英國並未從全球事務中撤退
All zones of public discourse have their excesses and irrationalities, but none like foreign policy. In our golden age of data, this is one area that remains resiliently unmeasurable. So anyone can say anything as long as they say it sonorously and use the word “strategy” a lot.
And so the idea has taken hold that Britain is withdrawing from the world. The charge is built on topical grievances against Prime Minister David Cameron: his euroscepticism, his implied cuts to the defence budget in the coming years, his absence from the Franco-German diplomatic front against Russia. These observations are each true, to a point, but they add up to a partial reading.
因此，英國正在從全世界退縮的說法深入人心。這一指責建立在時下對首相戴維•卡梅倫(David Cameron)的諸多不滿之上：他的歐洲懷疑主義(euroscepticism)、他暗示在未來幾年削減國防預算以及缺席法德聯合制裁俄羅斯的外交陣線。從某種程度上說，這些觀點每一個說得都沒錯，但合起來看卻有失偏頗。Here is a rounder account. Since 2010, Britain has co-led a military operation in Libya that amounted to regime change, and come within a parliamentary vote of a strike against Syria. It has bombed jihadis in Iraq and declared that there is “no legal barrier” to an extension of those raids into Syrian territory. It has tried to deepen relations with China and other Asian powers, even at the cost of American umbrage. It has not just stuck to a target for foreign aid that has little grounding in logic and even less in electoral self-interest, it has codified it in statute.
這裏有一些相反的說法。2010年以來，英國與其他國家一起領導了對利比亞的軍事行動，導致後者政權更迭，並在議會就是否打擊敘利亞舉行投票。它對伊拉克境內的聖戰分子進行轟炸，並宣稱將這些打擊行動擴大到敘利亞境內“沒有法律障礙”。它一直在努力深化與中國及其他亞洲大國之間的關係，即便這讓美國感到不滿。英國不僅堅持邏輯上毫無道理可言、甚至還讓自己在選舉中失分的對外援助目標，而且還將對外援助寫入法律。
Whatever one thinks of these ventures — some have failed hideously, some make sense, some lack any — they do not constitute a retreat from the world. They do not suggest a government ducking foreign policy in either its diplomatic or kinetic modes. If Mr Cameron is an isolationist, he is a lousy one.
不管人們如何看待這些行動——有些遭遇慘敗，有些有意義，有些則毫無意義——它們都算不上英國從全世界退縮。無論是從其外交模式還是從其動力模式來說，它們都沒有表明英國政府迴避外交政策。如果卡梅倫是一名孤立主義者，那他也是一名蹩腳的孤立主義者。Make do with the boring truth: on a spectrum of postwar prime ministers, Mr Cameron’s curiosity about the world puts him somewhere in the middle. He is more outward-looking than Harold Wilson but less restlessly adventurous than Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair. Our historical lens is coloured by the recent tenures of those two globe-trotters, who were in effect their own foreign secretaries. Given that Mr Blair’s activism involved the Iraq war and an ardour for the European single currency, Britons might excuse their present prime minister his relative circumspection.
不妨看一下有些無聊的事實：如果對戰後的英國首相進行排序，卡梅倫對世界的好奇心可以讓他位列中等。他比哈羅德•威爾遜(Harold Wilson)更關注國際事務，但不像瑪格麗特•撒切爾(Margaret Thatcher)或者託尼•布萊爾(Tony Blair)那麼敢於冒險。撒切爾和布萊爾奔波於世界各地參與全球事務，他們最近任期的表現影響了我們看待歷史的方式——這兩人實際上是他們自己的外交大臣。鑑於布萊爾的行動主義包括參與伊拉克戰爭以及熱情支持歐洲單一貨幣，英國人或許會原諒現任首相的相對謹慎。Critics of Britain’s insularity tend to come in two forms: those who do not mean what they say, and those who do not know what they mean.
批評英國孤立的往往有兩類人：言不由衷的人和不知所云的人。Take the first lot. In politics, when people accuse a leader of lacking a strategy, they tend to mean that they dislike the strategy he has. When they implore him to “engage” with something, they want him to engage on terms that please them. There is a lofty tier of British public life that dislikes Mr Cameron’s mercantilist take on the world and his desire to revise the terms of EU membership. They regard the first as vulgar, like winning a hand of poker at their members’ club without putting the money back into the coffers, and the second as foolish. But both are foreign policies: trade promotion and reform of the EU along liberal lines, however fanciful a project that might be, are ways of engaging with the outside world. The carpers should say what they mean: their complaint is with Mr Cameron’s ideas, not his lack of them. We can then discuss those ideas.
第一類人有很多。在政治上，當人們指責一位領導人缺乏戰略時，通常他們的意思是不喜歡他當前的戰略。當他們懇請他“參與”某事時，其實是希望他能以取悅他們的方式進行。英國公共生活中的上層社會不喜歡卡梅倫以重商主義的眼光看待世界以及他修改歐盟成員國條款的訴求。他們認爲前者有些庸俗，就像在俱樂部贏了一手牌後沒有把錢放回保險櫃一樣，而後者則有些愚蠢。但這都是外交政策：沿着自由主義路線促進貿易以及改革歐盟（不論多麼不現實），都是與外部世界打交道的方式。吹毛求疵者應該心口一致：他們抱怨的是卡梅倫的想法，而不是他缺少想法。我們可以接着討論這些想法。If this type of critic is disingenuous, the other is sketchy. Foreign policy debate is given to the most excruciating waffle, usually couched in an airy language you might call Grandese. People talk of strategy, vision, geopolitics, the world stage, but surrender specific proposals as readily as a baby gives up a pacifier clenched between its gums. At its best, diplomacy is politics at its most civilised. At its worst, it is a world made predominantly of smoke.
如果這種批評有些虛僞，那另一種則有些粗陋。外交政策辯論往往是最折磨人的胡扯，而且經常以一種你可能稱之爲“宏大”(Grandese)的輕快語言表述。人們談論戰略、願景、地緣政治和世界舞臺，但讓他們提出具體建議時，他們就像嬰兒吐出緊咬住的奶嘴一樣輕易放棄。在最好的時候，外交是最文明的政治表現。最糟糕的時候，它就是一個烏煙瘴氣的世界。Britain is a medium-sized power whose global reach has waned for about 70 years. It has traumatic recent experiences of war. It has not balanced a budget since 2002. What should its international strategy be? Why does it need one? Do similar countries really have one? If there is something screamingly obvious that Britain should be doing abroad right now, what is it?
英國是一箇中等規模的強國，其全球影響力70年來一直在下降。它在最近的參戰中受過創傷。自2002年以來，它一直沒有實現預算平衡。英國的國際戰略應該是什麼樣的？爲何英國需要一個戰略？類似的國家真的有戰略嗎？如果現在海外有一些顯然需要英國去做的事，會是什麼事呢？In the absence of precise answers to these questions, the criticism boils down to a hunch that Mr Cameron should put himself about a bit more, as if a prime minister is delinquent in his duties by not maximising his country’s visibility. We chuckle at armchair football coaches who yell at players on screen to run about more and get stuck in, but this mania for perpetual motion in foreign affairs is not much different.
在這些問題沒有明確答案的情況下，這些批評只能歸結爲一種直覺：卡梅倫應該再多出份力，好像一位首相如果不把他的國家最大限度的呈現在國際社會，就是他工作失職。我們對坐在扶手椅上對着屏幕上的球員大喊、要求他們拼命跑動的人暗自發笑，但這種對外交事務“永動”的熱衷也沒有太大區別。Britain’s recent efforts abroad deserve criticism. There is the agony of Libya, which we have learnt not to talk about. The sanctification of aid looks quixotic next to the defence squeeze. But it is wrong to conflate bad choices with retreat. Sonorous, multilingual nonsense is still nonsense.
英國近期的海外行動應該受到批評。我們目睹了利比亞的苦難，但學會了不去談論它。在剛剛縮減完國防預算之後就進行神聖的援助顯得不切實際。但將糟糕的選擇與退縮混爲一談是不對的。用多種語言大聲說出的廢話仍舊是廢話。
