奥巴马的外交理念文章原标题：“奥巴马在国外” 美国《新闻周刊》2008年7月19日

nicholasxw

译者按：巴拉克·奥巴马常常被共和党反对他的人说成是口若悬河的政客，蛊惑人心的野心家，常常有味但无聊和无稽地谈论变革。那些支持他的人有时也担心，民主党推出这样一个演讲头头是道但实干经验不足的候选人会不会是中了共和党的奸计。奥巴马最著名的竞选口号是“是的，我们可以！”（Yes，we can!）因此很多人说“说我们‘可以’容易，但是究竟是可以做什么却十分暧昧和含糊。”如果把从来没有在部队服役过也很少有外交经验的奥巴马跟曾经是越战战俘并在参议院武装部队委员会供职近20年的约翰·麦凯恩相比，奥巴马在外交政策方面的确象一个初出茅庐的国会山实习生。但是，美国《新闻周刊》的作家法里德·扎卡利亚却认为奥巴马的反对者和那些担心奥巴马过于天真的美国人的看法大错特错。扎卡利亚认为，奥巴马是一个继承了美国现实主义外交传统的候选人，他在如何维护美国的超级大国地位、解决国际危机和冲突和维持美俄、美中关系方面远比麦凯恩成熟和老辣。美国的外交不可能不包含理想主义，但是没有现实主义作为基础的理想外交永远只是理想。而奥巴马的外交理念可以把理想和现实、把目的和势力有机和巧妙地结合起来。

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奥巴马成了“右派”了吗？

   有人说他是天真幼稚的理想主义者。不过，就外交政策而言，他却是选战中真正的现实主义者。

    至少在外交政策方面，有人这样指责奥巴马：他是个天真的理想主义者，以为能凭借个人魅力征服美国的敌人。约翰·麦凯恩及他的阵营、保守派的专栏作者和右翼博客写手都把他描摹成一个自由主义梦想家，幻想着世界上的危险自行消失。甚至布什总统本人也在年初加入战团，谴责这位伊利诺伊州的参议员太天真，竟愿意和古巴和北朝鲜的独*者会谈。有些评论者几乎认定：奥巴马本周的中东和欧洲之行——这是初选胜利后奥巴马第一次出访——将是他的梦醒时分。
     
    然而，这样的批评却是错得离谱。在和曾经的希拉里和现在的麦凯恩的对决中，奥巴马详尽地说明了支撑他外交政策的那些理念。他展现的绝不是那种典型自由主义的世界观，而是更接近于传统的现实主义。有趣的是：起码在外交政策的历史流派里，奥巴马更像是一个冷酷的保守主义者，而麦凯恩则是一个热情的理想主义者。
     
    没有一个总统候选人会宣称自己的世界观和书本上的毫无二致。理查德·尼克松未曾说过他喜欢政治现实主义。吉米·卡特也不说自己是威尔逊主义者。把自己严限于某一派别是不明智的，大多数政治家、甚至政策分析家都很聪明地说要吸取各种传统的精华。所以约翰·麦凯恩自称为“讲求实际的理想主义者”。前国家安全顾问安东尼·雷克现在是奥巴马的幕僚，他声称自己是一个“务实的新威尔逊主义者”。国务卿康多莉扎·赖斯把自己说成是“美国式的现实主义者”。
     
    在这个背景下，奥巴马在谈及自己的倾向和抱负上就显得尤其诚恳。确实，他一开始赞扬的是哈里·杜鲁门，从外交政策意义上理解，这如同说敬仰乔治·华盛顿一样陈腐 (比尔·克林顿、小布什和约翰·麦凯恩都以杜鲁门为榜样)。不过，奥巴马接着棋出新招，作为一个民主党人，他赞扬了共和党老布什领导下的政府。老布什通常被视为近些年的总统中最雷厉风行或是最冷酷无情(看你从哪个立场去考量他)的一位。奥巴马不止一次赞扬过他，最近的一次是上周和我在CN*做访谈时。他把自己的意思说得很清楚。“这是理想和外交政策现实主义之间的矛盾，我特别赞赏老布什的外交政策。”他在5月对《纽约时报》的戴维·布鲁克如是说。
     
    奥巴马很少从道德的角度去评价当下的布什政府。哪怕在讨论恐怖主义时，他也没有把世界二分为善和恶。他认为各个国家、甚至极端主义组织都是复杂的，受着权力欲、贪婪和恐惧的驱动，而不仅仅是被纯意识形态所左右。他对外交的兴趣基于这样一种观念：我们可以摸索、学习、并可能分化和影响各种国家和运动，因为它们并非顽石一块。例如，当他和我谈到伊斯兰极端组织时，他反复强调伊斯兰世界内部的多样化，谈起了阿拉伯人，波斯人，非洲人，东南亚人，以及什叶派和逊尼派，所有这些团体都有他们各自的利益和议程。
     
    奥巴马从来不使用布什的自由议程中那样高昂的语言，而是更愿意谈论改善人们经济前景、文明社会和“尊严”——这是他的关键词。他拒绝布什那种对选举和政治权利的执迷，提出人们的实际需要范围更大、更为根本，包括食物、住所和工作。他对《纽约时报》的詹姆斯·特劳伯说：“一旦这些需求满足了，就可以为我们期望的民主政权提供了空间。”这种民主发展观是缓慢、有机和渐进的，通常是保守主义者的观点。
     
    奥巴马钦羡地谈起迪安·艾奇逊(译注：杜鲁门政府的国务卿), 乔治·凯南(译注：冷战时期外交家，遏制政策创始人)和莱因霍尔德·尼布尔(译注：神学家，基督教现实主义的奠基人)，这些人都能极为清醒地意识到理想主义的限制和美国所能改变的范围。“他的历史观，他对传统的尊重，以及他对改变世界(除非是极为缓慢地)的怀疑主义，在这些方面奥巴马都显得极度保守。”L· 麦克法夸尔在《纽约客》里简介奥巴马时这样写，“有时候他听起来就像伯克式(英国18世纪著名政治家)的现实主义者。他不相信抽象、概括、推演之类。他不是简单地认为不可能发生革命，而是更看重延续性和稳定性，他对这两者的重视有时超出了变革本身。”
     
    奥巴马说了什么很重要，与此同等重要的是那些他没说的东西——他没有攻击布什的某些软肋所在。他本可以抨击布什纵容中国独*统治，敦促他杯葛北京奥运会开幕式，或者是谴责它在达尔富尔问题上毫无作为。事实上，奥巴马对这些问题很谨慎，不哗众取宠，不过分许诺。(可惜他在贸易政策上正好相反，既哗众取宠，又过分许诺。)
     
    最能体现奥巴马以美国国家利益为重的理念的是他对伊拉克问题的看法。尽管伊拉克事态在改善，尽管有可能在阿拉伯世界的腹地建立一个民主政权，但奥巴马的立场毫不动摇——伊拉克是个泥潭，美国能越早抽身就越好。我确实希望他多少能够理解一个民主的伊拉克会在对付伊斯兰极端组织的斗争中起正面作用。然而他的视界全然集中于美国核心的安全利益，他显然是一个现实主义者。沃尔特·李普曼(译注：美国著名政治评论家)和乔治·凯南在六十年代中期也是这么看越南战争的。
     
    具有讽刺意味的是，共和党人现在倒像是外交政策上的理想主义者了，他们把各个国家贴上正义或是邪恶的标签，拒绝和邪恶政权打交道，热衷于在全世界推行民主，而不去从历史背景和现实复杂上多加考虑。例如，在911之后两年半，乔治·W·布什在白宫对许多来访者说：“(在阿富汗问题上)我不管那些细微末节。”是麦凯恩这个共和党人提出了一些异想天开的计划，主张美国应该建立一个民主国家联盟，把俄罗斯赶出八国集团，也把中国排除在这两个组织之外。
     
    对麦凯恩这一有关俄罗斯和中国的计划，奥巴马的回应几乎像是亨利·基辛格或是布伦特·斯考克罗夫特(译注：老布什的国家安全顾问)起草的。他上周对我说，我们需要和这两个国家合作来解决重大的全球问题，例如和俄罗斯讨论核扩散问题，和中国讨论经济问题。奥巴马和麦凯恩在这一点上的区别至关重要。美国未来几十年中面临的唯一重大战略挑战就是——如何团结世界新起的各种势力，使他们成为全球经济政治新秩序的利益攸关伙伴。俄罗斯和中国是其中的硬骨头，它们不仅是大国，还有不同的政治体制和意识形态。然而，把它们纳入帐中的好处还是显而易见的。如果没有大国间的合作，全球的和平稳定就成了虚无缥缈的海市蜃楼。
     
    奥巴马和麦凯恩显然都是现实主义和理想主义的综合体。美国政治家始终致力于将这两者结合起来，这也是理所当然的。一个不切实际的外交政策肯定会失败，一个缺乏理想的外交政策又非美国所求。不过每个领导人试图建立起来的平衡却始终是不一样的，我想说的是——奥巴马不同于现今的民主党人，他相当注重现实主义传统；而麦凯恩也多少不同于传统的共和党人，他戴道德的眼镜看世界。
     
    最后，奥巴马和麦凯恩的不同归根究底也许不是意识形态的不同，而是气质上的差别。麦凯恩是个悲观主义者，认为世界是一个阴暗而危险的地方，如果美国不常常使用武力的话，邪恶就会胜利。奥巴马以为世界在很多方面正依照我们期望的方式进步。随着各个国家的发展，它们会日益现代化，融入国际经济和政治网络。在他看来，在这种大潮流下，像伊朗和北朝鲜这样的国家不过是在利用拒绝合作来增加自己的谈判筹码。美国的任务就是推动这股进步的潮流，使用技巧而不是实力，让世界上的大国共同解决世界上的大事。你可以说他是乐观的现实主义者，或是现实的乐观主义者，但你不能说他天真幼稚。
     
    Obama Abroad
    He's been called a naive idealist. But in terms of foreign policy, he's the true realist in the race.
     
    Fareed Zakaria
     
    The rap on Barack Obama, at least in the realm of foreign policy, has been that he is a softheaded idealist who thinks that he can charm America's enemies. John McCain and his campaign, conservative columnists and right-wing bloggers all paint a picture of a liberal dreamer who wishes away the world's dangers. Even President Bush stepped into the fray earlier this year to condemn the Illinois senator's willingness to meet with tyrants as naive. Some commentators have acted as if Obama, touring the Middle East and Europe this week on his first trip abroad since effectively wrapping up the nomination, is in for a rude awakening.
     
    These critiques, however, are off the mark. Over the course of the campaign against Hillary Clinton and now McCain, Obama has elaborated more and more the ideas that would undergird his foreign policy as president. What emerges is a world view that is far from that of a typical liberal, much closer to that of a traditional realist. It is interesting to note that, at least in terms of the historical schools of foreign policy, Obama seems to be the cool conservative and McCain the exuberant idealist.
     
    No candidate for the presidency ever claims to have a doctrinal world view. Richard Nixon never said he loved realpolitik. Jimmy Carter never claimed to be a Wilsonian. There's no advantage to getting pigeonholed, and most politicians and even policy folk are clever enough to argue that they want to combine the best of all traditions. So John McCain says he's a "realistic idealist." Former national-security adviser Anthony Lake, who now counsels Obama, calls himself a "pragmatic neo-Wilsonian." Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice describes herself as an "American realist."
     
    Against that backdrop, Obama has been strikingly honest about his inclinations and inspirations. True, he begins by praising Harry Truman's administration, which in the foreign-policy world is a little like saying you admire George Washington. (Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and John McCain have all cited Truman as a model.) But then Obama takes an unusual step, for a Democrat, and praises the administration of George H.W. Bush, one that is often seen as the most hardheaded or coldblooded (depending on your point of view) in recent memory. Obama has done this more than once, most recently in a conversation with me last week on CN*. And he is explicit about what he means. "It's an argument between ideology and foreign-policy realism. I have enormous sympathy for the foreign policy of George H.W. Bush," he told The New York Times's David Brooks in May.
     
    Obama rarely speaks in the moralistic tones of the current Bush administration. He doesn't divide the world into good and evil even when speaking about terrorism. He sees countries and even extremist groups as complex, motivated by power, greed and fear as much as by pure ideology. His interest in diplomacy seems motivated by the sense that one can probe, learn and possibly divide and influence countries and movements precisely because they are not monoliths. When speaking to me about Islamic extremism, for example, he repeatedly emphasized the diversity within the Islamic world, speaking of Arabs, Persians, Africans, Southeast Asians, Shiites and Sunnis, all of whom have their own interests and agendas.
     
    Obama never uses the soaring language of Bush's freedom agenda, preferring instead to talk about enhancing people's economic prospects, civil society and—his key word—"dignity." He rejects Bush's obsession with elections and political rights, and argues that people's aspirations are broader and more basic—including food, shelter, jobs. "Once these aspirations are met," he told The New York Times's James Traub, "it opens up space for the kind of democratic regimes we want." This is a view of democratic development that is slow, organic and incremental, usually held by conservatives.
     
    Obama talks admiringly of men like Dean Acheson, George Kennan and Reinhold Niebuhr, all of whom were imbued with a sense of the limits of idealism and American power to transform the world. "In his view of history, in his respect for tradition, in his skepticism that the world can be changed any way but very, very slowly, Obama is deeply conservative," wrote Larissa MacFarquhar in her profile of him for The New Yorker. "There are moments when he sounds almost Burkean. He distrusts abstractions, generalizations, extrapolations, projections. It's not just that he thinks revolutions are unlikely: he values continuity and stability for their own sake, sometimes even more than he values change for the good."

     
    As important as what Obama says is what he passes up—a series of obvious cheap shots against Bush. He could bash him for coddling China's dictatorship, urge him to boycott the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics or criticize his inaction in Darfur. In fact, Obama has been circumspect on all these issues, neither grandstanding nor overpromising. (This is, alas, not true on trade policy, where he has done both.)
     
    Perhaps the most telling area where Obama has stuck to a focused conception of U.S. national interests is Iraq. Despite the progress in Iraq, despite the possibility of establishing a democracy in the heart of the Arab world, Obama's position is steely—Iraq is a distraction, and the sooner America can reduce its exposure there, the better. I actually wish he were somewhat more sympathetic to the notion that a democratic Iraq would play a positive role in the struggle against Islamic extremism. But his view is certainly focused on America's core security interests and is recognizably realist. Walter Lippmann and George Kennan made similar arguments about Vietnam from the mid-1960s onward.
     
    Ironically, the Republicans now seem to be the foreign-policy idealists, labeling countries as either good or evil, refusing to deal with nasty regimes, fixating on spreading democracy throughout the world and refusing to think in more historical and complex ways. "I don't do nuance," George W. Bush told many visitors to the White House in the years after 9/11. John McCain has had his differences with Bush, but not on this broad thrust of policy. Indeed it is McCain, the Republican, who has put forward some fanciful plans, arguing that America should establish a "League of Democracies," expel Russia from the Group of Eight industrialized countries and exclude China from both groups as well.
     
    Obama's response to McCain's proposals on Russia and China could have been drafted by Henry Kissinger or Brent Scowcroft. We need to cooperate with both countries in order to solve significant global problems, he told me last week, citing nuclear-proliferation issues with Russia and economic ones with China. The distinction between Obama and McCain on this point is important. The single largest strategic challenge facing the United States in the decades ahead is to draw in the world's new rising powers and make them stakeholders in the global economic and political order. Russia and China will be the hardest because they are large and have different political systems and ideological approaches to the world. Yet the benefits of having them inside the tent are obvious. Without some degree of great-power cooperation, global peace and stability becomes a far more fragile prospect.
     
    Obama and McCain are obviously mixtures of both realism and idealism. American statesmen have always sought to combine the two in some fashion, and they are right to do so. A foreign policy that is impractical will fail and one that lacks ideals is unworthy of the United States. But the balance that each leader establishes is always different, and my main point is that Obama seems—unusually for a modern-day Democrat—highly respectful of the realist tradition. And McCain, to an extent unusual for a traditional Republican, sees the world in moralistic terms.

    In the end, the difference between Obama and McCain might come down to something beyond ideology—temperament. McCain is a pessimist about the world, seeing it as a dark, dangerous place where, without the constant and vigorous application of American force, evil will triumph. Obama sees a world that is in many ways going our way. As nations develop, they become more modern and enmeshed in the international economic and political system. To him, countries like Iran and North Korea are holdouts against the tide of history. America's job is to push these progressive forces forward, using soft power more than hard, and to try to get the world's major powers to solve the world's major problems. Call him an Optimistic Realist, or a Realistic Optimist. But don't call him naive.
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