of GDP on defense but has a bigger defense budget than the rest of the world combined, that is the sign of a successful strategy: our military superiority is immense and unchallengeable, yet the cost to us, is by historical great power standards, low. That is the sign of strategic success, not of ‘free riding allies’, Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump.
事实上，当其他国家觉得在军事上并不需要有大量开销的时候，维持这个框架对我们来说成本更低——当美国的国防开支少于GDP的4%，国防预算却比其他所有国家总和还多，这标志着一个成功的战略：我们的军事优势是巨大且不容挑战的；而其成本——按照历史上的强国标准——仍是很低的。奥巴马先生和川普先生，这就是战略成功的标志，而不是让同盟国“搭顺风车”。
The other reason that the U.S. has followed this strategy is the bitter experience of the past that teaches an important lesson: multipolar arms races lead to great power war. The U.S. has believed since the 1940s that another global conflict on the scale of World War I and World War II would mean the collapse of global civilization, or even the extermination of the human race. We have therefore made it a centerpiece of our policy to deter other powers from building huge military establishments and, when they do it—as the USSR did in its day—to ensure that such powers are deterred from war and that other powers feel safe enough in the shadow of U.S. strength that their military responses, though real, are limited.
令美国遵循这个战略的另一个原因是，过去的苦涩经验给我们上了重要一课：多极的军备竞赛导致强国间战争。自1940年代起，美国就相信，另一场规模如一战和二战的全球冲突意味着全球文明的崩塌，甚至是全人类的灭亡。因此我们政策的中心就是阻止其他政权建立起庞大的军事设施，并且，当有国家这么做时——就像前苏联当初的所作所为——我们会确保阻止这些政权走向战争，并且使其他政权在美国军事力量的羽翼下感到安心，即便他们的军事反应能力被切实地限制了。

For 70 years this strategic approach has prevented the outbreak of devastating wars like those of the first half of the twentieth century. That we did so at an affordable, though not an insignificant, cost, is a triumph of strategic thinking and of American foreign policy.

过去70年，这项战略方针阻止了很多发生在20世纪上半叶那样的毁灭性战争。尽管我们做到了，其代价不能说不大，但仍是我们能够承受的，这是美国战略思考和外交政策的胜利。

Weak leadership and a failure of strategic intelligence now threatens the success of the most successful world strategy of modern times, a strategy whose success has been the root cause of American prosperity and global stability for two generations. There is no enemy powerful enough to destroy the Pax Americana today, except for the greatest of all great powers in human affairs: the power of stupidity.

软弱的领导力和战略情报的失败，如今威胁着现代最成功的世界战略。这个战略的成功，在整整两代人的时间里，是美国繁荣和全球稳定的根本原因。当下没有任何敌人有足够的能力去摧毁美利坚治世，除了所有影响人类事物的伟力中最强大的：愚蠢之力。

We will know that American foreign policy has started to work again when military budgets around the world go down, while ours remains at an affordable level. Those are the metrics we are looking for; right now, we seem to be getting the opposite.

当全世界军事预算下降，而美国的军事预算尚在可负担水平时，我们会知道美国的外交政策又开始起作用了。这些就是我们要达到的指标；而现在，我们似乎正与之背道而驰。

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The Global Vote of No Confidence in Pax Americana 全球对美利坚治世投下不信任票作者：WRM @ 2016-4-5

译者：焦美淳（@火车入巷）

校对：Drunkplane（@Drunkplane-zny)

根据斯德哥尔摩国际和平研究所（SIPRI）的数据，自美军从伊拉克和阿富汗撤军后，全球军事开支第一次有了实际增长。

The U.S., a country whose economic and security interests extend globally more than those of any other country thanks both to our geography and the nature of our economy, benefits more than any other country from the existence of a global economic and security system
因为我们的地理位置和经济性质，美国的经济和安全利益辐射全球，甚于其他任何一个国家，因此从全球经济和安全体系中的所获利益也甚于其他任何一个国家。
It is actually cheaper for us to maintain this framework when other countries don’t feel the need to spend lots of money on their militaries—when the U.S. spends less than 4% of GDP on defense but has a bigger defense budget than the rest of the world combined, that is the sign of a successful strategy: our military superiority is immense and unchallengeable, yet the cost to us, is by historical great power standards, low. That is the sign of strategic success, not of ‘free riding allies’, Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump.
事实上，当其他国家觉得在军事上并不需要有大量开销的时候，维持这个框架对我们来说成本更低——当美国的国防开支少于GDP的4%，国防预算却比其他所有国家总和还多，这标志着一个成功的战略：我们的军事优势是巨大且不容挑战的；而其成本——按照历史上的强国标准——仍是很低的。奥巴马先生和川普先生，这就是战略成功的标志，而不是让同盟国“搭顺风车”。
The other reason that the U.S. has followed this strategy is the bitter experience of the past that teaches an important lesson: multipolar arms races lead to great power war. The U.S. has believed since the 1940s that another global conflict on the scale of World War I and World War II would mean the collapse of global civilization, or even the extermination of the human race. We have therefore made it a centerpiece of our policy to deter other powers from building huge military establishments and, when they do it—as the USSR did in its day—to ensure that such powers are deterred from war and that other powers feel safe enough in the shadow of U.S. strength that their military responses, though real, are limited.
令美国遵循这个战略的另一个原因是，过去的苦涩经验给我们上了重要一课：多极的军备竞赛导致强国间战争。自1940年代起，美国就相信，另一场规模如一战和二战的全球冲突意味着全球文明的崩塌，甚至是全人类的灭亡。因此我们政策的中心就是阻止其他政权建立起庞大的军事设施，并且，当有国家这么做时——就像前苏联当初的所作所为——我们会确保阻止这些政权走向战争，并且使其他政权在美国军事力量的羽翼下感到安心，即便他们的军事反应能力被切实地限制了。