翻译：杨赛

 

美国和中国的领导人们必须就双方不可侵犯的界限做出讨论，并且做出诠释来定义这些禁区。这必须设计为可以持续一个较长的时期，不受美国两党执政更替的影响

Kissinger says U.S., China must cease escalating threats, or ‘we will slide into a situation similar to World War I’

 

基辛格：中美必须停止升级威胁，否则人类将可能滑向类似于第一次世界大战的局势之中

 

The U.S. must realize that it can no longer achieve ‘unilateral superiority’ in economic, technological strength, the famed diplomat says

 

享有盛名的外交家基辛格近日表示：美国必须意识到，自己已经不再能在经济和科技实力方面保持“单极霸权”了。

 

Henry Kissinger is no stranger to a hostile China.

 

基辛格对于一个充满竞争意识的中国并不感到陌生。

 

As President Nixon’s national security adviser, Kissinger helped engineer the first official visit by an American delegation to the People’s Republic of China, which ultimately paved the way for Nixon to visit Beijing and the U.S. to resume a cooperative relationship with the country after a long period of diplomatic isolation.

 

作为尼克松总统的国家安全顾问，基辛格帮助设计了美国代表团到中华人民共和国的第一次官方访问，而这也最终为尼克松访问北京铺平了道路，为中美长期的外交孤立关系破冰和恢复互助关系奠定了良好的基础。

 

On Wednesday afternoon, the famed diplomat warned that rising tensions between the U.S. and China could ultimately lead to a disastrous, kinetic war, in a virtual discussion with Federal Reserve Bank of New York President sponsored by the Economic Club of New York.

 

就在10月7日下午，这位闻名于世的外交家在与由纽约经济俱乐部赞助的与纽约联邦储备银行行长的一次远程讨论中警告到，中美之间升级的张力可能会最终导致一场灾难性的军事战争。

 

“Our leaders and [China’s] leaders have to discuss the limits beyond which they will not push threats, and how to define that,” Kissinger said, adding that a these talks must be designed in such a way that they can be conducted over a long period of time, across administrations of both parties.

 

“我们和中国的领导人们必须就双方不可侵犯的界限做出讨论，并且做出诠释来定义这些禁区，” 基辛格继而又提到这些谈话必须设计为可以持续一个较长的时期，并且不受美国两党执政更替的影响。

 

“You can say this is totally impossible, but if it is, we will slide into a situation similar to World War I,” he continued, pointing out that during the years leading up to the outbreak of war in the summer of 1914, the conventional wisdom then, as today, was that war between the great powers was not conceivable.

 

“你可以认为战争是完全不可能发生的，但如果它是可能的，人类将会滑向类似于第一次世界大战的局面中去，”

 

他又继续指出，要知道，在1914年夏天的战争爆发之前的几年时间内，当时世间的普遍观点就像今天一样，都认为超级大国之间的战争是难以想象的。

 

But even as world leaders at that time didn’t take the threat of war seriously, they were simultaneously building military capabilities and strategies that made it more likely. There are parallels to that technological race and the one occurring today, as the U.S. and China compete for unassailable dominance in domains like artificial intelligence.

 

当时的世界领导人们虽然并没有严肃地看待战争的威胁，但他们当时都在打造更强的军事实力，并制定更多的战略计划，这些都使战争更有可能发生。

 

当时，也有和如今正在发生的科技竞赛类同的情况，就像现今的美中之间正为了在人工智能等领域內毋庸置疑的支配地位而互相竞争。

 

Instead of striving for such dominance, he argued, we should “think of an economic world in which no other country should be able to blackmail us, but where that objective is not designed in such a way that all potential technological capabilities in other countries have to be confronted and reduced.

 

基辛格提出，美国不应该为了上述的统治地位而努力，而是应该“思考如何在一个经济世界当中令他国无法恐吓讹诈我们，但这一目标不应该通过对垒和减低其他国家潜在的科技能力这一路径来达成。”

 

“This is a big challenge for any administration, and it’s not a partisan challenge, it’s a historic challenge because we can’t review it every four to eight years, and if we cannot get clear in our own country about this, we can’t deal with other countries,” he added.

 

“这对于任何执政政府来说都是严峻的挑战, 而且这不只是某一党派的挑战，而是一项历史性的挑战，因为我们可以每四到八年就回顾它，并且如果我们不能在我们自己的国家中厘清这一问题，我们也不可能处理好其他国家的关系，” 基辛格追加到。

 

U.S.-China relations have receded somewhat from the spotlight in the American political discourse as the COVID-19 epidemic and issues of racial justice and policing have overshadowed the ongoing trade conflict and disputes over Hong Kong’s independence from the mainland. But the Trump administration has sought to blame China, where the novel coronavirus originated, for the international epidemic while it has continued to take a hard line on Chinese companies like the owner of the popular TikTok video-sharing app.

 

美中关系因为一系列原因从美国的政治舆论焦点中淡退了下来，新冠疫情的爆发，种族平等和警察执法的问题都盖过了持续发酵中的贸易冲突和关于香港对于大陆的独立性的争议。但特朗普政权意在指责疫情发源地的中国，为本次全球性疫情爆发的原因，同时也一直对中国公司们态度强硬，就像其对十分受欢迎的视频分享APP TikTok的母公司所采取的强硬手段。

 

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has become more united in its desire to strike a combative posture with China. Democratic nominee Joe Biden once championed China’s accession to the World Trade Organization but has recently argued that the U.S. should join with its allies to “confront China’s abusive behaviors and human rights violations,” in an article in Foreign Affairs earlier this year.

 

与此同时，民主党正出于自身想要给中国营造出一种善战的姿态的渴望，而变得越加统一。民主党候选人乔•拜登曾经拥护过中国加入世界贸易组织，但现在却转而在今年稍早些时候刊登于Foreign Affairs的一篇文章中，争辩到美国应该和其盟友共同“对抗中国的暴行和侵犯人权的行为。”

 

“The United States does need to get tough with China. If China has its way, it will keep robbing the United States and American companies of their technology and intellectual property,” he wrote. “It will also keep using subsidies to give its state-owned enterprises an unfair advantage—and a leg up on dominating the technologies and industries of the future.”

 

“美国的确需要对华强硬。如果中国可以随心所欲的话，它将会持续从美国和美国公司手中掠取科技和知识产权，” 拜登在文章中写到。“它也会持续性地为国有企业提供资助，从而使他们获得不公平的优势—而这又会给其创造在未来的科技和产业领域中处于主导地位的条件。”

 

Kissinger argued that the nature of the technologies and industries of the future make the current U.S.-China conflict a particularly dangerous one, because it’s possible that technologies like artificial intelligence lend themselves to zero-sum thinking and winner-take-all outcomes.

 

基辛格认为，未来科技和产业的性质尤为加剧了美中冲突的危险性，这是由于像人工智能这一类的科学技术可能会使两国带入到零和思维中去，并且产生赢家通吃的结果。

 

“The last time we have a comparable technological change was hundreds of years ago, during the enlightenment, when printing was invented and it enabled the unprecedented distribution of knowledge,” Kissinger said.

 

“上一次人类历史上经历过的相似的科技进步是几百年之前，在启蒙运动期间，印刷术的发明和由此而带来的知识的普及，” 基辛格说。

 

The essential difference between that time and now, however, is that there was a concurrent flowering of philosophical thinking that created conceptual frameworks for societies to deal with what this new technology had wrought. Kissinger warned, “In the present world, technological thinking is way ahead of conceptual thinking.”

 

当时和现在最根本的分别在于，当时伴随着技术进步的同时，哲学思想也正愈加繁荣化，而后者也催生了社会如何处理这些科技进步所带来的变化的概念性框架。基辛格警示到，“而在当今的时代中， 技术性的思维模式正遥遥领先于概念性的思维框架。”

 

文章原载于2020年10月7日 marketwatch. com