America and the Middle East
美国与中东
How they got in, how to get out
升堂容易，退堂难
Jul 24th 2008
From The Economist print edition
Foresight and hindsight in the world’s bad places
(关于这块）是非之地的马前卒和马后炮
HOW did America get into its current mess in the Middle East? And how can it get out again? Kenneth Pollack’s book is all about the second question but he starts by making a confession relevant to the first. He was a champion of the invasion of Iraq. In 2002, in an influential book entitled “The Threatening Storm”,he argued the strategic and moral case for removing Saddam Hussein. Mr Pollack admits now that the intervention a year later was a fiasco, and that after such a disaster the inclination of most Americans is to turn away from the region completely and focus on problems at home. But that is not his view. His latest book is a powerful argument for continued, and perhaps even greater, American involvement in the Middle East.
美国是怎样一步一步卷入中东的泥潭？他又怎样才能脱身？肯尼斯·珀拉克的书是关于一本第二个问题的书，却是以一个与第一个问题相关的自白开篇。他曾支持美军入侵伊拉克。2002年，在他那本反响巨大的《威胁风暴：入侵伊拉克》中，他表明无论从战略角度还是道德角度，都应推翻萨达姆侯赛因的政权。珀拉克现在承认2003年的入侵是惨败，也承认事后绝大多数的美国人倾向于从该地区完全撤军继而全力解决国内的各种问题。但他不这么认为，并在这本新书中有力阐明了美国继续或是更大规模的参与中东事务的原因。
As befits a former CIA analyst and member of the National Security Council, Mr Pollack builds his case on a hard-headed examination of America’s interests in the region. Of these, the most important is oil. If a big percentage of it were suddenly to be removed from the market, the shock of higher prices could on some estimates spark a global recession akin to the Great Depression. American policy, he concludes, should therefore be designed principally to prevent “catastrophic oil disruptions”. This means guarding against possibilities such as a revolution in Saudi Arabia or a massive terrorist attack on the oil-supply network.
作为前CIA分析家、（美国）国家安全委员会成员，珀拉克的理由基于对美国在该地区利益的精明盘算。其中，石油为最。如果很大比例的石油突然从市场消失，随后的更高油价的冲击，据部分人士估计，将引发接近于大萧条的全球经济萧条。从而他得出结论，应该以防止”破坏性的石油供应中断”为原则决定美国的政策。这就意味着要防范沙特阿拉伯革命或石油供应网络的大规模恐怖袭击这类事件的发生。
You might expect a book that starts this way to dwell mainly on how America can maintain military forces in the region. Mr Pollack, however, wants nothing less than “an integrated grand strategy” to secure American interests for the long run. Such a strategy, he admits, may take “many decades”, just as it took nearly half a century for America to help Europe and East Asia repair themselves after the second world war. For this grand strategy to work, he says, America will first have to harmonise its separate policies towards Iraq, Iran and Israel. It must also transform the region’s politics and economics. That is to say-let no one accuse the chastened Mr Pollack of imperial hubris-America must help along the efforts of the locals, since outsiders “cannot possibly know how to change the society of another people”.
你可能认为该书会通篇论述美国如何在中东地区保持军事力量。然而，珀拉克谈论的可是一个确保美国长期利益的”整合大战略”。他承认，正如美国花费了近半个世纪时间帮助欧洲和东亚二战后重建，这样的战略需要”几十年”才能实现。他说，为了实现这一战略，美国要先协调对伊拉克、伊朗、以色列的分裂的政策。同时必须改变该地区的政经情况。那就是说—-大家不要指责长了教训的珀拉克像皇帝一样傲慢—–美国必须联合当地力量，因为外人”不可能知道如何改变另一个民族的社会”。
But do the people of the Middle East want what America wants for them? Given the growth of political Islam, and the fact that Mr Pollack deems many Arab countries to be on the point of revolution, perhaps not. Nonetheless, a policy of continuing to prop up repressive regimes is like “playing Russian roulette” with foreign policy, as America discovered when the shah’s fall turned Iran from staunch friend to implacable foe. Far better, he says, to encourage the region’s governments to address popular grievances by embracing political freedom and social equality.
但是中东地区的人民会配合么？考虑到伊斯兰政治力量不断增长，和珀拉克认为许多阿拉伯国家即将爆发革命的事实，答案是：不大可能。然而，继续支持压迫性政权就像拿外交政策”下俄罗斯轮盘赌的赌注”，正像伊朗国王政权垮台后，美国发现这个国家由一个忠实可靠的朋友，变成难以和解的强敌。珀拉克认为，鼓励中东地区的政府通过给予民众政治自由和社会平等要处理民间的不平，要比其他方法好的多。
This will not be easy, not least because of the hated Bush administration’s insincere or at least incompetent pursuit of this very policy. But Arabs tell pollsters that they want both democracy and Islam, and Mr Pollack reckons these two are compatible. Quoting an Egyptian activist who says that what her countrymen need is a job and a voice, he thinks America must find its path out of the desert by helping all Arabs get both.
说着容易做起来难，尤其是不得人心的布什政府在实行这项政策时缺乏诚意或是至少能力不足。但是阿拉伯的民意调查显示他们既要民主又要伊斯兰，珀拉克认为这两者可以并存。用一个埃及积极人士的话说，他的同胞需要的不过是一份糊口的工作和发言权。珀拉克援引该人士的话称美国只有帮助阿拉伯人拥有这两个权利，才能从中东泥潭中脱身。
A simple summary of Mr Pollack’s main ideas does scant justice to this thoughtful and informative book. None of its prescriptions is especially novel. The patient promotion of reform, careful containment of the spillover from Iraq, a policy of carrots and sticks (but no military pre-emption) for Iran, building the sinews of a Palestinian state: to all except isolationists and the few surviving neocons, this has become a fairly conventional prospectus for America’s post-Iraq policy in the Middle East. But Mr Pollack binds the strands together deftly and imparts a good deal of learning and wisdom along the way.
这个充满思考和信息的书不是简单的几句话就概括得了的。书中的建议并不特别新颖。不厌其烦的提倡改革、小心控制伊拉克的意外事件、对伊朗采取胡萝卜和大棒政策（但不采取武力强制）、完善巴勒斯坦政府：对于除孤立主义者和少数幸存的新保守主意人士外的所有人来说，这已成为美国对伊战后中东地区的常规章程。但珀拉克巧妙的把这些结合在一起，一路娓娓道来其中的学问和智慧。
Sir Lawrence Freedman is less interested in how America should proceed after Iraq and more in working out how it tied itself in such knots in the first place. As an historian, he is more tolerant than Mr Pollack of George Bush, noting that after September 11th this president faced a challenge more complex in some ways than the one Franklin Roosevelt had to deal with after Pearl Harbour in 1941. Whereas Roosevelt knew who the enemy was and what America would have to do, Mr Bush had to choose and name an enemy in a new sort of war without obvious rules, aims or front-lines. He did so, moreover, in a region where no power had exercised a consistently sure touch, and where America had long been torn between an underlying dissatisfaction with the state of affairs and the traditional instinct of a great power to protect the status quo from aggressive states or radical movements.
相对于美国对伊用武后应采取何种策略，劳伦斯•弗里德曼爵士对美国当初如何搅入泥潭更感兴趣。身为一名历史学家，他比珀拉克更能体会乔治.布什的难处。他指出，”9.11事件”事件后这位总统面临的挑战，从某些方面看来，比1941年珍珠港事件后富兰克林.罗斯福要应对的挑战还要复杂。罗斯福知道自己的敌人是谁和美国必需采取怎样的措施去应对，但布什必须选择和指名敌人，而且新型的战争没有明显的规则、目标和前线。况且，这是一个掌管势力不断交叠的地区，美国人既对这里的事态不满，大国传统的本能又让力图他维持现状、防止激进事件发生，因而左右为难，然而，布什做到了这些。
It is instructive to read these books together. Sir Lawrence’s aim is not to lay out a policy. He has no grand unifying theory of the Middle East. His aim is only to render the “most credible” account possible of momentous events such as the fall of the shah, the three wars in the Persian Gulf, invasion and jihad in Afghanistan, Jimmy Carter’s half-success at peacemaking at Camp David in 1978 and Bill Clinton’s failure there two decades later. All these and more formed the treacherous backdrop of American interests and alliances against which Mr Bush had to formulate his response to the attacks on the twin towers. Sir Lawrence’s subtle narrative is a marvel of concision, even over more than 500 pages. By the end it cannot but make the reader wonder how realistic it is to advocate, as Mr Pollack does, an “integrated grand strategy” capable of being sustained for decades in such a violent and unpredictable part of the world.
读读这些书会增长我们的见识。劳伦斯爵士作书的目的不在与制定一项政策。他并没提出关于中东问题的一套统一的大理论。他只想向我们展示对一些重大事件”最可靠”的描述，包括伊朗王室垮台、三次波斯湾战争、阿富汗被入侵和其境内伊斯兰圣战组织、吉米.卡特1978年斡旋的《戴维营协议》以及二十年后比尔克林顿在戴维营的再次斡旋等等。所有这些连同其他事件构成了美国利益集团和同盟面临的危险形势，这是在这一背景下，布什必须在”9.11事件”后制定随后的政策。劳伦斯爵士精妙的叙述简练至极，却依然超过500页。读者最后不得不怀疑，在这个动荡不安、无法预料的地区，珀拉克倡导的能延续数十年的”整合大战略”是否现实。
To that Mr Pollack has a simple answer, in the form of a question. What is the alternative? Thanks to its energy needs, America is locked into the region for the foreseeable future, even though the future is so hard to foresee in the unhappy Middle East. Since there are no quick fixes, it had better reconcile itself to the long slog. And although unexpected events will continue to knock it off course, it is more likely to succeed if it can cling to at least some general sense of where it is trying to go.
对此，珀拉克的回答很简单：还有其他办法么？鉴于对能源的需求，尽管不太平的中东地区的未来难以预测，可以预见美国未来仍将驻兵此地。正因为没有迅速的脱身之道，美国最好接受长期深陷泥潭的处境。尽管仍会有突发事件打断进程，但只要美国继续保有至少是大体应向哪个方向走的概念，它就更可能成功。
Book details
A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East
By Kenneth M. Pollack
Random House; 539 pages; $30
A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East
By Lawrence Freedman
PublicAffairs; 624 pages; $29.95. Weidenfeld & Nicolson; £20
译者：muxrrluer http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=12942&extra=page%3D1