美国霸权——辉煌已成回忆.doc

中英版：美国霸权辉煌已成回忆？ （英国金融时报）美国霸权辉煌已成回忆？ 作者：英国金融时报 爱德华卢斯 华盛顿报道 2009-12-31If a week is a long time in politics, a decade is starting to look like an age in geopolitics. Comparing the America that began the 21st century with the America of today is to witness a country that has in some ways quite radically altered its view of itself and its relationship to the world.如果说在政治领域，一周算是很长时间的话，那么从地缘政治的角度看，10年看上去就像是一个时代。把本世纪之初的美国与今日美国进行对比，就见证了一个国家在某些方面已根本改变对自身、以及其与全球关系的看法。In short, the metallic rust of decline has crept into the American soul. “You could argue that the first decade of the 21st century was the last decade of the American century,” says David Rothkopf, a former Clinton administration official and student of US foreign policy. “We are now entering the multipolar century.”简言之，衰落的锈迹已悄然潜入了美国的灵魂。“可以这样说：21世纪的头十年是美国世纪的最后十年，”前克林顿政府官员、美国外交政策专家戴维罗斯考夫(David Rothkopf)表示，“我们目前正步入多级世纪。”That change in perception is not readily backed up by statistics. With a rough 22 per cent share of global income, the US weighting in the global economy has barely shifted since 1975 when it hit its post-war nadir. Nor is it expressed in terms of declining US military power quite the opposite: the Pentagons budget remains larger than the next seven powers combined.统计数据并不是太支持这种感觉上的变化。美国约占全球总收入的22%，自1975年触及战后最低点以来，美国在全球经济中的权重几乎没什么变化。这种变化也没有体现为美国军力的不断下滑恰恰相反：五角大楼的预算仍超过排在美国之后的7个大国的总和。Indeed, by any static measure of power Barack Obamas America should be as predominant as the America Bill Clinton bequeathed to George W. Bush. “The US is the only power in the world that has the capability to launch a military venture anywhere in the world at any time,” says Richard Clarke, a former senior counter-terrorism adviser to Mr Clinton and Mr Bush. “And that is likely to remain the case for at least another 25 years.”实际上，以所有静态的实力标准衡量，巴拉克奥巴马(Barack Obama)领导下的美国，应该与比尔克林顿(Bill Clinton)留给乔治布什(George W. Bush)的美国处于同样的主宰地位。“美国是全球唯一有能力在任何时间、在全球任何一个地方发起军事行动的国家，”曾担任克林顿和布什高级反恐顾问的理查德克拉克(Richard Clarke)表示，“至少未来25年，情况可能仍将如此。”What then has caused this shift in perception over the last decade? The best way of encapsulating it is to contrast the high noon of globalisation during Mr Clintons 1990s what Republican critics liked to call the “holiday from history” with the highly-indebted America Mr Obama inherited from Mr Bush.那么，过去10年人们这种感觉上的变化是什么引起的呢？概括这一点的最佳方法，是把上世纪90年代克林顿任期内的全球化鼎盛时刻共和党批评家喜欢将这一时期称之为“历史的假期”与奥巴马从布什手中接过的负债累累的美国进行比较。Led by Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, Mr Clintons economic team spent the decade adding heft to the International Monetary Funds often intrusive attempts to restructure exposed economies from Mexico in 1994 to the victims of the “Asian flu” crisis in 1997. These countries had strayed from the orthodoxies of the Washington consensus and were required to don the hairshirt in recompense. Even Japan, which had no need of the IMF but which was still suffering from the collapse of its asset price bubble, was treated to high-handed lectures by visiting US officials.在那十年，以罗伯特鲁宾(Robert Rubin)和劳伦斯萨默斯(Lawrence Summers)为首的克林顿经济班子，为国际货币基金组织(IMF)通常带有干扰性的重组努力加压，对象是那些暴露在风险之下的经济体从1994年的墨西哥，到1997年亚洲金融危机的受害者们。这些国家已偏离了华盛顿共识的正统学说，作为惩罚，他们被要求穿上刚毛衬衣（译者注：指忏悔者贴身穿的衣服）。甚至连不需要IMF帮助、但遭受自身资产价格泡沫破裂之苦的日本，也受到了来访美国官员专横跋扈的说教。“I remember during the South Korea negotiations we had the IMF in one room and the South Koreans in another, but Larry Summers was the guy dictating the conditions from a third,” says Simon Johnson, a former IMF chief economist. “This was the peak of American economic hubris.”“我记得，在韩国谈判期间，IMF呆在一个房间，韩国呆在另一个房间，而拉里萨默斯(Larry Summers)则在第三个房间讲条件，”IMF前首席经济学家西蒙约翰逊(Simon Johnson)表示，“这是美国经济傲慢的巅峰时刻。”Today the US is cleaning up the mess from the largest financial collapse in history one that originated in the US and was caused by the actions of American public and private sector players. Perhaps the best way of expressing how much has changed is to recall the reaction of Chinese students in Beijing this year when Tim Geithner, the US Treasury secretary, assured them that Chinas dollar assets were in safe hands. His reassurances provoked laughter.如今，美国正在清理历史上最大规模的金融危机留下的乱局，这场危机源自于美国，是美国公共及私营部门参与者的行为所引发的。要说明情况发生了多大改变，最好的办法可能是回想一下今年中国学生对美国财长蒂姆盖特纳(Tim Geithner)发言的反应。当时盖特纳在北京向中国学生保证中国的美元资产是安全的，他的这番话引来了学生们的一片笑声。The biggest difference, therefore, is in Americas declining intellectual hegemony. In the 1990s the US was the model to which to aspire. It was Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, and an erstwhile cheerleader for the American model of capitalism, who pronounced the death of the Washington consensus at the G20 summit in London last April.因此，最大的区别在于美国知识霸权的衰落。上世纪90年代，美国是全球渴望效仿的典范。美国资本主义模式昔日的崇拜者、英国首相戈登布朗(Gordon Brown)，在去年4月20国集团(G20)伦敦峰会上宣告了华盛顿共识的终结。Nor is that disrepair confined to the US economic model. During the 1990s Francis Fukuyamas The End of History and the Last Man was required reading. It spelled out how the collapse of the Soviet Union had removed the last ideological competitor to the system of democratic capitalism best exemplified by the US. Nowadays, people talk about the “rise of the rest” in full awareness that many of the worlds rising powers most notably China are no closer to democracy than they were during the Clinton years.不仅限于美国的经济模式。在上世纪90年代，弗朗西斯福山(Francis Fukuyama)所著的历史的终点和最后的人(The End of History and the Last Man)一书是必读之作。该书讲述了苏联的解体是如何去除掉民主资本主义最后一个意识形态竞争者的，而美国是民主资本主义的最佳例证。如今，人们讨论“其它国家的崛起”时，心里完全清楚，全球许多正在崛起的大国特别是中国并不比克林顿时期更接近民主Mr Obamas election in November 2008 did a great deal to revivify the much-tarnished Brand America. Indeed, according to the Pew survey, almost all of the negative views of the US from the Bush years were wiped out by Mr Obamas victory. But the euphoria of “Obamamania” could not erase the consequences of an administration that had left the US with a chronic fiscal deficit and a military that was badly over-extended and which had been partly humiliated in the twin wars of Iraq and Afghanistan.2008年11月奥巴马的当选，对于重振大为逊色的美国形象颇有帮助。实际上，Pew调查显示，奥巴马的胜利，几乎消除了所有布什时期对美国的负面看法。但“奥巴马狂热”的欢欣无法消除上一届政府造成的后果，它给美国留下了长期的财政赤字，同时军事上严重过度扩张，而伊拉克和阿富汗战争在一定程度上令美国军队蒙羞。“It reminds me of that old joke when you ask someone for directions and he replies: “Well you wouldnt want to start from here”, says an outside adviser to Mr Obama on Afpak, as the related crises in Afghanistan and Pakistan are known. “The conditions that helped get Obama elected were the same ones that made it such a tough legacy to inherit.”“这让我想起一则老笑话，当你问某人方向时，他答道：你不会希望从这里开始，”一位就“阿富巴战争”(Afpak)向奥巴马提供建议的外部顾问表示，阿富汗和巴基斯坦的危机互相关联，这一点尽人皆知，“帮助奥巴马当选的条件，正是那些使之成为一项如此棘手的遗赠的条件。”Even if Mr Obama managed to break through the classic Washington gridlock and impose an IMF-style fiscal regime on the US economy, it would take many years to get back on to an even footing. In the meantime, most economists expect US growth rates to be lower, and unemployment to be higher, than they were before the crisis began.即便奥巴马成功打破典型的华盛顿僵局，并把一种IMF风格的财政机制强加给美国经济，也需要多年时间才能重新回到同等的地位。同时，多数经济学家预测，与危机爆发前相比，美国经济增长率将会下降，而失业率则将会上升。Furthermore, many believe that the US will remain vulnerable to doubts about its sovereign creditworthiness, particularly given the high proportion of US debt instruments held overseas China alone accounts for 13 per cent of US Treasury bonds.此外，许多人认为，美国的主权信誉仍将容易遭受质疑，尤其是考虑到很大比例的美国债务工具由海外持有仅中国就持有13%的美国国债。Over the next decade US publicly held debt is forecast to more than double to 85 per cent of gross domestic product the highest rate since the second world war. And that is without including the intragovernment debt in Social Security and Medicare, the government health scheme for the elderly, which would push US indebtedness well above 100 per cent of GDP during Mr Obamas second term. Hegemons cannot for long survive such rising indebtedness.未来十年，预计美国的公债将增加一倍以上，占到国内生产总值(GDP)的85%，为二战以来的最高水平。而这还不包括社会保障和医疗保险（Social Security and Medicare，针对老年人的政府健康计划）形式的政府内部债务，这将令美国债务在GDP中所占的比例在奥巴马第二任期内远远超过100%。霸权国家无法长期经受这种不断上升的债务。Then there are the caveats. In the late 1980s Paul Kennedys The Rise and Fall of Great Powers predicted that an America suffering from imperial overstretch would be overtaken by countries such as Japan. Who is to say that todays angst about Americas expected decline will not prove as laughable in retrospect as the “Japanic” that gripped the US in the late 1980s?因此，一些人发出了警告。上世纪80年代末，保罗肯尼迪(Paul Kennedy)在大国的兴衰(The Rise and Fall of Great Powers)中预测，权力过度扩张的美国将被日本等国家取代。有谁能说，回