中美之间必有一战吗？

[SuHaiJack]

中美之间必有一战吗？

托马斯·弗里德曼2021年4月28日 Cancan Chu/Getty ImagesIf you’re looking for a compelling beach read this summer, I recommend the novel “2034,” by James Stavridis, a retired admiral, and Elliot Ackerman, a former Marine and intelligence officer. The book is about how China and America go to war in 2034, beginning with a naval battle near Taiwan and with China acting in a tacit alliance with Iran and Russia.如果你在寻找这个夏天引人入胜的海边读物，我推荐由退休海军上将詹姆斯·斯塔夫里迪斯(James Stavridis)和前海军陆战队员、情报官员埃利奥特·阿克曼(Elliot Ackerman)共同创作的小说《2034》。该书讲述了中美在2034年发动战争，以台湾附近的海战以及中国与伊朗、俄罗斯的默契结盟拉开帷幕。I’m not giving it all away to say China and the U.S. end up in a nuclear shootout and incinerate a few of each other’s cities, and the result is that neutral India becomes the dominant world power. (Hey, it’s a novel!)我不会告诉你，中国和美国最终打起了核战，并摧毁了对方的几座城市，最后中立的印度变成了主导全球的大国。（嘿，这只是一本小说！）What made the book unnerving, though, was that when I’d put it down and pick up the day’s newspaper I’d read much of what it was predicting for 13 years from now:然而，这本书令人感到不安的是，当我放下它并拿起当天的报纸时，我看到的是它对13年后的大部分预测。Iran and China just signed a 25-year cooperation agreement. Vladimir Putin just massed troops on the border of Ukraine while warning the U.S. that anyone who threatens Russia “will regret their deeds more than they have regretted anything in a long time.” As fleets of Chinese fighter jets, armed with electronic warfare technology, now regularly buzz Taiwan, China’s top foreign affairs policymaker just declared that the U.S. “does not have the qualification … to speak to China from a position of strength.”伊朗和中国刚刚签署了为期25年的合作协议。弗拉基米尔·普京(Vladimir Putin)刚在乌克兰边境集结了部队，同时警告美国，任何威胁俄罗斯的人“将对自己的所作所为感到前所未有的后悔”。现在，装备有电子战技术的中国战斗机机队经常骚扰台湾，中国最高外交政策制定者刚刚宣布，美国“没有资格居高临下同中国说话”。Yikes, that’s life imitating art a little too closely for comfort. Why now?哎呀，这贴近生活的艺术贴得太近，以至于让人感到不舒服。那为什么是现在？The answer can be found, in part, in a book I have written about before: Michael Mandelbaum’s “The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth.” It tracks how we went from a world defined by the Cold War between American democracy and Soviet communism — 1945 to 1989 — to a singularly peaceful quarter century without big power conflict, buttressed by spreading democracy and global economic interdependence — 1989 to about 2015 — to our current, much more dangerous era in which China, Iran and Russia are each deflecting the pressures of democracy and the need to deliver constant economic growth by offering their people aggressive hypernationalism instead.部分答案可以从一本我曾提到过的书中找到：迈克尔·曼德尔鲍姆(Michael Mandelbaum)的《世界和平的兴衰》(The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth)。它回溯了历史的进程：从美国民主与苏联共产主义之间的冷战（1945年～1989年），到没有发生大国冲突、以传播民主和全球经济相互依存支撑的特别平和的四分之一个世纪（1989年～2015年），到我们眼下更加危险的时代——中国、伊朗和俄罗斯都在通过向人民提供激进的极端民族主义来转移民主的压力，以及实现经济持续增长的需要。What has made this return of Chinese, Iranian and Russian aggressive nationalism even more dangerous is that, in each country, it is married to state-led industries — particularly military industries — and it’s emerging at a time when America’s democracy is weakening.使中国、伊朗和俄罗斯的激进民族主义变得更加危险的是，以上每个国家都和国家主导的产业密不可分——特别是军事产业，而且这种激进的民族主义崛起的时刻正值美国民主制度日趋削弱之时。Our debilitating political and cultural civil war, inflamed by social networks, is hobbling Americans’ ability to act in unison and for Washington to be a global stabilizer and institution builder, as the United States was after World War II.社交网络激化了我们令人感到乏力的政治和文化内战，阻碍了美国人团结的能力，也阻碍了华盛顿像“二战”后那样，成为一个全球稳定的维护者和制度建设者。Our foolish decision to expand NATO into Russia’s face — after the fall of the Soviet Union — hardened post-Communist Russia into an enemy instead of a potential partner, creating the ideal conditions for an anti-Western autocrat like Putin to emerge. (Imagine if Russia, a country with which we have zero trade or border disputes, were OUR ally today vis-à-vis China and Iran and not THEIR ally in disputes with us.)在苏联解体后，我们把北约扩张到俄罗斯的面前，这一愚蠢的决定使后共产主义时代的俄罗斯变成了敌人，而不是潜在的伙伴，从而为普京这样的反西方独裁者的崛起创造了理想条件。（想象一下，如果与我们没有贸易或边境争端的俄罗斯现在是我们的盟友，而不是与我们存在争端的中国和伊朗的盟友。）Meanwhile, the failure of the U.S. interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq to produce the pluralism and decency hoped for after 9/11, coupled with the 2008 economic crisis and the current pandemic — together with the general hollowing out of America’s manufacturing base — has weakened both American self-confidence and the world’s confidence in America.同时，在911之后，美国对阿富汗和伊拉克的干预未能产生希望出现的多元化和良好结果，再加上2008年的经济危机和当前的大流行——以及美国制造业基础的普遍空洞化——不但削弱了美国的自信心，也削弱了世界对美国的信心。The result? Right when China, Russia and Iran are challenging the post-World War II order more aggressively than ever, many wonder whether the United States has the energy, allies and resources for a new geopolitical brawl.结果呢？正当中国、俄罗斯和伊朗比以往任何时候都更加积极地挑战“二战”后的世界秩序时，许多人都怀疑美国是否拥有足够的精力、盟友和资源来应对一场新的地缘政治争端。“Just because communism is gone — and we don’t have two political and economic systems that claim universal legitimacy competing to govern every country — doesn’t mean that ideological considerations have disappeared from international politics,” Mandelbaum argued to me.曼德尔鲍姆对我说：“仅仅因为共产主义消失了——不再有两个政治和经济体系为了统治每个国家而竞相争夺普世合法性——并不意味着意识形态方面的考虑已经从国际政治中消失了。”Regimes like those in China, Iran and Russia feel much more threatened — more than we think — by democracy, Mandelbaum added. During the first decade of the 21st century, these regimes were able to generate sufficient public support through economic progress. But after that proved more difficult in the second decade of the 21st century, “the leaders of these countries need to find a substitute, and the one they have chosen is hypernationalism.”曼德尔鲍姆还说，像中国、伊朗和俄罗斯这样的政权感受到的民主威胁远超我们的想像。在21世纪的前10年，这些政权能够通过经济进步获得足够的公众支持。但是在21世纪第二个10年里，已证实这变得更加困难了，“这些国家的领导人需要寻找一个替代物，而他们选择的是极端民族主义。”Are we up to the challenge? I’m pretty sure we can keep a more aggressive, nationalistic Russia and Iran deterred at a reasonable cost, and with the help of our traditional allies.我们准备好迎接挑战了吗？我很确定，在传统盟友的帮助下，我们可以以合理的代价威慑越发激进的、民族主义的俄罗斯和伊朗。But China is another question. So we’d better understand where our strengths and weaknesses lie, as well as China’s.但是中国就不一样了。所以我们最好知己知彼。China is now a true peer competitor in the military, technological and economic realms, except — except in one critical field: designing and manufacturing the most advanced microprocessors and logic and memory chips that are the base layer for artificial intelligence, machine learning, high-performance computing, electric vehicles, telecommunications — i.e., the whole digital economy that we’re moving into.中国现在是军事、技术和经济领域的真正竞争对手，然而——一个关键领域除外：设计和制造最先进的微处理器、逻辑和存储芯片，它们是人工智能、机器学习、高性能计算机、电动汽车、电信的基础，也是我们正在迈进的整个数字经济。China’s massive, state-led effort to develop its own vertically integrated microchip industry has so far largely failed to master the physics and hardware to manipulate matter at the nano-scale, a skill required to mass produce super-sophisticated microprocessors.迄今为止，中国政府主导的、大规模发展本国垂直集成微芯片产业的努力，在很大程度上未能掌握对物理和硬件在纳米级水平上的操作，而这是大规模生产超精密微处理器所需的技能。However, just a few miles away from China sits the largest and most sophisticated contract chip maker in the world: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. According to the Congressional Research Service, TSMC is one of only three manufacturers in the world that fabricate the most advanced semiconductor chips — and by far the biggest. The second and third are Samsung and Intel.但是，距离中国不远处就是世界上最大、最先进的代工芯片制造商台湾半导体制造公司（Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company，简称台积电）。根据国会研究服务部(Congressional Research Service)的数据，台积电是世界上仅有的三家最先进的半导体芯片制造商之一，也是迄今为止最大的一家。排在第二和第三的是三星和英特尔。Most chip designers, like IBM, Qualcomm, Nvidia, AMD (and even Intel to some extent) now use TSMC and Samsung to make the microprocessors they design.大多数芯片设计者，例如IBM、高通(Qualcomm)、英伟达(Nvidia)、超威半导体(AMD)（甚至在某种程度上还包括英特尔），现在都使用台积电和三星来制造它们设计的微处理器。But, just as important, three of the five companies that make the super-sophisticated lithography machines, tools and software used by TSMC and others to actually make the microchips — Applied Materials, Lam Research Corporation and KLA Corporation — are based in the United States. (The other two are Dutch and Japanese.) China largely lacks this expertise.但同样重要的是，制造台积电和其他公司在实际制造微芯片时使用的超精密光刻机、工具和软件的五家公司当中，有三家都在美国。（另外两个在荷兰和日本。）中国基本上缺乏这个能力。As such, the American government has the leverage to restrict TSMC from making advanced chips for Chinese companies. Indeed, just two weeks ago, the U.S. made TSMC suspend new orders from seven Chinese supercomputing centers suspected of assisting in the country’s weapons development.因此，美国政府拥有限制台积电为中国公司制造先进芯片的筹码。确实，就在两周前，美国使台积电暂停了来自七个中国超级计算中心的新订单，因为它们涉嫌协助该国的武器开发。The South China Morning Post quoted Francis Lau, a University of Hong Kong computer scientist, as saying: “The sanctions would definitely affect China’s ability to keep to its leading position in supercomputing,” because all of its current supercomputers mostly use processors from Intel or designed by AMD and IBM and manufactured by TSMC. Although there are Korean and Japanese alternatives, Lau added, they are not as powerful.《南华早报》援引香港大学计算机科学家刘智满的话说：“制裁肯定会影响中国在超级计算领域保持领先地位的能力”，因为其目前所有超级计算机都主要使用英特尔的处理器，或由AMD和IBM设计、台积电制造的处理器。刘智满还说，虽然有韩国和日本的替代品，但它们没有那么强大。China, though, is doubling down on research in the physics, nanotechnology and material sciences that will drive the next generation of chips and chip-making equipment. But it could take China a decade or more to reach the cutting edge.不过，中国将加大在物理、纳米技术和材料科学方面的研究，这将推动下一代芯片和芯片制造设备的发展。但是中国可能要花十年甚至更长的时间才能达到最前沿。That’s why — today — as much as China wants Taiwan for reasons of ideology, it wants TSMC in the pocket of Chinese military industries for reasons of strategy. And as much as U.S. strategists are committed to preserving Taiwan’s democracy, they are even more committed to ensuring that TSMC doesn’t fall into China’s hands for reasons of strategy. (TSMC is now building a new semiconductor factory in Phoenix). Because, in a digitizing world, he who controls the best chip maker will control … a lot.这就是为什么，在今天，中国虽然是出于意识形态的原因希望收复台湾，但出于战略原因，它也希望将台积电收入中国军工产业囊中。尽管美国战略家致力于维护台湾的民主，但他们出于战略原因更加致力于确保台积电不会落入中国之手。（台积电现在正在凤凰城建立一个新的半导体工厂。）因为在一个数字化的世界中，掌控最好的芯片制造商就能够掌控……很多东西。Just read “2034.” In the novel, China gains the technological edge with superior A.I.-driven cybercloaking, satellite spoofing and stealth materials. It’s then able to launch a successful surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet.读一读《2034》吧。在这部小说中，中国凭借卓越的人工智能驱动的网络隐身、卫星欺骗干扰和隐形材料获得了技术优势。这时，它有能力对美国太平洋舰队发动一次成功的突袭。And the first thing China does is seize Taiwan.中国要做的第一件事就是占领台湾。Let’s make sure that stays the stuff of fiction.让我们确保这一切仍然是虚构的东西。托马斯·L·弗里德曼(Thomas L. Friedman)是外交事务方面的专栏作者。他1981年加入时报，曾三次获得普利策奖。他著有七本书，包括赢得国家图书奖的《从贝鲁特到耶路撒冷》(From Beirut to Jerusalem)。欢迎在Twitter和Facebook上关注他。翻译：纽约时报中文网点击查看本文英文版。

Source: 中美之间必有一战吗？