【中文标题】美越在南海军事演习,中国被激怒 【原文标题】US-Vietnam ties strengthen with military exercises, to China's chagrin 【原文链接】 http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100812/wl_csm/319388 【译者】长今兮虞 【翻译方式】人工 【声明】本文供Anti-CNN/ACCN使用,未经译者或AC同意,谢绝转载;谢谢合作。 【译文】
东南亚的血泪史最新的转折点,这个星期,美国约翰麦凯恩航空母舰在中国南海培训越南军队搜救能力。
“尤其是我们曾今轰炸过越南,”在70年代即美越战争时期前美国岘港总领事弗雷德里克布朗说,“这是美国和越南都想做的事情。 这是一个军方与军方的关系。”
具有历史的讽刺性的是,约翰麦凯恩号航空母舰,一个导弹驱逐舰装备了最新的主持反导弹系统,是以美国参议员约翰麦凯恩的祖父和父亲命名的,两个都是约翰麦凯恩号航空母舰的美海军将领,约翰麦凯恩在一次战争中他的美海军飞机被击落,从此以后他被监禁在河内超过5年。
“约翰·麦凯恩”号此次访越是为了参加所谓“文体联欢”,并参观岘港,之前美国航空母舰乔治华盛顿于本月8号刚刚才访越,97000吨的庞然大物无视中国声明的对整个南海的领水权在南海巡航。
美越两个昔日的冷战敌国能在今年进入蜜月期,很明显是因为越南和邻国中国的关系,而中国在越战中是越南强大的盟友。越南看来是想用一个强大的力量来制衡另一个强大的力量。
“我想一想就知道中国不高兴,”布朗先生说“中国正在用硬手腕来维护自己的主权。”
上个月美国和中国的意见发生了摩擦,中国外长杨洁篪说国务卿希拉里克林顿告诉河内东南亚联盟的外交官主权是“一个领导外交优先考虑。”的行为实际上是“对中国的攻击”。
这些外交争斗背景是在南沙群岛附近中国的空中和海上训练,而南沙群岛是越南,菲律宾和中国争夺的一片岛屿,礁群。长期以来,越南抗议中国在西沙群岛的控制,这些事中国从旧的南越军队在1974年得到的。
“这都是太极拳,”卡尔罗宾逊说,他曾花费数年时间在越南作记者和美国援助工作者“但世界并不需要开始更多地注意那些近海岛屿的和那里究竟发生着什么。”
“越南'非常聪明' ”罗宾森说,越南“像它在战争期间一样”,当年它依靠中国和苏联得到军火,而这两个国家常常之间闹矛盾。
“这是非常聪明的,”他说,“唯一不爽的是美国人花了这么很长的时间才醒来一起玩这个游戏。”
两个星期前,当中国正在南海时,美国航空母舰乔治华盛顿正在东北亚--朝鲜半岛的东岸--率领着美国和韩国军队。中国拒绝提供一份由来自五个其他国家专家们证实的韩国沉船是由于受到了小潜艇发射的鱼雷的攻击的朝鲜认证书。
美韩军事汇演本来是计划在半岛的西海岸进行的,但是在中国拒绝事件发生后他们改变了地点。中国很焦急地强调它在黄河权利,本没有强调在大部分水面的主权,而是说美国的行为会威胁中国的大陆地区。
在美韩军事演习结束后,美国航空母舰乔治华盛顿沿着东亚边线一直巡行到了南海。从东南亚到东北亚都提出了如何面对中国日益增长的军事和经济力量的问题。
“你发现没有人会说我们努力地‘包括中国’”,美国高级外交官布朗说,“越南人想说的是他们已经和和美国成为了盟友。”
不仅仅这样,华盛顿的约翰霍普金斯大学的教授布朗说,“我们努力阻止中国习惯性地说‘我的就是我的,你的也是我的。’”
在近些年里,美国和越南的关系越来越好,他们一起研讨核合作协议,商议美国的那个地方应该提供核能源的原料,美国的哪个公司应该投资。美国是在中国之后的越南的第二大贸易合作伙伴,每年双边贸易金额大约有 $15 billion,大部分是倾向于越南向美国出口。
中国?对于前国家部门的专家,现在是伦敦的国际机构战略研究的Mark Fitzpatrick,他去年才去过越南,“很显然,美国和越南正在加强关系。”尽管越南经济在去年“过热”,他说,“它依然是全球最动态,最快速增长经济之一。”
对于越南,“考虑到中国的领土声明,边境争论和越来越独断”,他补充道,“美国是一个自然而且受欢迎的合作伙伴”,越战的记忆都已经在历史的长河里退去,所有的国家都应该向前看。 【原文】
Seoul, South Korea – In the latest twist to Southeast Asia's blood-stained history, this week the USS John McCain is training Vietnamese forces in the South China Sea in search-and-rescue.
“It’s extraordinary considering we were bombing Vietnam,” says Frederick Brown, who was US consul-general in Danang in the early 1970s as war raged in Vietnam's jungles and rice paddies. “It’s something the US and Vietnam want to do. It’s a military-to-military relationship.”
Adding to the historical irony, the USS John McCain, a guided missile destroyer equipped with the latest aegis counter-missile system, is named for the grandfather and the father, both US Navy admirals, of US Senator John McCain, who was imprisoned in Hanoi for more than five years after his US Navy plane was shot down in the war.
The USS McCain called at the central Vietnam port of Danang on Aug. 10 for what were called "cultural visits" two days after Vietnamese officials were flown out to the aircraft carrier George Washington, a 97,000-ton behemoth cruising the waters in defiance of China's claims to the entire South China Sea.
The blossoming relationship between the US and Vietnam is all the more remarkable considering Vietnam’s relationship with neighboring China, its strongest ally during the Vietnam War. Vietnam now appears to want to balance one great power against another while China flexes its muscles around the Chinese mainland.
“I can only imagine the Chinese are not happy about it,” says Mr. Brown. “The Chinese with sharp elbows are trying to assert their claims.”
US and Chinese views collided last month when China’s foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had staged “virtually an attack on China” after she told diplomats at the Association of South East Asian Nations in Hanoi that sovereignty was “a leading diplomatic priority.”
Those remarks provided diplomatic background noise to Chinese air and naval exercises in the South China Sea around the Spratly Islands, a cluster of islets and reefs claimed in whole or part by Vietnam, the Philippines and Brunei, as well as China. And Vietnam has long protested China’s hold over the Paracel Islands, seized by Chinese forces from the old South Vietnamese army in 1974 and held since then by China.
“It's all shadow boxing,” says Carl Robinson, who spent years in Vietnam as a journalist and US aid worker and is now there leading lengthy tours of the country. “But the world does need to start paying more attention to those offshore islands and what's actually going on there.”
Vietnam's 'very clever stuff' Mr. Robinson says Vietnam “as usual, is playing all sides just like it did during the war” when it relied on China and the Soviet Union, often at odds with one another, for arms. “It's very clever stuff,” he says, “and too bad it's taken this long for the Americans to wake up to playing the game too.”
While China was roiling waters in the South China Sea two weeks ago, the carrier George Washington was leading US and South Korean forces in northeast Asia – off the east coast of the Korean peninsula – in the wake of the sinking of a South Korean corvette, the Cheonan, in March in which 46 sailors were killed. China refuses to support the finding of a South Korean investigation in which experts from five other countries agreed North Korea sunk the ship with a torpedo fired from a midget submarine.
US-Korean exercises were originally planned for the peninsula's west coast, in the Yellow Sea near where the Cheonan went down, but they were moved after China protested. China, anxious to assert its interests in the Yellow Sea, does not claim sovereignty over that large body of water but says US operations there would threaten the Chinese mainland.
It was after US-Korean exercises that the George Washington then sailed around the rim of east Asia to the South China Sea. The standoff from Southeast to Northeast Asia raises the whole question of how to face China’s rising military as well as economic power.
“You won’t find anyone saying we’re trying to ‘contain China,' " says Brown, who as a senior US diplomat coordinated with the former South Vietnamese government in battling communist forces from Hanoi, “and the last thing the Vietnamese want is to announce an alliance with the US.”
Nonetheless, Brown, now a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, says. “We’re trying to resist China’s propensity to say, ‘What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine also.’”
So much have US and Vietnamese relations flourished in recent years that they’re negotiating a nuclear cooperation agreement under which the US would provide fuel for nuclear energy plants in which US companies could invest. The US is now Vietnam’s second biggest trading partner after China with $15 billion in annual two-way trade, hugely balanced in favor of Vietnam exports to the US.
China?To Mark Fitzpatrick, a former proliferation expert at the State Department, now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, who last visited Vietnam late last year, it “makes eminent sense for the US and Vietnam to improve ties.” Although Vietnam’s economy” was overheating last year,” he says, “it remains one of the most dynamic, fast-growing economies of the world.”
And for Vietnam, “concerned about China’s territorial claims, past border disputes and growing assertiveness,” he adds, “the US is a natural and much-welcomed partner” as memories of the Vietnam War recede into “ancient history and both nations are inclined to look more to the future.” |