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【中文标题】如果丘吉尔面对普京
【原文标题】What Would Winston Churchill Do?
【登载媒体】国家利益
【原文作者】Robert C. O'Brien
【原文链接】http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/what-would-winston-churchill-do-10230
俄罗斯赤裸裸地占领了克里米亚，加上他对基辅的威胁和自我的辩解——他只不过实在保护俄罗斯民族——仿佛让欧洲回到了最黑暗的年代。前国务卿希拉里•克林顿在上个月直言不讳地指出：“这些话听起来很熟悉，这是希特勒在上个世纪30年代所作所为。所有的德意志民族都是德国人，德国人的祖先就生活在捷克斯洛伐克和罗马尼亚等地方。希特勒不断说德意志族没有被公平地对待，我必须去那里保护我的人民。就是这些话让人惶恐不安。”
在太平洋地区，中国并没有采取类似俄罗斯入侵克里米亚这样明目张胆的军事行动，但它声称对南中国海所谓“九段线”以内的全部海域拥有主权。与此同时，中国的海军和海岸警卫部队试图把菲律宾人赶出斯卡伯勒礁（译者注：即黄岩岛），这片礁石距菲律宾150英里，距离中国最近的领土海南岛有550英里。作为回应美国和亚洲地区对中国在南中国海问题上立场的担忧，外交部长杨洁篪在2010年7月称：“中国是一个大国，有些国家是小国，这是不争的事实。”
中国还在东中国海努力与日本争夺被对方管辖多年的尖阁列岛（译者注：即钓鱼岛）的所有权，最终在包括了日本和韩国管辖的一大片海域划定防空识别区。有多方报道说，西方对于俄罗斯在克里米亚的行为缺少必要的反应，这吓坏了美国在太平洋地区的盟友，尤其是日本。它认为中国从这起事件中领悟到，西方或许会对用武力解决领土争端的行为睁一只眼闭一只眼。
诚然，近几十年，地区强权用武力征服邻国的努力纷纷失败了，最著名的是阿根廷在1982年入侵马岛和伊拉克在1991年入侵科威特。所以在中国于1951年吞并西藏之后，大国尽量避免采取这样的行动。但是鉴于乌克兰和太平洋地区的局势，长期以来相对稳定的局面似乎要结束了，尽管奥巴马总统在俄罗斯入侵克里米亚之后发表讲话说：“因为你是大国、强国，就要霸占另一个国家——这是21世纪的国际法和国籍秩序绝对不允许的。”
与此相反的是，普京和中国用实际行动在宣布，新的“国际秩序”似乎要回归八十年前。
专制的强权——俄罗斯和中国——就有这样的打算，并且已经开始采取行动。旁边还有一个坏分子——伊朗——在静观事态发展，它也有入侵中东霸权的计划。西欧民主国家和日本在经历了多年的国防预算削减之后，无法面对这种挑战。美国在奥巴马执政期间也加入了裁军俱乐部，即使在俄罗斯入侵克里米亚期间，政府依然计划封存一部分海军强大的舰队，甚至国防部长海格尔谈到要封存部分航空母舰。同时，陆军和海军陆战队员分别裁军数千人。民意调查分析人士说，美国的选民被伊拉克战争和阿富汗战争搞得疲惫不堪，对境外冲突再也提不起兴趣。西方国家领导人不再主导公众的意见，而是随波逐流，他们对于替那些远在天边的小国——比如乌克兰和菲律宾——大动干戈变得非常谨慎。
30年代的声音依然回响在耳边，我们有必要回顾一下1938年发生的事情。1938年3月12日，奥地利被并入德意志第三帝国。合并是奥地利纳粹党的鼓动和德国要求下的产物，德国紧接着发动入侵，流放了维也纳的合法政府。本计划在第二天举行的有关德奥合并的全民投票被取消，改在一个月之后德国自己举办的公民投票。在纳粹国防军的监视和投票不匿名的情况下，奥地利人投票支持合并。德奥合并终于在德国一战投降二十周年纪念日的前几个月完成，这违反了德国在战后缔结的协议。有趣的是，俄罗斯吞并克里米亚也发生在苏联解体二十三周年纪念日之前，普京称苏联的解体为“地缘政治的世纪灾难。”。
德奥合并之后的两个星期，温斯顿•丘吉尔大步走进英国下议院，说：“我们的国家幅员辽阔、繁荣富饶，却被视如无物。心怀恐惧不能避免战争，向往和平也不能避免战争，忽略那些侵略行为的受害者更加不能。在目前的局势下，避免战争唯一的方法是与侵略者做针锋相对的斗争。”
他继续说道：
我亲眼见到这座闻名遐迩的岛屿在不由自主地沦落，不负责任地走下通往黑暗深渊的阶梯……如果世俗间的悲剧即将击败英伦和英帝国，那么一千年之后的历史学家无论如何不能了解我们的内部究竟发生了什么事。他们永远无法了解，一个胜利的国度、一个资源取之不尽用之不竭的国度为何会让自己屈服，为何会放弃它通过巨大的牺牲和伟大的胜利换来的一切。
冷战结束后的四分之一个世纪，同样的语言可以用来描述美国当前的状况，但已经没有下议院愿意讨论这些问题，也没有丘吉尔如雷贯耳般的警告声。1938年的局势发展很快，9月底，欧洲强权已经同意掠夺捷克斯洛伐克的战略性产业和银行业，把所谓的苏台德区交付给第三帝国，以满足希特勒对征服的渴望，以及避免战争的妄想。
尽管大部分英国人支持首相内维尔•张伯伦对希特勒采取的绥靖政策，认为这是追求和平的政治家所采取的英明决策，但丘吉尔在10月5日回到下议院，明白无误地阐述了事实：“一切都结束了。沉默、悲痛、被遗弃、脆弱的捷克斯洛伐克陷入了黑暗之中。作为西方民主社会和国际联盟顺从的伙伴，它遭受了巨大的痛苦和打击。”
丘吉尔承认张伯伦的绥靖政策颇受欢迎，但正确地指出它已经失败了。
我毫不怀疑我们忠诚、勇敢的人民，他们已经准备好不惜任何代价履行他们的职责，并且在面对上周紧张的局势时毫不退缩。我同样也不怀疑当他们得知短时期之内不会经历苦难时所流露出的自然的、发自内心的喜悦和欣慰，但他们应当看清事实。他们应该知道我们国土防御中的缺陷，他们应该知道我们不战而败的事实，其造成的影响将永远伴随我们。
接下来，丘吉尔预言性地警告他的国人和大西洋两岸的听众绥靖政策造成的影响。“别以为一切都结束了。这仅仅是一个开始，是饭前的开胃酒，有一大杯苦酒在未来几年等着我们咽下，直到我们恢复了自身的道德情操和军事活力。我们必将挺身而起捍卫自由，就像古代的盎格鲁萨克森一样。”
希特勒在经历了十年的解除武装和安抚行动之后，于1939年9月入侵波兰，占领者很快就变成了斯大林，他也想在战利品中分一杯羹。幸运的是，领导英国及其盟友的依然是预见到灾难降临、在危急时刻保持勇气和毅力、鼓舞自由世界国家人民面对挑战的人。在多年前发出了预见性警告之后，丘吉尔独自团结起英国人民，以及所有以英语为母语国家的人民的力量。
所有怀着良好愿望的人们热切地期望，近期在欧洲和太平洋地区所发生的事件，不是我们即将饮下的第一口苦酒，独裁政权会自觉放弃武力威胁它们的邻国，无论其理由是领土争端还是施加影响力。现在有太多的西方领导人希望扮演张伯伦的角色。米特•罗姆尼州长在总统竞选中发出了类似丘吉尔的警告声，其中提到俄罗斯的军事复兴，却遭到了总统及其幕僚的揶揄，并最终以微弱劣势选举失利。或许正是因为这个先例，后期成功当选的官员们绝少直言不讳地提到即将降临的暴风雨。被排挤出政治核心的罗姆尼依然在仗义执言，参议员马克•鲁维奥和大使约翰•博尔顿尝试发表了一些讲话，内容涉及到不受欢迎的信息，包括如果我们准备捍卫自由，必将面对艰难的挑战。媒体也拒绝面对现实中的世界，但它们应当引用权威的声音、正义的理由，持续不断地让西方，让整个世界，甚至让独裁政府内部的爱好和平人士保持清醒。尤其是重利忘义的现代化中国，让它们了解这个崭新而又陈旧的时代。
原文：
Russia's naked grab of Crimea, its continuing intimidation of Kiev and Putin's proffered justification—that he is merely protecting ethnic Russians—parallel a much darker time in European history. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made this point last month: "Now if this sounds familiar, it's what Hitler did back in the '30s. All the Germans that were ... the ethnic Germans, the Germans by ancestry who were in places like Czechoslovakia and Romania and other places, Hitler kept saying they're not being treated right. I must go and protect my people, and that's what's gotten everybody so nervous."
In the Pacific, China has not undertaken military action as dramatic as the Russian invasion of Crimea but it has staked a claim to almost the entirety of the South China Sea with its "nine-dash line." In the process, China's Navy and Coast Guard has expelled the Philippines from the Scarborough Shoal, a reef just under 150 miles from the Philippines but almost 550 miles from Hainan Island, the nearest Chinese port. Responding to U.S. and regional concerns raised about China's position on the South China Sea, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi proclaimed in July 2010, “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact."
China is also actively contesting long-time Japanese administration of the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea and it unilaterally imposed an Air Defense Identification Zone covering waters and islands administered by both Japan and South Korea. It is widely reported that the West's lack of response to Russia's Crimean adventure has spooked America's Pacific allies, particularly Japan, which believe the lesson China has drawn from the situation is that a military resolution of its territorial claims would be likewise countenanced by the West.
While regional powers have unsuccessfully sought to conquer their neighbors in recent decades—most notably Argentina's invasion and occupation of the Falklands in 1982 and Iraq's invasion and occupation of Kuwait in 1991—the major powers have eschewed such conduct since China's 1951 annexation of Tibet. Given events in Ukraine and the Pacific, that long period of relative stability appears to be at an end, notwithstanding President Obama's comment following Russia's invasion of Crimea, "because you’re bigger and stronger taking a piece of the country—that is not how international law and international norms are observed in the 21st century.“
To the contrary, Putin's and China's actions declare, the new “international norms” look alarmingly like those of eight decades ago.
The authoritarian powers, Russia and China, have the initiative and are on the move. They are, in turn, watched by a regional provocateur, Iran, which has its own visions of Middle Eastern hegemony. The Western European democracies and Japan, after years of slashing defense budgets, are ill prepared to face these challenges. America under the Obama administration joined the disarmament club through sequestration. Even in the face of the Russia's invasion of Crimea, the administration plans to mothball half of the Navy's robust cruiser fleet, and Secretary Hagel has talked of doing something similar to the carrier fleet, while at the same time cutting many thousands of troops from the Army and Marines, respectively. Pollsters claim U.S. voters are exhausted by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and show little interest in foreign conflicts. Following, rather than leading, public opinion, Western leaders are wary of intervening in any substantial manner on behalf of small, far-away nations such as Ukraine or the Philippines.
Given the echoes of the 1930s being heard today, it is useful to review the events of 1938. Austria was annexed into the German Third Reich on March 12, 1938. The annexation took place the day after agitation by the Austrian Nazi Party and German demands—swiftly followed by German invasion—ousted the legitimate government in Vienna. A referendum on the union between Austria and Germany—scheduled for the next day—was cancelled. A month later, the Germans held their own referendum; under the watchful eyes of the Wehrmacht and without ballot secrecy, Austrians voted for union. The Anschluss took place a few months before the twentieth anniversary of the German surrender in World War I and violated Germany's post-war treaty obligations. Interestingly, Russia's annexation of Crimea took place just twenty-three years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, an event Putin has labeled the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century."
Two weeks following the Anschluss, Winston Churchill strode into the British House of Commons and stated: "[A] country like ours, possessed of immense territory and wealth, whose defences have been neglected, cannot avoid war by dilating upon its horrors, or even by a continuous display of pacific qualities, or by ignoring the fate of the victims of aggression elsewhere. War will be avoided, in present circumstances, only by the accumulation of deterrents against the aggressor."
He continued:
I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly the stairway which leads to a dark gulf... If mortal catastrophe should overtake the British nation and the British Empire, historians a thousand years hence will still be baffled by the mystery of our affairs. They will never understand how it was that a victorious nation, with everything in hand, suffered themselves to be brought low and to cast away all that they had gained by measureless sacrifice and absolute victory—'gone with the wind.'
A quarter century after the end of the Cold War, similar words could certainly be used to describe America's present circumstances—but there is no Commons debating such matters and there is no Churchill thundering warnings of what lay ahead. Back in 1938, the pace of events quickened, and by the end of September the great powers were agreeing to strip Czechoslovakia's strategic industrial and banking regions from the country without its consent, awarding the so-called Sudetenland to the Third Reich in a further effort to slake Hitler's thirst for conquest and avoid a Europe-wide war.
While the majority of Britons supported Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler as an act of statesmanship in the pursuit of peace, Churchill, back in the Commons on October 5, laid out the truth of the matter: "[a]ll is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness. She has suffered in every respect by her association with the Western democracies and with the League of Nations, of which she has always been an obedient servant."
Churchill acknowledged the popularity of Chamberlain's appeasement but correctly labeled it a defeat:
I do not grudge our loyal, brave people, who were ready to do their duty no matter what the cost, who never flinched under the strain of last week—I do not grudge them the natural, spontaneous outburst of joy and relief when they learned that the hard ordeal would no longer be required of them at the moment; but they should know the truth. They should know that there has been gross neglect and deficiency in our defenses; they should know that we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road...
Churchill then prophetically warned his countrymen and his audience across the Atlantic of the consequences of the appeasement policy: "Do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time."
After a decade of disarmament followed by appeasement, Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939—swiftly followed by Stalin, who sought to secure his share of the spoils. Fortunately, the United Kingdom and its allies were able to turn to the man who had foretold of the calamity and who possessed the courage and fortitude to hold the forces of darkness at bay during that perilous time while what remained of the Free World frantically rearmed to meet the challenge. Having given the warning for so many years, Churchill alone had the credibility to rally the British people and eventually the English-speaking peoples.
It is the sincere hope of all men and women of good will that the recent events in Europe and the Pacific are not, in fact, the first sip of another bitter cup, and that the authoritarian regimes will retreat from the use of force or even the threat thereof against their neighbors whether it be for territorial conquest or to exert influence over them. There are too many Western leaders willing to play Chamberlain's role today. Governor Mitt Romney's Churchilll-like warning of a resurgent Russia made during the last campaign was mocked by the President and elites, and was rejected by a narrow margin at the polls. Perhaps because of that example, very few elected officials have been willing to speak bluntly about this gathering storm. Romney from the sidelines continues to do so, and Senator Marco Rubio and Ambassador John Bolton have auditioned speeches with the unpopular message that vigor and hard choices are required of us if we are to arise and take our stand for freedom. The media elites refuse to face the realities of the world, however, and it will take sustained, disciplined rhetoric from credible voices to wake the West, the world, and even peaceful elements within the authoritarian regimes, especially commercially savvy and modern China, to the dangers of this old new era.
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