美国人喜欢“领导权”——无论是这个字眼还是这东西本身。但其他人对美国的“领导权”却不看好，这也情有可原。“领导权”意味着，对他人拥有非正式的控制权，而事先无需得到他们的正式认可。正如约翰•霍普金斯大学(Johns Hopkins University)教授迈克尔•曼德尔鲍姆(Michael Mandelbaum)在《节俭的超级大国》(The Frugal Superpower)中所辩称的，美国自二战以来、尤其是冷战以来所行使的领导权，已使它成为“事实上的世界政府”。
美国在以各种方式维持秩序，有些方式你可在每晚的电视上看到，有些方式你则看不到。它保护着经济资源——尤其是石油与运输石油所需的航道。它向全球经济提供了一个监管框架和一种储备货币。但这个世界“政府”并不是经投票选出（至少不是经正式投票选出）的，并且自2003年入侵伊拉克以来，它的合法性就一直受到严重质疑。尽管如此，曼德尔鲍姆仍辩称：“美国的强大有利于地球上的大多数居民，甚至有利于许多不喜欢美国和一些积极反对美国的人。”如果美国实力下降，他们的利益将会受损。
而这正是现在所发生的事，曼德尔鲍姆写道。美国这个福利国家已不堪重负，如今婴儿潮一代又即将退休。它将通过削减国防与外交预算，来筹措支付养老金的资金。始于雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)倒闭的本次金融危机，又进一步收紧了美国的资源。它动摇了美国选民对执政精英们的信心（这一点屡屡出乎精英们的意料），并带来了巨额新增赤字。皮尤(Pew)最近一项调查显示，49%的美国人认为，美国应该“在国际事务中管好自己的事情”——这一比例创下该问题于1964年首次被提出以来的新高。
曼德尔鲍姆为自己制定的任务是，弄明白美国在资源减少的情况下，如何能够继续向世界提供其所依赖的政府。无疑，它会停止帮助他国重建，或人道主义干涉、民主推广、转型外交，或任何你所能列出的那些美国自摆脱对手苏联的约束后、禁不起诱惑而发动的可有可无的战争。它也不会再发动旨在改善索马里、波斯尼亚或海地人权状况的战争。
美国收敛拳脚并不意味着它建立起来的体系将会崩塌，甚至不意味着这一体系会衰落。曼德尔鲍姆认为，目前仅有三个国家有能力有动机颠覆这一体系：中国、俄罗斯和伊朗。他并不十分担心中国。毕竟，中国依赖现有体系来获取它所需的资源，以安抚其躁动不安的农村人口。他一针见血地指出，打破支撑中国贸易的现有安排，“将消除中国政权合法性的一大来源，迫使它转而依靠另一大来源，即民族主义，来维持自身权力。”该论点实际上是在支持现有体系。但它同时也是在说明，对中国有利的事情，也有利于世界。
曼德尔鲍姆认为，俄罗斯及伊朗的情况则不同。他认为北约(Nato)扩张至俄边境的政策，是美国自冷战结束以来构思得最糟糕的政策。俄罗斯领导层相信，美国欺骗利用了他们——曼德尔鲍姆认为，俄罗斯领导层这么想理由很充分。俄罗斯如今势必将阻挠美国的利益。让他们接受这一体系几乎是不可能的。伊朗的情况可能也是如此。对付这两个国家的最佳做法是，限制它们进行战略捣蛋所必需的资金。既然它们严重依赖石油，那么通过对汽油课以重税就可以达到这一目的。
曼德尔鲍姆长期以来一直在鼓吹汽油税“教义”，他的鼓吹颇具说服力。他指出，除了外交政策方面的理由外，我们还有环保与财政方面的理由来支持这类税收。但这类税收几乎不可能得到制定。曼德尔鲍姆自己认识到，依赖石油“的根本原因，与美国外交政策即将面临的经济约束的根本原因相同……即无法支付所耗资源的全部成本。”
曼德尔鲍姆一向理智且思维清晰。但最终，这或许是一本以更加坦率的态度讲述美国衰落的书，尽管曼德尔鲍姆自己不愿承认这一点。1950年时，世界上52%的商品与服务都是由美国生产的，美国能在二战后建立国际秩序便得益于此。这一秩序足够开放，使得众多国家从中受益。这一切都是由美国人开创的。但这并不能说明世界就必须由美国人来领导。
《节俭的超级大国——现金匮乏时代的美国全球领导力》(The Frugal Superpower- America's Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era)，迈克尔•曼德尔鲍姆(Michael Mandelbaum)著。出版方：Perseus集团PublicAffairs出版社。单价24.95美元。
译者/何黎
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001034097
Americans are fond of “leadership” — both the word and the thing — but others can be forgiven for taking a dimmer view of it. “Leadership” means having informal control over others without submitting to formal vetting by them. As Johns Hopkins University professor Michael Mandelbaum argues in The Frugal Superpower, the leadership the US has exercised since the second world war, and particularly since the cold war, has made it “the world's de facto government”.
The US keeps order in ways that you see on television every night and in ways that you don't. It protects economic resources — particularly oil and the shipping lanes through which it moves. The US provides the global economy with a regulatory framework and a reserve currency. No one voted for this world “government”, at least not formally, and its legitimacy has been sharply questioned since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Nonetheless, Mr Mandelbaum argues: “American power confers benefits on most inhabitants of the planet, even on many who dislike it and some who actively oppose it.” They would suffer were US power to diminish.
That is exactly what is happening now, Mr Mandelbaum writes. The US welfare state is overburdened, now the baby boom generation is retiring. Money to pay the pension cheques will be found by cutting defence and diplomatic budgets. The financial crisis that began with the collapse of Lehman Brothers straitened American resources even further. It shook US voters' confidence in governing elites (to the continuing surprise of the elites themselves), and led to massive new deficits. A recent Pew survey found that 49 per cent of Americans think the US ought to “mind its own business internationally” — a higher score than at any time since the question was first asked in 1964.
The task Mr Mandelbaum has set himself is to figure out how the US, with fewer resources, can continue to supply the world with the government it relies on. Certainly there will be an end to nation-building — or humanitarian intervention, or democracy promotion or transformational diplomacy, or whatever you want to call those optional wars the US was tempted into fighting once it was liberated from the constraint of a hostile Soviet Union. There will be no more wars to improve the human rights situation in Somalia, Bosnia or Haiti.
That the US will do less does not mean the system it built will collapse or even weaken. Mr Mandelbaum sees only three countries at present with the capacity and the incentive to upset it: China, Russia and Iran. He is not too worried about the first of these. In the end, China is dependent on the status quo for the economic resources that allow it to pacify its restless rural population. Breaking the arrangements that underpin Chinese trade, he rightly notes, “would remove one of [China's] two principal sources of political legitimacy, forcing it to rely, in order to remain in power, on the other one: nationalism.” That is indeed an argument in favour of the existing system. But it is also an argument that what is good for China is good for the world.
Russia and Iran are different, Mr Mandelbaum believes. He sees the expansion of Nato to Russia's borders as the worst-conceived US policy of the post-cold war era. Russia's leadership believe — with good reason, he thinks — that the US double-crossed and took advantage of it. Russia is now set on thwarting US interests. Getting them to buy into the system is next to impossible. The same may be true of Iran. The best course in dealing with both countries is to limit their wherewithal for strategic mischief. Since they are heavily dependent on oil, the way to do that is by imposing a heavy tax on petrol.
Mr Mandelbaum has been preaching the gospel of petrol taxes for a long time, and does so persuasively. He notes there are environmental and fiscal reasons to favour such taxes on top of the foreign-policy ones. But they have little chance of getting enacted. Mr Mandelbaum himself sees that dependence on oil “has the same fundamental cause as the impending economic constraints on American foreign policy … the failure to pay the full costs of what is consumed.”
The author is always reasonable and clear. In the end, though, maybe this is a more straightforward story of decadence and decline than he cares to admit. The US was able to establish an international order after the second world war because in 1950 it produced 52 per cent of the world's goods and services. The order is open enough to benefit a great variety of countries. That is a tribute to the Americans as founding fathers. It does not make them indispensable as leaders.
The writer is an FT columnist
The Frugal Superpowe- America's Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era
By Michael Mandelbaum
Public Affairs (Perseus), $24.95
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