[2008.06.21] American Foreign Policy 帝国本能

American Foreign Policy
美国的外交政策

Imperial instincts
帝国本能

Jun 19th 2008
From The Economist print edition
2008年6月19日
《经济学人》印刷版

America’s longing for an empire has a long history
历史悠久的帝国梦

NEARLY 50 years ago, when William Appleman Williams, one of the 20th century’s most important historians of diplomacy, drew attention to America’s persistent search for an empire, he was denounced for being pro-communist.
约半个世纪前，二十世纪最重要的外交史学家威廉•阿普曼•威廉斯就曾让人注意这样一个状况，即美国一直顽固地在谋求成为帝国，然而当时人们却斥之为亲共分子。

To challenge deeply held beliefs about American innocence was shocking enough. To contradict cold-war propaganda was worse. Recently, however, such ideological conformism has been disappearing. It has become acceptable to speak of empire, both among those who defend American foreign policy and those who condemn it. “If people want to say we’re an imperial power-fine,” says William Kristol, a right-wing commentator. Two years ago, in “Dangerous Nation”, Mr Kristol’s fellow neoconservative, Robert Kagan, also acknowledged the aggressive side of American behaviour.
对美国人向来纯真这种根深蒂固的观念提出挑战本身就够令人震惊的；而对冷战宣传进行驳斥就更糟。然而，这种意识形态方面的传统观念最近正在逐渐消失。无论是对维护还是谴责美国外交政策的人来说，现在说美国是一个帝国时亦更为坦然了。右翼评论家威廉•克里斯托尔表示：”要是别人说美国是一个帝国–那就让他们么去说吧”。二年前，与克里斯托尔先生一样同为新保守派的罗伯特•卡根在《危险国家》一书中亦承认，美国人的所作所为具有侵略性的一面。

Now Walter Nugent, of Notre Dame University, has produced a comprehensive history of how the thrust of empire shaped American history. He stops short of recent years, scarcely mentioning the Iraq war. But he makes it plain that the policies of the present administration have a pedigree that goes back even to the Founding Fathers: Thomas Jefferson himself hoped for “an empire for liberty”.
圣母大学的瓦尔特•钮金先生撰写了一部通史，对以帝国作为主题是如何塑造美国历史的问题进行了诠释。这部著作并未涉及近年，对伊拉克战争更是几乎只字不提。但是，钮金先生明确指出，本届政府的各项政策，若追本溯源，甚至可以上及那些开国元勋：托马斯杰佛逊自己就曾希望”建造一个自由的帝国。”

Mr Nugent points out that although there have been many accounts of specific events and ideas-among them the expulsion of the southern Indians down the Trail of Tears, Manifest Destiny or the Spanish-American war and the conquest of the Philippines-“telling the whole story reveals patterns that individual episodes do not.”
钮金先生指出，通史对具体事件和概念着墨颇多–南方印第安人被迫沿 “血泪之路”西迁、天定命运、美西大战和征服菲律宾–但是”展现完整的历史却能让人看到历史片段无法揭示的脉络。”

Expansion came in three phases. First, the drive from the Atlantic colonies to the Pacific, in which settler pressure, boosted by extraordinary demographic growth, demanded the acquisition of territory. In the second, America acquired colonies and protectorates around the Pacific and the Caribbean. With the second world war and the cold war, “a third phase of American empire-building, still with us, came into being.” Thus, Mr Nugent concludes, “we have always been an imperial nation, and remain so, but the shape of the American empire has shifted over time.”
美国的领土扩张分为三个阶段。第一个阶段，从大西洋沿岸的各殖民地推进到太平洋沿岸。在此阶段，受人口异常增长推动，定居人口的压力迫使要求获得领土。第二阶段，美国获得了沿太平洋和加勒比海沿岸的殖民地和保护领地。伴随着第二次世界大战和冷战，”构建美帝国的第三个阶段开始起步，并且这一阶段迄今仍未结束”。 因此,钮金先生得出结论：”美国过去是帝国，至今仍是，只不过美帝国的形态与时俱变罢了。”

Perhaps the most original section of the book is Mr Nugent’s account of how America, in negotiation with Britain, France and Spain at the end of the war of independence, acquired the territory between the Appalachian mountains and the Mississippi. He points out that in 1782 hardly any Americans were pressing to follow acquisition with settlement. So Benjamin Franklin, John Jay and John Adams were able to exploit the rivalry of the European powers to acquire this huge territory without either conquest or migration.
对于美国如何在独立战争尾期在与英国、法国和西班牙的谈判中获得了阿巴拉契亚山脉至密西西比河之间的领土，钮金先生在通史中作了解释，而这一部分或许也是全书最独具慧眼部分。钮金先生指出，几乎没有美国人在1782年迫切要求在获得领土后就进行定居。因此，本杰明•富兰克林、约翰•杰伊和约翰•亚当斯能够利用欧洲列强纷争在既未动一枪一卒也没有移居一人的情况下获得这一大片领土。

Successive chapters recount the Louisiana Purchase (Mr Nugent maintains that Napoleon almost certainly sold territory to which he did not have clear title); the exploitation of Napoleon’s invasion of Spain to acquire the Floridas; the Mexican war and the addition of the present states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and more at the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. He also shows how Britain, by brandishing naval power, was able to prevent America from taking over British Columbia. He goes on with William Seward’s purchase of Alaska and the colonial or pseudo-colonial adventures of the Spanish-American war and the early 20th century: Hawaii, Cuba, the Philippines, Guam, Panama, Haiti and Nicaragua.
《通史》后续章节对下列历史事件作了叙述：购买路易斯安娜（钮金先生坚信，拿破仑并不拥有其出售领土的明确产权，这一点几乎可以肯定的）；利用拿破仑入侵西班牙而获得佛罗里达；通过1848年的《瓜达卢佩一伊达尔戈条约》又获得如今的加利福尼亚、亚利桑那和新墨西哥等州。钮金先生叙述了英国如何凭借海军力量阻止美国占领英属哥伦比亚。通史还触及了及威廉•西华德购买阿拉斯加、美西战争这种变相的殖民冒险战争及二十世纪早期历史：夏威夷、古巴、菲律宾、关岛、巴拿马、海地和尼加拉瓜。

Mr Nugent interprets the whole of the American story in terms of the contrast between the ideals of the republic and the “unadmitted reality” of empire, explaining this as a consequence of the American claim to “exceptionalism”. His countrymen “should understand that their claim to exceptionalism is valid only in terms of their unparalleled growth and the remarkable natural resources their vast country has provided them. They are not exceptional, however, in any sense of moral innocence or purity.”
通过将共和理想与”不予承认的帝国事实”进行对照，钮金先生诠释了全部美国历史。他解释说，之所以存在”共和理想”和”帝国事实”这种状态是因为美国人自称”有权例外”。但是，美国人应当明白，只有凭藉美国无可匹敌的发展及其巨大的疆域所给予美国人的丰富自然资源，美国人才能自称有权例外。从道德行为上来看，美国人既不纯真，也毫无例外之处。

In this he undervalues, quite unfairly, the genuine originality of the American political achievement. If Americans have always had the habit of empire, they have also endowed the world with the ideal of popular sovereignty. Yet Mr Nugent is right to emphasise the persistence of the expansionist strand in American history. Because they believed in the unique nature of their liberty, Americans felt justified in expanding it. Usefully, and originally, Mr Nugent has explained the connection between the two “habits”, of coveting territory and of justifying expansion in the name of freedom.
不过，钮金先生在这一方面低估了美国政治成就真正具有独创意义的一面，这一点颇为不公。倘若美国人始终有着帝国作派的话，美国人还激起这个世界主权在民这样的理想。然而，对于强调美国历史上始终存在着一小撮扩张主义者，钮金先生并无不妥。美国人自认自己的自由具有独特性，因此有理由要扩大这种自由。对于觊觎他人领土并以自由的名义对自己的扩张加以辩护这两种”作派”之间的联系，钮金先生已经作了解释。这样的解释当然相当有价值，而钮金先生的独到之处亦在于此。

Book details

Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion
By Walter Nugent

Knopf; 416 pages; $30

译者：holyhermit   http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=12272&extra=page%3D1