恐懼迷住了美國人的眼

恐懼迷住了美國人的眼

Flying into New York the other day, I got my first good look at the Freedom Tower, now known as 1 World Trade Center, the skyscraper that sits atop 9/11’s ground zero. It does, indeed, scrape the sky, topping out at a patriotic 1,776 feet. Thirteen years after 9/11, I appreciate the nationalist pride that, while terrorists can knock down our buildings, we can just build them right back up. Take that, Osama bin Laden.

幾天前，我做飛機去紐約，第一次好好看了一眼“自由塔”，也就是在9·11事件原爆點的那座摩天大樓，現(xiàn)在叫作“世貿中心1號樓”(1 World Trade Center)。它的確是一座摩天之樓，高度恰好是洋溢著愛國情懷的1776英尺(約合541.3米)。9·11過去13年后的今天，我欣賞這種民族自豪，恐怖分子可以撞倒我們的建筑，我們可以原地再把它們建起來。傻了吧，奧薩瑪·本·拉登(Osama bin Laden)。

If only the story ended there. Alas, bin Laden really did mess us up, and continues to do so. We’ve erased the ruins of the World Trade Center, but the foreign policy of fear that 9/11 instilled is still very much inside us — too much so. It remains the subtext of so much that we do in the world today, which is why it’s the subtitle of a new book by David Rothkopf, “National Insecurity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear.”

要是故事就這樣結束該多好。可惜，本·拉登的確把我們害慘了，至今仍未恢復。我們清理了世貿中心的廢墟，但9·11事件催生的恐懼外交政策，在我們心中仍有相當?shù)臍埩?mdash;—可以說殘留得太多了。我們今天在世界上做的許多事情，潛臺詞始終還是這種恐懼，這也是為什么它會出現(xiàn)在戴維·羅斯科普夫 (David Rothkopf)的新書《國家無安全：恐懼時代的美國領導》(National Insecurity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear)的副標題里。

Much of the book is an inside look at how foreign policy was made under the two presidents since 9/11. But, in many ways, the real star of the book, the ubershaper of everything, is this “age of fear” that has so warped our institutions and policy priorities. Will it ever go away or will bin Laden be forever that gift that keeps on giving? This is the question I emailed to Rothkopf, the editor of Foreign Policy magazine.

該書用相當篇幅講述了9·11以來兩位總統(tǒng)制定外交政策的內幕。然而，很多方面來講，這本書的頭號明星，凌駕于諸事之上的決定性因素，是“恐懼時代”，我們的制度和政策都完全圍繞它來確定什么是當務之急。這樣的狀況會一直持續(xù)下去嗎，本·拉登會不會成為一個永遠揮之不去的陰影?我在寫給《外交政策》(Foreign Policy)雜志主編羅斯科普夫的郵件中提出了這個問題。

“The post-9/11 era will not be seen as a golden age in U.S. foreign policy,” he responded. “Largely, this is because 9/11 was such an emotional blow to the U.S. that it, in an instant, changed our worldview, creating a heightened sense of vulnerability.” In response, “not only did we overstate the threat, we reordered our thinking to make it the central organizing principle in shaping our foreign policy.”

“后9·11時代不會被人看作美國外交歷史上的黃金時期，”他答道。“很大程度上是因為，9·11對美國是一個巨大的感情打擊，大到一瞬間改變了我們的世界觀，創(chuàng)造了一種被放大的脆弱感。”為了做出應對，“我們不僅夸大了威脅，還重新調整了我們的思維方式，讓它成為塑造外交政策的核心組織原則。”

This was a mistake on many levels, Rothkopf insisted: “Not only did it produce the overreaction and excesses of the Bush years, but it also produced the swing in the opposite direction of Obama — who was both seeking to be the un-Bush and yet was afraid of appearing weak on this front himself” — hence doubling down in Afghanistan and re-intervening in Iraq, in part out of fear that if he didn’t, and we got hit with a terrorist attack, he’d be blamed.

羅斯科普夫認為，從很多層面看，這都是一個錯誤：“它不但造成了布什時期的過激反應和無節(jié)制的行動，還造成了奧巴馬向相反方向的擺動——他試圖去布什化，但同時也不希望在這方面顯得孱弱”——因此就有了增兵阿富汗和重新介入伊拉克的舉動，這在一定程度上是因為害怕如果不這么做，我們遭到恐怖襲擊時，他就是罪人。

Fear of being blamed by the fearful has become a potent force in our politics. We’ve now spent over a decade, Rothkopf added, “reacting to fear, to a very narrow threat, letting it redefine us, and failing to rise as we should to the bigger challenges we face — whether those involved rebuilding at home, the reordering of world power, changing economic models that no longer create jobs and wealth the way they used to” or forging “new international institutions because the old ones are antiquated and dysfunctional.”

害怕被心懷恐懼的人埋怨，這在我們的政治中已經成為一股不可小覷的力量。羅斯科普夫還說，我們現(xiàn)在已經用了整整10年“來應對恐懼，應對微不足道的威脅，讓恐懼重新定義我們，讓我們在更大的挑戰(zhàn)出現(xiàn)時沒能去面對——不管是國內的重建、世界大國格局的改變，還是改革已經不能再像以前那樣創(chuàng)造就業(yè)和財富的經濟模式，”或建立“新的國際制度，因為舊制度已經過時和失靈。”

To put it another way, he said — and I agree with this — the focus on terrorism, combined with our gotcha politics, has “killed creative thinking” in Washington, let alone anything “aspirational” in our foreign policy. Look at the time and money Republicans forced us to spend debating whether the Benghazi, Libya, consulate attack was a terrorist plot or a spontaneous event — while focusing not a whit on the real issue: what a bipartisan failure our whole removal of Libya’s dictator turned out to be, what we should learn from that and how, maybe, to fix it.

換句話說，他認為——我也同意——對恐怖主義的關注，再結合我們的拆臺政治學，已經扼殺了華盛頓的“創(chuàng)造性思維”，更不要奢望在我們的外交政策中有什么“志向遠大”的地方?？纯垂埠忘h人迫使我們花了多少時間和金錢，用于討論利比亞班加西領館遇襲是一個恐怖主義陰謀，還是偶發(fā)性事件——對真正迫切的問題卻毫不關心：我們推翻利比亞獨裁統(tǒng)治的行動，究竟造成了多么嚴重的兩黨癱瘓，我們從中能得到什么教訓，也許還可以想想如何解決。

I have sympathy for President Obama having to deal with this mess of a world, where the key threats come from crumbling states that can be managed only by rebuilding them at a huge cost, with uncertain outcomes and dodgy partners. Americans don’t want that job. Yet these disorderly states create openings for low-probability, high-impact terrorism, where the one-in-a-million lucky shot can really hurt us. No president wants to be on duty when that happens either. Yet many more Americans were killed in their cars by deer last year than by terrorists. I don’t think Obama has done that badly navigating all these contradictions. He has done a terrible job explaining what he is doing and connecting his restraint with any larger policy goals at home or abroad.

我對奧巴馬總統(tǒng)抱有同情，因為他不得不應對這個亂糟糟的世界，在這個世界里，威脅都來自那些搖搖欲墜的國家，只有付出巨大的代價幫助它們重建，才能控制這些威脅，但所有的結果都充滿不確定性，伙伴們也都并不可靠。美國人又不想把這些事攬到自己頭上。然而，那些失序的國家為概率低、影響大的恐怖主義制造了機會，盡管這樣的行動真正傷害到我們的概率只有百萬分之一，但是也沒有哪位總統(tǒng)想要在這種事情發(fā)生時當政。然而，去年因為鹿而出車禍喪生的美國人，都比被恐怖分子殺害的人多很多。我不認為奧巴馬在應對這些矛盾時的表現(xiàn)有那么糟糕。但是他的確沒有很好地解釋自己的行為，也沒有讓人們看到，他的克制與內政和外交上更宏大的政策目標有什么關系。

Argues Gautam Mukunda, a professor at the Harvard Business School and author of “Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter,” our overreliance on fencing, so to speak, since 9/11 has distracted us from building resilience the way we used to, by investing in education, infrastructure, immigration, government-funded research and rules that incentivize risk-taking but prevent recklessness.

著有《不可或缺：領導者真正發(fā)揮作用的時候》(Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter)一書的哈佛商學院教授高塔姆·穆昆達(Gautam Mukunda)說，9·11之后我們過于強調把自己圍起來(姑且如此形容)，以至于我們無法像以往那樣，通過投資教育、基礎設施、移民、政府資助的研究，以及那些鼓勵冒險但勸阻草率的規(guī)則，讓我們更有韌性。