歐洲"現實主義者"讓普京受益

Here we go again. Russian artillery fires and a convoy – filled with aid, the Russians say – rolls across Ukraine’s border, where an awful but undeclared battle between Moscow’s proxies and the Kiev government for control of the country’s east has been under way for months. Kiev calls this “a direct invasion”. What will Washington and its European allies do?

又是老一套。俄羅斯炮兵開火，而（俄羅斯人說，滿載援助的）護衛隊開過烏克蘭邊境——在那裏，雖然沒有正式宣戰，但莫斯科的代理人和烏克蘭政府已經爲爭奪烏克蘭東部控制權而爆發了一場持續數月的可怕戰爭。烏克蘭政府將此稱爲“直接的侵略”。華盛頓及其歐洲盟友將如何應對？

Recent history suggests there will be many who argue against doing much. Why? Because President Vladimir Putin , Russia’s tough-guy leader, has been playing the west like a fiddle, giving just enough to pretend he is something other than the ultranationalist autocrat he has always been.

最近的歷史表明，將會有許多人反對採取嚴厲措施。原因何在？因爲俄羅斯的硬漢領導人、總統弗拉基米爾•普京(Vladimir Putin)一直在欺騙西方，恰到好處地假裝他不是極端民族主義獨裁者，雖然他自始至終都是這麼一個人。

Mr Putin, the former KGB spy, is a master at giving his western apologists room to manoeuvre; at putting a case out there, no matter how implausible. This was true from the very start of his rule, when I was a correspondent in Moscow for The Washington Post and he was launching his crackdown on independent media and on tycoons such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky. His western apologists were happy to take Mr Putin at his word, that he was merely cleaning up the mess left by Boris Yeltsin, his predecessor, while failing to account for his efforts to dismantle the admittedly flawed democracy he inherited. “If by democracy, you mean the dissolution of the state, we don’t need it,” he once told western correspondents. Few paid attention at first.

前克格勃(KGB)間諜普京非常擅長給他的西方辯護者發揮的空間，而且非常擅長編理由，無論它多麼不合情理。他上臺伊始就是這樣，當時我擔任《華盛頓郵報》(The Washington Post)駐莫斯科記者，而他正開始打壓獨立媒體和米哈伊爾•霍多爾科夫斯基(Mikhail Khodorkovsky)等寡頭。他的西方辯護者樂於相信他的話，即他只是在清理前任鮑里斯•葉利欽(Boris Yeltsin)留下的亂攤子，儘管他未能解釋他爲何努力摧毀自己繼承的民主體制——誠然，它是有些缺陷。普京曾經對西方記者表示：“如果你所說的民主是讓國家解體的意思，那我們不需要這種民主。”最初沒什麼人注意這一點。

But it is not just Mr Putin’s skill at telling the west what he wants it to hear. He has also been lucky – in his friends as well as his enemies. And by friends, I am not talking about the paid shills or leftwing western apologists who publicly defend him, disregarding his invade-the-neighbours, crack-down-at-home tendencies.

但普京不僅僅是善於告訴西方他希望讓他們聽到的東西。他還有運氣——不論從朋友還是敵人來看。我在這裏所說的朋友不是他花錢僱的托兒，也不是無視他對外侵略鄰國、對內打壓異己的傾向而公開爲其辯護的西方左翼人士。

No, I am talking about the much more dangerous kind of sentiment that benefits Mr Putin and thrives in western capitals – and usually, though much more quietly, prevails in debates over what to actually do in response to Russian aggression. These folks do not pretend that Putinism is great; they are not excusing his human rights violations or the cartoonish corruption of the Kremlin’s ruling elite. Usually, they are just being “realists”. Germany and other parts of Europe are too dependent on Russian energy to confront Moscow; the US, while terribly sorry, does not have a true “national interest” in who controls which part of eastern Ukraine. Escalation could lead to a far more dangerous crisis, they argue, often persuasively, in this centennial anniversary of Europe falling into the Great War.

我說的朋友是那種危險得多的情緒，這種讓普京受益的情緒在西方各國非常盛行，而且雖然更加不動聲色，卻通常在針對俄羅斯侵略行爲應採取何種實際行動的辯論中佔據主導地位。這些人不會佯稱，普京主義非常偉大，他們沒有爲他侵犯人權或克里姆林宮執政精英誇張的腐敗行徑辯解。通常來說，他們只是“現實主義者”。德國和其他歐洲國家過於依賴俄羅斯的能源，從而無法與莫斯科對抗；美國儘管表示極爲遺憾，但它在誰控制烏克蘭東部哪個部分的問題上沒有真正的“國家利益”。在歐洲陷入一戰一百週年之際，他們聲稱緊張局勢升級可能導致更爲危險的危機，而且這種說法常常頗有說服力。

And there is much validity to these arguments, which also have the benefit of being exactly what policy makers in an exploding world generally want to hear. The Washington Post’s David Ignatius recently characterised the debate about Mr Putin in the west as one between the “squeezers” and the “dealers”: well, these are the dealers, and they are ready to make a deal.

這些觀點很令人信服，也正是政策制定者們在一個衝突不斷的世界裏通常希望聽到的觀點。《華盛頓郵報》的大衛•伊格內修(David Ignatius)最近將西方關於普京的辯論描述爲“擠壓者”和“交易者”之間的辯論：恩，這些是交易者，他們準備締結交易。

Of course, Mr Putin’s takeover of the Crimean peninsula this year and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 by a Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile over eastern Ukraine did provoke a real response: sanctions on Russia’s financial sector, its energy modernisation, threats of more. There has been nothing more infuriating to US President Barack Obama and his advisers than being told time and again by his hardline Republican critics that he has been soft on the Kremlin. Exasperated White House officials have told me repeatedly there would not have been any European sanctions, never mind tough ones, without constant nudging and pushing from the White House. And I believe it.

當然，普京今年吞併克里米亞半島，以及馬航MH17航班在烏克蘭東部被俄羅斯提供的地對空導彈擊落，的確激起西方動真格的反應：對俄羅斯金融部門的制裁，對其能源現代化的禁制，還有威脅施加更多制裁。持強硬立場的共和黨批評人士一再斥責美國總統巴拉克•奧巴馬(Barack Obama)及其顧問對克里姆林宮太軟弱了，沒有比這更讓後者惱火的了。憤怒的白宮官員們再三告訴我，如果不是白宮不斷施壓敦促，歐洲都不會實施制裁，更別說出臺嚴厲的制裁措施了。我相信他們說的是真的。

But it is also true that, while Mr Obama has pushed, and pushed hard, for economic retaliation, he has made clear that more assertive military measures are unlikely and even resisted other measures, such as stationing more troops in eastern Europe, bolstering Ukraine’s forces and the like. And besides, it is not just a willingness to accommodate and look the other way that give Mr Putin an advantage when it comes to dealing with Washington.

但同樣千真萬確的是，儘管奧巴馬推動、而且是大力推動經濟報復，但他也明確表示，美國不太可能出臺更爲堅決的軍事措施，甚至抵制採取其他措施，比如在東歐部署更多軍隊，支持烏克蘭軍隊等等。此外，讓普京在與華盛頓打交道時具有優勢的，不只是其願意順應形勢並從對方角度看問題。

The accelerating crises elsewhere in the world are also, unfortunately, likely to be good news for the Kremlin. With Iraq exploding and the Pentagon talking in apocalyptic terms about the dangers of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, the al-Qaeda spin-off known as Isis, and with Israel at war in Gaza and racial unrest at home, Mr Obama and his administration just are not going to have the capacity to focus on the festering war in Ukraine unless they are forced to. “I worry about Obama and team now being pulled into Iraq and losing focus on Ukraine,” a former senior official told me the other day. Once again the refrain will be: “The EU has to lead.”

遺憾的是，世界其他地方危機加劇也可能對克里姆林宮是好消息。隨着伊拉克衝突爆發和五角大樓以大難臨頭的語氣談論基地組織(al-Qaeda)分支“伊拉克與黎凡特伊斯蘭國”(ISIS)的危險，隨着以色列在加沙開戰以及國內爆發種族主義騷亂，奧巴馬政府無法集中精力應對烏克蘭日益激化的戰爭，除非他們被逼得這麼做。一位前高官有一天告訴我：“我擔心奧巴馬及其團隊的精力現在被吸引到伊拉克衝突上，而不再關注烏克蘭。”人們將再次老調重彈：“歐盟必須挑頭。”

And does anyone really think that it will?

真的有人認爲歐盟會挑頭嗎？