文艺；书评；外交往事；应敌之策；

　　George Kennan invented the American post-war policy of “containment” of the Soviet Union. His biography, 30 years in the making, fills in the detail；

　　乔治·凯南是战后美国对苏“遏制”政策的始作俑者。他这本耗时30年而成的传记，充满了“遏制”政策的点点滴滴；

　　George F. Kennan: An American Life. By John Lewis Gaddis.

　　乔治·凯南：大国之策 约翰·加迪斯著。

　　Three decades ago George Kennan— former American ambassador to Moscow, multilingual diplomat and conceptualiser of “containment”, the heart of his country's foreign policy towards the Soviet Union—agreed to allow an American cold-war historian, John Lewis Gaddis, to serve as his biographer. Kennan had decamped from public service to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton more than 20 years earlier and was already 78 years old. When he began giving Mr Gaddis interviews and stacks of personal papers in 1981, their understanding was that the biography would appear in the presumably not-too-distant future after the elder man's passing.

　　三十年前，乔治·凯南—前美国驻莫斯科大使，掌握多种语言的外交官，美国对苏外交核心“遏制”政策的始作俑者—同意由美国冷战历史学者约翰·加迪斯为其撰写传记。那时，已78岁高龄的乔治·凯南，早退出政界在普林斯顿高级研究院从事研究已超过二十个年头。1981年起乔治·凯南开始与约翰·加迪斯会面并给予后者大堆个人资料，两人商定乔治·凯南的传记将在其过世后不久的将来面世。

　　Decades of interviews later, Mr Gaddis, who is now 70, had become accustomed to his students “speculating sombrely about which of us might go first”. Even Kennan felt sorry for “poor John”; in 2003 he lamented the “serious burden” of his own “unnatural longevity”. It was only in 2005, when death finally claimed Kennan at the age of 101, that Mr Gaddis could begin thinking about publishing this long-awaited biography.

　　自两人会面后的几十年里，如今已古稀之年的约翰·加迪斯已经习惯了让他的学生们“严肃地预测一下我们两个谁会先走一步“。即便是乔治·凯南也对约翰·加迪斯心怀愧疚；2003年他曾为自己的“超然长寿”带来的“不堪重负”而悲叹不已。2005年，101岁的乔治·凯南终于等到了生命的终点，也是从那时起，约翰·加迪斯才可以开始考虑出版这本经历了漫长等待的传记了。

　　The extraordinary length of the book's gestation meant that much changed between conception and publication. Had it appeared in the mid-1980s, the context would have been cold-war stalemate; in the early 1990s, celebration; a decade ago in 2001, concern about terrorism. Because “George F. Kennan: An American Life” finally arrives in the uneasy year of 2011, its context is economic misery and questions about the future of American dominance in international affairs.

　　这本书无与伦比的超长“妊娠期”意味着其起初构思与最终出版之间的多次变更。在书中，80年代中期的背景主要是冷战僵局；90年代早期是庆祝冷战胜利；2001年之后的十年主要涉及反恐。熬到了经历漫长艰辛最终出版的2011年，背景则又成了经济困局和对美国将来是否能主导全球事务的疑问。

　　Mr Gaddis is unequivocal on this topic. He told the New York Times in 2004 that “American imperial power…has been a remarkable force for good, for democracy, for prosperity.” He has also expressed his admiration for the former presidents, Ronald Reagan and George Bush junior, and their versions of “grand strategy”, a topic he now teaches at Yale University. All of these developments have naturally given rise to much speculation. Could Mr Gaddis, who admits that he speaks no foreign languages, get on top of the mountain of material and do credit to such an international polymath? Would his own views emerge along with Kennan's? The 784-page answer to both these questions is yes.

　　约翰·加迪斯对每一个话题都不含糊。2004年他曾告诉《纽约时报》的记者：“美利坚帝国有种非常不平凡的力量，一种使之优秀、民主、繁荣的力量。”同时他也表达了对前总统里根和小布什以及他们的“伟大战略”的敬佩之意，这也是他在耶鲁大学教授的课题。这些言语自然引起了人们进一步的猜测。承认自己不懂外语的约翰·加迪斯，能否征服堆积如山的资料，为乔治·凯南这样的国际大家赢得赞颂？他的观点是否来自乔治·凯南？这部厚达784页的作品肯定的回答了这两个问题。

　　Mr Gaddis has mastered the sources that came his way over the decades. The resulting biography is engaging and lucid. The first half of the book almost has the sweep of a novel. Readers join Kennan in Germany as the Nazis rise; in Norway in 1931 as the awkward young man meets the parents of his fiancée, to whom he would remain married for 73 years; in the Soviet Union in 1933 as he establishes the first American embassy; in Czechoslovakia as Adolf Hitler arrives and the world descends into another war; and back in Moscow again in 1945 when he receives skin-crawling personal compliments from Joseph Stalin on his Russian language skills. The chapter detailing Kennan's breakthrough—achieved by redesigning American foreign policy at a stroke, via his 5,000-word “Long Telegram” from Moscow to Washington, DC, in 1946—is particularly gripping. As he himself put it: “My reputation was made. My voice now carried.”

　　约翰·加迪斯掌握着几十年里符合自己观点的资源，所创作出的传记引人入胜又清晰明了。传记的前半部读起来几乎就是一部小说的翻版。读者们一起与乔治·凯南在纳粹兴起时造访德国；1931年在挪威，一起与这位笨拙的青年会见之后陪伴了他73载未婚妻的父母；1933年与之一起建立美国第一个驻苏联大使馆；和他一道与希特勒一起来到捷克斯洛伐克并目睹了第二次世界大战；之后又一块在斯大林对其俄语技巧令人起鸡皮疙瘩般的恭维下于1945年返回莫斯科。而描写乔治·凯南事业取得重大突破的章节—在1946年通过其从莫斯科发往华盛顿的5，000字“长电”，一举改写了美国外交政策—尤为精彩。就如同乔治·凯南自己给自己的评价一样：“功成名就，四海扬声。”

　　Before this, Kennan was a promising young officer in the American foreign service; after it, he joined the top ranks of American strategists. His arguments convinced the Truman administration that efforts to continue wartime co-operation with Russia were fruitless. America should recognise the Soviet Union as a new kind of enemy, one seeking to destroy “our traditional way of life”. Rather than fighting a conventional war, America would need to contain Soviet hostility firmly and consistently over the long term. As America resisted Moscow more and more, Kennan felt it was crucial that his country maintain the “health and vigour of our own society” and not become a garrison state.

　　而在那之前，乔治·凯南不过是美国外交界里颇有前途的小青年，之后则位列顶级战略家之层。他的论据证实了杜鲁门政府继续与苏联战时合作的努力终究无果。美国应当把苏联做为一个新的，一个试图摧毁“我们传统的生活方式”的敌人来认识，应当放弃传统的战争方式，坚决地包纳苏联的敌意并长期持之以恒。随着美苏争霸的愈演愈烈，乔治·凯南意识到，对美国来讲最关键的是保持“我们这个社会的健康与活力”而不是变成一个堡垒式的国家。

　　After the “Long Telegram”, Kennan returned to Washington and founded the State Department's influential Policy Planning Staff. But, according to Mr Gaddis, his prestige had peaked by 1948. After that, Kennan became increasingly sidelined for opposing what he judged to be excessive militarisation of his containment strategy. Yet he continued to condemn overly militarised policies for the rest of his life.

　　“长电”之后，乔治·凯南返回华盛顿，组建了国务院颇具影响力的机构政策计划处。不过根据约翰·加迪斯的讲述，其名望在1948年达到了顶峰。之后由于抵制其认为的过度军事化遏制政策而逐步边缘化。而乔治·凯南终其余生都在谴责过度军事化的政策。

　　Kennan took particular offence at the attitude of the Reagan administration, which he viewed as “simply childish, inexcusably childish, unworthy of people charged with the responsibility for conducting the affairs of a great power in an endangered world.” Nor did the end of the cold war change his mind. In 1992 Kennan made a point of stating that “nobody ‘won' the cold war”. It had been a long, costly tragedy, “fuelled on both sides by unreal and exaggerated estimates of the intentions and strength of the other side.”

　　对于里根政府，乔治·凯南的态度尤其地冒犯，他认为里根“简单幼稚，无法理解地天真，根本不配担负起在有危险的世界指导一个超级大国事务如此之重任。”冷战结束后他也没有改变自己的看法。1992年乔治·凯南曾阐述自己的观点，认为“冷战无赢家”。这场旷日持久，代价高昂的悲剧，“将对另一方意图和力量进行了不现实和扩大估算的双方同时埋葬。”

　　Mr Gaddis disagrees. He closes his study by condemning Kennan for having “blinded” himself to the fact that, in Mr Gaddis's opinion, Reagan brought Kennan's “strategy to its successful conclusion”. If Kennan were alive, he would probably still disagree, and not without reason. If the elder man's concern for the costs of bellicose foreign policy, rather than the younger man's enthusiasm for imperial exercise of American power, had dominated the last decade, it would have made for a sounder grand strategy. In ways that this biography seems not entirely to appreciate, Kennan's far-sighted opposition to American over-militarisation makes his personal career history less gripping than his legacy.

　　约翰·加迪斯对此并不认同。在传记结尾他责备了乔治·凯南对事实的“视而不见”，按照约翰·加迪斯的观点，是里根的采纳“成就”了乔治·凯南的战略。但是如果乔治·凯南还健在，他可能还会反对，而且还自有道理。如果这位老人担心的是好战外交政策所付出的代价，而不是在其后的十年起决定性作用的青年人对美国超级力量运用的热情，那么它将会是一个更加合理的宏伟战略。如此来看这部传记对乔治·凯南也不全是赞誉，乔治·凯南颇有远见地反对美国过度军事化使其个人职业生涯的精彩程度比其传记略逊一筹。