2021年经济学人 拜登带领美国重返世界领导地位:道阻且长(1)（在线收听）

United States

美国版块

Lexington

莱克星顿专栏

Back to the future

回到未来

Joe Biden sets out to restore American leadership with an old team in a new world

乔·拜登着手利用旧的团队恢复美国在新世界的领导地位

Not since George H. W. Bush in 1989 has America inaugurated a president so well-known in world affairs as Joe Biden. A former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, then vice-president for eight years, he has had a role in, or a say on, most foreign policy since the cold war. His chosen foreign-policy team, dominated by other veterans of Barack Obama’s administration such as John Kerry and Tony Blinken—a former secretary of state and a prospective one who has briefed Mr Biden for decades—is almost as well-known. Yet for all these familiar elements Mr Biden’s foreign policy is cloaked in uncertainty.

自1989年乔治·布什就任总统以来，美国就再未出现过像乔·拜登那样在世界事务中享有盛名的总统。拜登曾任参议院外交关系委员会主席，随后担任副总统8年，他在冷战之后的大多数外交政策中都发挥了作用，或者说拥有发言权。他选择的外交政策团队由奥巴马政府的诸多资深人士主导，比如几乎是众所周知的曾经的国务卿约翰·克里以及曾向拜登做了数十年简报的副国务卿托尼·布林肯。然而，尽管有这么多熟悉的元素，拜登的外交政策仍笼罩在不确定性之中。

This reflects the altered circumstances in which he has returned to the White House. Having launched his campaign as a continuity candidate, drawn from retirement to defend Mr Obama’s legacy, he faces huge problems that will make his administration very different from the “third Obama term” he initially seemed to promise. One is the bungled covid-19 epidemic, which has produced misery at home and more proof of America’s abandonment of global leadership. In the depth of the Iraq war many Europeans thought better of the superpower than they do now. The crisis will also hamper Mr Biden’s ability to repair the damage, by ensuring he is largely consumed by fighting fires at home.

这反映出拜登回到白宫后的情况发生了变化。作为一名延续性候选人，拜登从离任后开始竞选，去守护奥巴马的遗产，他面临着的巨大的问题将使他的政府与他最初似乎承诺的“第三届奥巴马任期”截然不同。问题之一在于治理失败的新冠疫情，它不仅导致美国水深火热，还进一步证明美国放弃了全球领导地位。许多当时处于伊拉克战争深渊中的欧洲人对美国这个超级大国的看法比现在要好。新冠危机还将阻碍拜登修复创伤的能力，因为他要确保自己大部分时间都在国内“灭火”。

The second problem, what to do about China, is more daunting. The president and his team all subscribe to the new consensus view that it is a formidable, long-term competitor. Contrary to Republican fears, there is no prospect of them reverting to the Obama administration’s relatively benign vision of coexistence with China. Even those who are in retrospect least critical of that approach, such as Mr Blinken, a suave and understated diplomat, now sound hawkish by 2016 standards. And Mr Biden has appointed his most China-sceptical advisers to the top Asia jobs at the National Security Council and Pentagon. Foremost among this second group—categorised as “the 2021 Democrats” in an astute analysis of Mr Biden’s team by Thomas Wright of the Brookings Institution—is Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser. Yet quite how these Democratic hawks will push back at China, how far Mr Biden will back them, and to what effect, remain to be seen.

第二个更令人望而生畏的问题是，该怎么对待中国。拜登总统和他的团队都达成了新的共识，即中国是一个强大的、长期的竞争对手。与共和党的担忧相反，拜登政府不可能重启奥巴马政府相对温和的对华共存愿景。回首过去，即便是那些最少批判这种对华态度的人，比如温文尔雅的外交官布林肯，按照2016年的标准来看，他们现在的对华说法也很鹰派。拜登还任命了对中国最持怀疑态度的顾问来担任处理亚洲事务的国家安全委员会和五角大楼的高层职位。布鲁金斯学会的托马斯?赖特通过对拜登团队的敏锐分析，将其团队归类为“2021级民主党人”，其中助手团队中最重要的是国家安全顾问杰克?沙利文。然而，这些民主党鹰派将如何对抗中国，拜登将在多大程度上支持他们，以及效果如何，仍有待观察。