Niall Ferguson
美国目前收缩的不仅仅是货币政策，更为重要的是地缘政治上的收缩。我所指的是我们目前所看到的美国在国家安全策略上的根本性转变。正如美联储的“缩减量化宽松规模”，美国国家安全策略的调整也意味着将在全球引起强烈反响。这种地缘政治上的收缩是否在起作用，看看美国总统奥巴马(Obama)上周三就基辅血腥镇压抗议者发表的言论就知道了。奥巴马当时表示，如果人们跨过界限，就会产生种种后果。
没有人把奥巴马的这一警告当回事。乌克兰政府的狙击手继续在基辅独立广场射杀抗议者。世人还记得奥巴马就叙利亚使用化学武器划出的红线，不过当叙利亚真的跨过这道红线时，奥巴马却视而不见。乌克兰上周五达成的和解协议要求提前举行大选，并组建联合政府，但这是否意味着乌克兰危机的终结还不得而知。不管怎么说，各方在协商时可没有考虑到奥巴马的意见。
地缘政治收缩策略可追溯至奥巴马第一届任期内令人困惑的外交政策决定。政策决定中容易理解的部分是奥巴马希望撤出伊拉克，只维持最低规模的驻军。不太容易理解的是奥巴马的阿富汗政策。由于内部存在分歧，美国政府在2009年达成的是一项典型的官方妥协：先是向阿富汗“大幅”增兵，然后在最后一批派往阿富汗的部队还没到达之前又承诺开始撤军。
从2009年起，当伊朗民众起来反抗该国的神权统治者时，奥巴马只能被动观望，之后又被名不符实的“阿拉伯之春”打乱了阵脚。同年在开罗演讲时，奥巴马的措辞模糊而奉承，丝毫看不出他后来对于埃及2011年革命的反应。2011年，成千上万的示威者涌向开罗解放广场，要求埃及独裁者、美国的长期盟友穆巴拉克(Hosni Mubarak)下台。
在穆斯林兄弟会(Muslim Brotherhood)赢得2012年的大选后，奥巴马表示支持由穆尔西(Mohammed Morsi)领导的政府。但去年奥巴马又支持推翻穆尔西的军事政变。至于利比亚，奥巴马在2011年国际社会驱逐卡扎菲(Moammar Gadhafi)的行动中处于次要位置，但在2012年美国驻班加西领馆遭遇致命袭击时，奥巴马显然完全不在状态。
叙利亚是美国二战后外交政策的一大败笔。当奥巴马原本可以有效干预的时候，他犹豫了。当他真的干预时，却发现已经徒劳无益。反抗阿萨德(Bashar Assad)政权的自由叙利亚军(Bashar Assad)没有足够的援助来抵御，更别说是打败效忠于阿萨德的军队。奥巴马空泛地说（在美国国会同意的前提下）将对叙利亚发起空袭，将主动权拱手交给了俄罗斯。美国国务卿克里(John Kerry)上周也承认，去年在俄罗斯的协调下达成的让阿萨德政权交出化学武器的协议只是用来违背的。
美国的这种不作为是一场灾难。至少有13万叙利亚平民遇难，900万人被效忠阿萨德的部队赶出家园。至少有11,000人被迫害致死，还有数十万人被围困，他们的食品和药品供应在狂轰滥炸下被切断。
更糟糕的是，叙利亚内战已经升级为逊尼和什叶派穆斯林之间的派别战争，伊拉克伊斯兰酋长国、叙利亚以及努斯拉阵线等圣战团体与阿萨德对立，而什叶派真主党和伊朗圣城军则为阿萨德而战。与此同时，来自叙利亚的难民潮和武装人员的自由流动也影响了黎巴嫩、约旦和伊拉克等邻国的稳定。伊拉克的情况尤其可怕。该国暴力升级，特别是在安巴尔省。根据总部位于英国的非政府组织Body Count的统计，2013年伊拉克有9,475名平民遇难，2008年这一数字为10,130人。
要想了解美国这种战略性不作为的范围，布什政府所谓“大中东”地区的总死亡人数统计是最好的参照。所谓“大中东”地区，从本质上说就是从摩洛哥一直延伸到巴基斯坦、主要为穆斯林国家的这个地带。根据国际战略研究所(International Institute of Strategic Studies, 简称：IISS)的数据，2013年该地区有超过75,000人死于暴力冲突或恐怖主义袭击，为IISS武装冲突数据库1998年建立以来的最高死亡人数。1998年时大中东地区因冲突导致的死亡者人数在全球占38%；而去年这一比例为78%。
奥巴马(Obama)的支持者最喜欢把他描画成和平主义者，而有别于布什(George W. Bush)的好战形象。但现在几乎可以肯定的是，若将奥巴马的这个任期与上个任期做个比较，大中东地区有更多人死于暴力冲突。
奥巴马1月份接受《纽约客》(New Yorker)杂志采访时表示，有些事情真的让人吃惊。他宣称，“我现在甚至真的不需要乔治•凯南(George Kennan)了。”他所指的是已故的美国外交家和历史学家，他富有见地，担当罗斯福(Franklin Roosevelt)及后来历任总统的外交政策顾问。但奥巴马接下来就他自己规划的中东战略作出的说明却恰恰说明，乔治•凯南正是他需要的人：他谙熟中东地区情况，具有为美国制定可靠战略的经验，比如他在上世纪四十年代末提出了对当时的苏联(Soviet Union)的遏制政策。
那么奥巴马的战略到底是什么呢？奥巴马在《纽约客》上解释说，“如果逊尼和什叶派不再互相仇杀，就完全符合该地区人民的利益了”。“虽然这并不能彻底解决问题，但如果我们可以让伊朗以负责任的方式采取行动，那么你会发现，伊朗与逊尼派或以逊尼派为主的海湾国家之间将形成一种平衡。”
他说，“另外，只要巴勒斯坦问题能得到化解，那么还会建立另一种新的平衡，以色列甚至可与逊尼派国家至少在正常化外交关系方面建立一种非正式的联盟。”奥巴马显然一直在研读有关国际关系的文章，而且了解“势力均衡”。奥巴马的分析存在的问题是，他并没有解释为何上述任何一个利益相关方会在他的“平衡法令”上签字。
正如尼克森(Nixon)时代的国务卿亨利•基辛格(Henry Kissinger) 50多年前在他的著作《重建的世界》(A World Restored)中所指出的那样，平衡并非一种自然发生的现象。基辛格写道，“力量均衡只能限制侵略的范围，却并不能阻止侵略。”“力量均衡是历史教训的这样一种经典表述：如果没有抵御侵略的实质性护卫，没有任何一种秩序是安全的。”
在19世纪英国扮演着“平衡者”的角色——即有权干预欧洲事务从而令局面保持平衡的超级大国。目前美国收缩地缘政治战线带来的问题是，奥巴马不愿在中东扮演“平衡者”的角色。去年9月份他层呼吁不对叙利亚采取行动，对于这不光彩的一幕他的解释是，美国不是世界警察。
但是只进行斡旋而不采取行动几乎也是不可想像的。伊朗仍是一股反叛的力量；该国并没有放弃核计划的明显意图；在维也纳举行会谈也只是一个幌子。在不断升级的地区教派冲突中，什叶派和逊尼派两方均有意扩大自己的势力范围，他们都把目标瞄准了后美国时代的中东地区领导权。
收缩地缘政治战线是一种多面现象。从国内政治和财政角度看，本届政府对军事开支进行了大幅削减。五角大楼的预算在许多方面都超标了，这一点毋庸置疑。但是就像菲利普•泽利科(Philip Zelikow)近期所说，在削减支出的同时，政府并没有在美国未来军事需求的问题上达成任何清晰的共识。
迄今为止，本届美国政府最接近“大战略”的一个举动就是2012年宣布把重心由中东向亚太倾斜。但是如果离开中东时留下了局势不稳的火种，在亚太加剧了地区紧张局势，则这种重心的转移没有任何意义。切实可行的做法是真正采取一些措施在远东和中东建立起一种联系。眼下更倚重中东石油的是中国人，而不是美国人。然而目前所有已经完成的重心转移活动只是引起了北京方面的猜忌，认为美国正在考虑某种“围堵”中国的政策。
经过再三思量，奥巴马需要的或许不是凯南，而是基辛格。基辛格曾表示，实现和平并不像想像的那么容易。在那些回顾起来似乎最为和平的岁月，人们寻找和平的意愿最低。而在人们似乎无休止地寻找和平的那些年代，又似乎最难获得安宁。当和平（其定义为避免战争）被作为首要目标时......国际体系就会处在某个最霸道成员的摆布之下。
在全球依旧存在着这么多霸道国家的时候，上面这些话值得奥巴马好好想想。
本文作者弗格森是哈佛大学的历史学教授，同时也是斯坦福大学胡佛研究所(Hoover Institution)的高级研究员。他最新的著作是《The Great Degeneration》，由企鹅出版社(Penguin Press) 2013年出版。
2
013年6月，前美国联邦储备委员会(Federal Reserve, 简称：美联储)主席贝南克(Ben Bernanke)宣布将缩减量化宽松规模，新兴市场股市和货币自那以来遭遇了沉重打击。为何谈到（到目前为止只是）温和削减大规模资产购买计划会对美国之外的市场产生如此巨大的反响，现在还不得而知。从经济角度最好的解释是，由于缩减量化宽松规模意味着未来美国利率会上升，这一预期导致资本撤出了新兴市场。这种解释虽然看似合理，但也并非完全如此。美国目前收缩的不仅仅是货币政策，更为重要的是地缘政治上的收缩。我所指的是我们目前所看到的美国在国家安全策略上的根本性转变。正如美联储的“缩减量化宽松规模”，美国国家安全策略的调整也意味着将在全球引起强烈反响。这种地缘政治上的收缩是否在起作用，看看美国总统奥巴马(Obama)上周三就基辅血腥镇压抗议者发表的言论就知道了。奥巴马当时表示，如果人们跨过界限，就会产生种种后果。
AFP/Getty Images; Bloomberg (2); Getty Images (2)
奥巴马和他的外交政策团队。从左至右：哈格尔(Chuck Hagel)、赖斯(Susan Rice)、奥巴马和拜登(Joe Biden)。
地缘政治收缩策略可追溯至奥巴马第一届任期内令人困惑的外交政策决定。政策决定中容易理解的部分是奥巴马希望撤出伊拉克，只维持最低规模的驻军。不太容易理解的是奥巴马的阿富汗政策。由于内部存在分歧，美国政府在2009年达成的是一项典型的官方妥协：先是向阿富汗“大幅”增兵，然后在最后一批派往阿富汗的部队还没到达之前又承诺开始撤军。
从2009年起，当伊朗民众起来反抗该国的神权统治者时，奥巴马只能被动观望，之后又被名不符实的“阿拉伯之春”打乱了阵脚。同年在开罗演讲时，奥巴马的措辞模糊而奉承，丝毫看不出他后来对于埃及2011年革命的反应。2011年，成千上万的示威者涌向开罗解放广场，要求埃及独裁者、美国的长期盟友穆巴拉克(Hosni Mubarak)下台。
在穆斯林兄弟会(Muslim Brotherhood)赢得2012年的大选后，奥巴马表示支持由穆尔西(Mohammed Morsi)领导的政府。但去年奥巴马又支持推翻穆尔西的军事政变。至于利比亚，奥巴马在2011年国际社会驱逐卡扎菲(Moammar Gadhafi)的行动中处于次要位置，但在2012年美国驻班加西领馆遭遇致命袭击时，奥巴马显然完全不在状态。
叙利亚是美国二战后外交政策的一大败笔。当奥巴马原本可以有效干预的时候，他犹豫了。当他真的干预时，却发现已经徒劳无益。反抗阿萨德(Bashar Assad)政权的自由叙利亚军(Bashar Assad)没有足够的援助来抵御，更别说是打败效忠于阿萨德的军队。奥巴马空泛地说（在美国国会同意的前提下）将对叙利亚发起空袭，将主动权拱手交给了俄罗斯。美国国务卿克里(John Kerry)上周也承认，去年在俄罗斯的协调下达成的让阿萨德政权交出化学武器的协议只是用来违背的。
美国的这种不作为是一场灾难。至少有13万叙利亚平民遇难，900万人被效忠阿萨德的部队赶出家园。至少有11,000人被迫害致死，还有数十万人被围困，他们的食品和药品供应在狂轰滥炸下被切断。
更糟糕的是，叙利亚内战已经升级为逊尼和什叶派穆斯林之间的派别战争，伊拉克伊斯兰酋长国、叙利亚以及努斯拉阵线等圣战团体与阿萨德对立，而什叶派真主党和伊朗圣城军则为阿萨德而战。与此同时，来自叙利亚的难民潮和武装人员的自由流动也影响了黎巴嫩、约旦和伊拉克等邻国的稳定。伊拉克的情况尤其可怕。该国暴力升级，特别是在安巴尔省。根据总部位于英国的非政府组织Body Count的统计，2013年伊拉克有9,475名平民遇难，2008年这一数字为10,130人。
要想了解美国这种战略性不作为的范围，布什政府所谓“大中东”地区的总死亡人数统计是最好的参照。所谓“大中东”地区，从本质上说就是从摩洛哥一直延伸到巴基斯坦、主要为穆斯林国家的这个地带。根据国际战略研究所(International Institute of Strategic Studies, 简称：IISS)的数据，2013年该地区有超过75,000人死于暴力冲突或恐怖主义袭击，为IISS武装冲突数据库1998年建立以来的最高死亡人数。1998年时大中东地区因冲突导致的死亡者人数在全球占38%；而去年这一比例为78%。
奥巴马(Obama)的支持者最喜欢把他描画成和平主义者，而有别于布什(George W. Bush)的好战形象。但现在几乎可以肯定的是，若将奥巴马的这个任期与上个任期做个比较，大中东地区有更多人死于暴力冲突。
奥巴马1月份接受《纽约客》(New Yorker)杂志采访时表示，有些事情真的让人吃惊。他宣称，“我现在甚至真的不需要乔治•凯南(George Kennan)了。”他所指的是已故的美国外交家和历史学家，他富有见地，担当罗斯福(Franklin Roosevelt)及后来历任总统的外交政策顾问。但奥巴马接下来就他自己规划的中东战略作出的说明却恰恰说明，乔治•凯南正是他需要的人：他谙熟中东地区情况，具有为美国制定可靠战略的经验，比如他在上世纪四十年代末提出了对当时的苏联(Soviet Union)的遏制政策。
那么奥巴马的战略到底是什么呢？奥巴马在《纽约客》上解释说，“如果逊尼和什叶派不再互相仇杀，就完全符合该地区人民的利益了”。“虽然这并不能彻底解决问题，但如果我们可以让伊朗以负责任的方式采取行动，那么你会发现，伊朗与逊尼派或以逊尼派为主的海湾国家之间将形成一种平衡。”
他说，“另外，只要巴勒斯坦问题能得到化解，那么还会建立另一种新的平衡，以色列甚至可与逊尼派国家至少在正常化外交关系方面建立一种非正式的联盟。”奥巴马显然一直在研读有关国际关系的文章，而且了解“势力均衡”。奥巴马的分析存在的问题是，他并没有解释为何上述任何一个利益相关方会在他的“平衡法令”上签字。
正如尼克森(Nixon)时代的国务卿亨利•基辛格(Henry Kissinger) 50多年前在他的著作《重建的世界》(A World Restored)中所指出的那样，平衡并非一种自然发生的现象。基辛格写道，“力量均衡只能限制侵略的范围，却并不能阻止侵略。”“力量均衡是历史教训的这样一种经典表述：如果没有抵御侵略的实质性护卫，没有任何一种秩序是安全的。”
在19世纪英国扮演着“平衡者”的角色——即有权干预欧洲事务从而令局面保持平衡的超级大国。目前美国收缩地缘政治战线带来的问题是，奥巴马不愿在中东扮演“平衡者”的角色。去年9月份他层呼吁不对叙利亚采取行动，对于这不光彩的一幕他的解释是，美国不是世界警察。
但是只进行斡旋而不采取行动几乎也是不可想像的。伊朗仍是一股反叛的力量；该国并没有放弃核计划的明显意图；在维也纳举行会谈也只是一个幌子。在不断升级的地区教派冲突中，什叶派和逊尼派两方均有意扩大自己的势力范围，他们都把目标瞄准了后美国时代的中东地区领导权。
收缩地缘政治战线是一种多面现象。从国内政治和财政角度看，本届政府对军事开支进行了大幅削减。五角大楼的预算在许多方面都超标了，这一点毋庸置疑。但是就像菲利普•泽利科(Philip Zelikow)近期所说，在削减支出的同时，政府并没有在美国未来军事需求的问题上达成任何清晰的共识。
迄今为止，本届美国政府最接近“大战略”的一个举动就是2012年宣布把重心由中东向亚太倾斜。但是如果离开中东时留下了局势不稳的火种，在亚太加剧了地区紧张局势，则这种重心的转移没有任何意义。切实可行的做法是真正采取一些措施在远东和中东建立起一种联系。眼下更倚重中东石油的是中国人，而不是美国人。然而目前所有已经完成的重心转移活动只是引起了北京方面的猜忌，认为美国正在考虑某种“围堵”中国的政策。
经过再三思量，奥巴马需要的或许不是凯南，而是基辛格。基辛格曾表示，实现和平并不像想像的那么容易。在那些回顾起来似乎最为和平的岁月，人们寻找和平的意愿最低。而在人们似乎无休止地寻找和平的那些年代，又似乎最难获得安宁。当和平（其定义为避免战争）被作为首要目标时......国际体系就会处在某个最霸道成员的摆布之下。
在全球依旧存在着这么多霸道国家的时候，上面这些话值得奥巴马好好想想。
本文作者弗格森是哈佛大学的历史学教授，同时也是斯坦福大学胡佛研究所(Hoover Institution)的高级研究员。他最新的著作是《The Great Degeneration》，由企鹅出版社(Penguin Press) 2013年出版。
（本文版权归道琼斯公司所有，未经许可不得翻译或转载。）
Niall Ferguson
Since former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke uttered the word 'taper' in June 2013, emerging-market stocks and currencies have taken a beating. It is not clear why talk of (thus far) modest reductions in the Fed's large-scale asset-purchase program should have had such big repercussions outside the United States. The best economic explanation is that capital has been flowing out of emerging markets in anticipation of future rises in U.S. interest rates, of which the taper is a harbinger. While plausible, that cannot be the whole story.
For it is not only U.S. monetary policy that is being tapered. Even more significant is the 'geopolitical taper.' By this I mean the fundamental shift we are witnessing in the national-security strategy of the U.S.--and like the Fed's tapering, this one also means big repercussions for the world. To see the geopolitical taper at work, consider President Obama's comment Wednesday on the horrific killings of protesters in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. The president said: 'There will be consequences if people step over the line.'
No one took that warning seriously--Ukrainian government snipers kept on killing people in Independence Square regardless. The world remembers the red line that Mr. Obama once drew over the use of chemical weapons in Syria . . . and then ignored once the line had been crossed. The compromise deal reached on Friday in Ukraine calling for early elections and a coalition government may or may not spell the end of the crisis. In any case, the negotiations were conducted without concern for Mr. Obama.
The origins of America's geopolitical taper as a strategy can be traced to the confused foreign-policy decisions of the president's first term. The easy part to understand was that Mr. Obama wanted out of Iraq and to leave behind the minimum of U.S. commitments. Less easy to understand was his policy in Afghanistan. After an internal administration struggle, the result in 2009 was a classic bureaucratic compromise: There was a 'surge' of additional troops, accompanied by a commitment to begin withdrawing before the last of these troops had even arrived.
Having passively watched when the Iranian people rose up against their theocratic rulers beginning in 2009, the president was caught off balance by the misnamed 'Arab Spring.' The vague blandishments of his Cairo speech that year offered no hint of how he would respond when crowds thronged Tahrir Square in 2011 calling for the ouster of a longtime U.S. ally, the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak.
Mr. Obama backed the government led by Mohammed Morsi, after the Muslim Brotherhood won the 2012 elections. Then the president backed the military coup against Mr. Morsi last year. On Libya, Mr. Obama took a back seat in an international effort to oust Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, but was apparently not in the vehicle at all when the American mission at Benghazi came under fatal attack in 2012.
Syria has been one of the great fiascos of post-World War II American foreign policy. When President Obama might have intervened effectively, he hesitated. When he did intervene, it was ineffectual. The Free Syrian Army of rebels fighting against the regime of Bashar Assad has not been given sufficient assistance to hold together, much less to defeat the forces loyal to Assad. The president's non-threat to launch airstrikes--if Congress agreed--handed the initiative to Russia. Last year's Russian-brokered agreement to get Assad to hand over his chemical weapons is being honored only in the breach, as Secretary of State John Kerry admitted last week.
The result of this U.S. inaction is a disaster. At a minimum, 130,000 Syrian civilians have been killed and nine million driven from their homes by forces loyal to the tyrant. At least 11,000 people have been tortured to death. Hundreds of thousands are besieged, their supplies of food and medicine cut off, as bombs and shells rain down.
Worse, the Syrian civil war has escalated into a sectarian proxy war between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, with jihadist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and the Nusra Front fighting against Assad, while the Shiite Hezbollah and the Iranian Quds Force fight for him. Meanwhile, a flood of refugees from Syria and the free movement of militants is helping to destabilize neighboring states like Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. The situation in Iraq is especially dire. Violence is escalating, especially in Anbar province. According to Iraq Body Count, a British-based nongovernmental organization, 9,475 Iraqi civilians were killed in 2013, compared with 10,130 in 2008.
The scale of the strategic U.S. failure is best seen in the statistics for total fatalities in the region the Bush administration called the 'Greater Middle East'--essentially the swath of mainly Muslim countries stretching from Morocco to Pakistan. In 2013, according to the International Institute of Strategic Studies, more than 75,000 people died as a result of armed conflict in this region or as a result of terrorism originating there, the highest number since the IISS Armed Conflict database began in 1998. Back then, the Greater Middle East accounted for 38% of conflict-related deaths in the world; last year it was 78%.
Mr. Obama's supporters like nothing better than to portray him as the peacemaker to George W. Bush's warmonger. But it is now almost certain that more people have died violent deaths in the Greater Middle East during this presidency than during the last one.
In a January interview with the New Yorker magazine, the president said something truly stunning. 'I don't really even need George Kennan right now,' he asserted, referring to the late American diplomat and historian whose insights informed the foreign policy of presidents from Franklin Roosevelt on. Yet what Mr. Obama went on to say about his self-assembled strategy for the Middle East makes it clear that a George Kennan is exactly what he needs: someone with the regional expertise and experience to craft a credible strategy for the U.S., as Kennan did when he proposed the 'containment' of the Soviet Union in the late 1940s.
So what exactly is the president's strategy? 'It would be profoundly in the interest of citizens throughout the region if Sunnis and Shiites weren't intent on killing each other,' the president explained in the New Yorker. 'And although it would not solve the entire problem, if we were able to get Iran to operate in a responsible fashion . . . you could see an equilibrium developing between Sunni, or predominantly Sunni, Gulf states and Iran.'
Moreover, he continued, if only 'the Palestinian issue' could be 'unwound,' then another 'new equilibrium' could be created, allowing Israel to 'enter into even an informal alliance with at least normalized diplomatic relations' with the Sunni states. The president has evidently been reading up about international relations and has reached the chapter on the 'balance of power.' The trouble with his analysis is that it does not explain why any of the interested parties should sign up for his balancing act.
As Nixon-era Secretary of State Henry Kissinger argued more than half a century ago in his book 'A World Restored,' balance is not a naturally occurring phenomenon. 'The balance of power only limits the scope of aggression but does not prevent it,' Dr. Kissinger wrote. 'The balance of power is the classic expression of the lesson of history that no order is safe without physical safeguards against aggression.'
What that implied in the 19th century was that Britain was the 'balancer'--the superpower that retained the option to intervene in Europe to preserve balance. The problem with the current U.S. geopolitical taper is that President Obama is not willing to play that role in the Middle East today. In his ignominious call to inaction on Syria in September, he explicitly said it: 'America is not the world's policeman.'
But balance without an enforcer is almost inconceivable. Iran remains a revolutionary power; it has no serious intention of giving up its nuclear-arms program; the talks in Vienna are a sham. Both sides in the escalating regional 'Clash of Sects'--Shiite and Sunni--have an incentive to increase their aggression because they see hegemony in a post-American Middle East as an attainable goal.
The geopolitical taper is a multifaceted phenomenon. For domestic political as well as fiscal reasons, this administration is presiding over deep cuts in military spending. No doubt the Pentagon's budget is in many respects bloated. But, as Philip Zelikow has recently argued, the cuts are taking place without any clear agreement on what the country's future military needs are.
Thus far, the U.S. 'pivot' from the Middle East to the Asia Pacific region, announced in 2012, is the nearest this administration has come to a grand strategy. But such a shift of resources makes no sense if it leaves the former region ablaze and merely adds to tension in the latter. A serious strategy would surely make some attempt to establish linkage between the Far East and the Middle East. It is the Chinese, not the Americans, who are becoming increasingly dependent on Middle Eastern oil. Yet all the pivot achieved was to arouse suspicion in Beijing that some kind of 'containment' of China is being contemplated.
Maybe, on reflection, it is not a Kennan that Mr. Obama needs, but a Kissinger. 'The attainment of peace is not as easy as the desire for it,' Dr. Kissinger once observed. 'Those ages which in retrospect seem most peaceful were least in search of peace. Those whose quest for it seems unending appear least able to achieve tranquillity. Whenever peace--conceived as the avoidance of war--has been the primary objective . . . the international system has been at the mercy of [its] most ruthless member.'
Those are words this president, at a time when there is much ruthlessness abroad in the world, would do well to ponder.
Mr. Ferguson is a history professor at Harvard and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. His most recent book is 'The Great Degeneration' (Penguin Press, 2013).
Since former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke uttered the word 'taper' in June 2013, emerging-market stocks and currencies have taken a beating. It is not clear why talk of (thus far) modest reductions in the Fed's large-scale asset-purchase program should have had such big repercussions outside the United States. The best economic explanation is that capital has been flowing out of emerging markets in anticipation of future rises in U.S. interest rates, of which the taper is a harbinger. While plausible, that cannot be the whole story.
For it is not only U.S. monetary policy that is being tapered. Even more significant is the 'geopolitical taper.' By this I mean the fundamental shift we are witnessing in the national-security strategy of the U.S.--and like the Fed's tapering, this one also means big repercussions for the world. To see the geopolitical taper at work, consider President Obama's comment Wednesday on the horrific killings of protesters in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. The president said: 'There will be consequences if people step over the line.'
No one took that warning seriously--Ukrainian government snipers kept on killing people in Independence Square regardless. The world remembers the red line that Mr. Obama once drew over the use of chemical weapons in Syria . . . and then ignored once the line had been crossed. The compromise deal reached on Friday in Ukraine calling for early elections and a coalition government may or may not spell the end of the crisis. In any case, the negotiations were conducted without concern for Mr. Obama.
The origins of America's geopolitical taper as a strategy can be traced to the confused foreign-policy decisions of the president's first term. The easy part to understand was that Mr. Obama wanted out of Iraq and to leave behind the minimum of U.S. commitments. Less easy to understand was his policy in Afghanistan. After an internal administration struggle, the result in 2009 was a classic bureaucratic compromise: There was a 'surge' of additional troops, accompanied by a commitment to begin withdrawing before the last of these troops had even arrived.
Having passively watched when the Iranian people rose up against their theocratic rulers beginning in 2009, the president was caught off balance by the misnamed 'Arab Spring.' The vague blandishments of his Cairo speech that year offered no hint of how he would respond when crowds thronged Tahrir Square in 2011 calling for the ouster of a longtime U.S. ally, the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak.
Mr. Obama backed the government led by Mohammed Morsi, after the Muslim Brotherhood won the 2012 elections. Then the president backed the military coup against Mr. Morsi last year. On Libya, Mr. Obama took a back seat in an international effort to oust Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, but was apparently not in the vehicle at all when the American mission at Benghazi came under fatal attack in 2012.
Syria has been one of the great fiascos of post-World War II American foreign policy. When President Obama might have intervened effectively, he hesitated. When he did intervene, it was ineffectual. The Free Syrian Army of rebels fighting against the regime of Bashar Assad has not been given sufficient assistance to hold together, much less to defeat the forces loyal to Assad. The president's non-threat to launch airstrikes--if Congress agreed--handed the initiative to Russia. Last year's Russian-brokered agreement to get Assad to hand over his chemical weapons is being honored only in the breach, as Secretary of State John Kerry admitted last week.
The result of this U.S. inaction is a disaster. At a minimum, 130,000 Syrian civilians have been killed and nine million driven from their homes by forces loyal to the tyrant. At least 11,000 people have been tortured to death. Hundreds of thousands are besieged, their supplies of food and medicine cut off, as bombs and shells rain down.
Worse, the Syrian civil war has escalated into a sectarian proxy war between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, with jihadist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and the Nusra Front fighting against Assad, while the Shiite Hezbollah and the Iranian Quds Force fight for him. Meanwhile, a flood of refugees from Syria and the free movement of militants is helping to destabilize neighboring states like Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. The situation in Iraq is especially dire. Violence is escalating, especially in Anbar province. According to Iraq Body Count, a British-based nongovernmental organization, 9,475 Iraqi civilians were killed in 2013, compared with 10,130 in 2008.
The scale of the strategic U.S. failure is best seen in the statistics for total fatalities in the region the Bush administration called the 'Greater Middle East'--essentially the swath of mainly Muslim countries stretching from Morocco to Pakistan. In 2013, according to the International Institute of Strategic Studies, more than 75,000 people died as a result of armed conflict in this region or as a result of terrorism originating there, the highest number since the IISS Armed Conflict database began in 1998. Back then, the Greater Middle East accounted for 38% of conflict-related deaths in the world; last year it was 78%.
Mr. Obama's supporters like nothing better than to portray him as the peacemaker to George W. Bush's warmonger. But it is now almost certain that more people have died violent deaths in the Greater Middle East during this presidency than during the last one.
In a January interview with the New Yorker magazine, the president said something truly stunning. 'I don't really even need George Kennan right now,' he asserted, referring to the late American diplomat and historian whose insights informed the foreign policy of presidents from Franklin Roosevelt on. Yet what Mr. Obama went on to say about his self-assembled strategy for the Middle East makes it clear that a George Kennan is exactly what he needs: someone with the regional expertise and experience to craft a credible strategy for the U.S., as Kennan did when he proposed the 'containment' of the Soviet Union in the late 1940s.
So what exactly is the president's strategy? 'It would be profoundly in the interest of citizens throughout the region if Sunnis and Shiites weren't intent on killing each other,' the president explained in the New Yorker. 'And although it would not solve the entire problem, if we were able to get Iran to operate in a responsible fashion . . . you could see an equilibrium developing between Sunni, or predominantly Sunni, Gulf states and Iran.'
Moreover, he continued, if only 'the Palestinian issue' could be 'unwound,' then another 'new equilibrium' could be created, allowing Israel to 'enter into even an informal alliance with at least normalized diplomatic relations' with the Sunni states. The president has evidently been reading up about international relations and has reached the chapter on the 'balance of power.' The trouble with his analysis is that it does not explain why any of the interested parties should sign up for his balancing act.
As Nixon-era Secretary of State Henry Kissinger argued more than half a century ago in his book 'A World Restored,' balance is not a naturally occurring phenomenon. 'The balance of power only limits the scope of aggression but does not prevent it,' Dr. Kissinger wrote. 'The balance of power is the classic expression of the lesson of history that no order is safe without physical safeguards against aggression.'
What that implied in the 19th century was that Britain was the 'balancer'--the superpower that retained the option to intervene in Europe to preserve balance. The problem with the current U.S. geopolitical taper is that President Obama is not willing to play that role in the Middle East today. In his ignominious call to inaction on Syria in September, he explicitly said it: 'America is not the world's policeman.'
But balance without an enforcer is almost inconceivable. Iran remains a revolutionary power; it has no serious intention of giving up its nuclear-arms program; the talks in Vienna are a sham. Both sides in the escalating regional 'Clash of Sects'--Shiite and Sunni--have an incentive to increase their aggression because they see hegemony in a post-American Middle East as an attainable goal.
The geopolitical taper is a multifaceted phenomenon. For domestic political as well as fiscal reasons, this administration is presiding over deep cuts in military spending. No doubt the Pentagon's budget is in many respects bloated. But, as Philip Zelikow has recently argued, the cuts are taking place without any clear agreement on what the country's future military needs are.
Thus far, the U.S. 'pivot' from the Middle East to the Asia Pacific region, announced in 2012, is the nearest this administration has come to a grand strategy. But such a shift of resources makes no sense if it leaves the former region ablaze and merely adds to tension in the latter. A serious strategy would surely make some attempt to establish linkage between the Far East and the Middle East. It is the Chinese, not the Americans, who are becoming increasingly dependent on Middle Eastern oil. Yet all the pivot achieved was to arouse suspicion in Beijing that some kind of 'containment' of China is being contemplated.
Maybe, on reflection, it is not a Kennan that Mr. Obama needs, but a Kissinger. 'The attainment of peace is not as easy as the desire for it,' Dr. Kissinger once observed. 'Those ages which in retrospect seem most peaceful were least in search of peace. Those whose quest for it seems unending appear least able to achieve tranquillity. Whenever peace--conceived as the avoidance of war--has been the primary objective . . . the international system has been at the mercy of [its] most ruthless member.'
Those are words this president, at a time when there is much ruthlessness abroad in the world, would do well to ponder.
Mr. Ferguson is a history professor at Harvard and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. His most recent book is 'The Great Degeneration' (Penguin Press, 2013).
没有评论:
发表评论