欧洲"现实主义者"让普京受益

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。俄罗斯炮兵开火，而（俄罗斯人说，满载援助的）护卫队开过乌克兰边境——在那里，虽然没有正式宣战，但莫斯科的代理人和乌克兰政府已经为争夺乌克兰东部控制权而爆发了一场持续数月的可怕战争。乌克兰政府将此称为“直接的侵略”。华盛顿及其欧洲盟友将如何应对？

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.

最近的历史表明，将会有许多人反对采取严厉措施。原因何在？因为俄罗斯的硬汉领导人、总统弗拉基米尔•普京(Vladimir Putin)一直在欺骗西方，恰到好处地假装他不是极端民族主义独裁者，虽然他自始至终都是这么一个人。

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)间谍普京非常擅长给他的西方辩护者发挥的空间，而且非常擅长编理由，无论它多么不合情理。他上台伊始就是这样，当时我担任《华盛顿邮报》(The Washington Post)驻莫斯科记者，而他正开始打压独立媒体和米哈伊尔•霍多尔科夫斯基(Mikhail Khodorkovsky)等寡头。他的西方辩护者乐于相信他的话，即他只是在清理前任鲍里斯•叶利钦(Boris Yeltsin)留下的乱摊子，尽管他未能解释他为何努力摧毁自己继承的民主体制——诚然，它是有些缺陷。普京曾经对西方记者表示：“如果你所说的民主是让国家解体的意思，那我们不需要这种民主。”最初没什么人注意这一点。

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.

但普京不仅仅是善于告诉西方他希望让他们听到的东西。他还有运气——不论从朋友还是敌人来看。我在这里所说的朋友不是他花钱雇的托儿，也不是无视他对外侵略邻国、对内打压异己的倾向而公开为其辩护的西方左翼人士。

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.

我说的朋友是那种危险得多的情绪，这种让普京受益的情绪在西方各国非常盛行，而且虽然更加不动声色，却通常在针对俄罗斯侵略行为应采取何种实际行动的辩论中占据主导地位。这些人不会佯称，普京主义非常伟大，他们没有为他侵犯人权或克里姆林宫执政精英夸张的腐败行径辩解。通常来说，他们只是“现实主义者”。德国和其他欧洲国家过于依赖俄罗斯的能源，从而无法与莫斯科对抗；美国尽管表示极为遗憾，但它在谁控制乌克兰东部哪个部分的问题上没有真正的“国家利益”。在欧洲陷入一战一百周年之际，他们声称紧张局势升级可能导致更为危险的危机，而且这种说法常常颇有说服力。

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.

这些观点很令人信服，也正是政策制定者们在一个冲突不断的世界里通常希望听到的观点。《华盛顿邮报》的大卫•伊格内修(David Ignatius)最近将西方关于普京的辩论描述为“挤压者”和“交易者”之间的辩论：恩，这些是交易者，他们准备缔结交易。

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.

当然，普京今年吞并克里米亚半岛，以及马航MH17航班在乌克兰东部被俄罗斯提供的地对空导弹击落，的确激起西方动真格的反应：对俄罗斯金融部门的制裁，对其能源现代化的禁制，还有威胁施加更多制裁。持强硬立场的共和党批评人士一再斥责美国总统巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)及其顾问对克里姆林宫太软弱了，没有比这更让后者恼火的了。愤怒的白宫官员们再三告诉我，如果不是白宫不断施压敦促，欧洲都不会实施制裁，更别说出台严厉的制裁措施了。我相信他们说的是真的。

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.

但同样千真万确的是，尽管奥巴马推动、而且是大力推动经济报复，但他也明确表示，美国不太可能出台更为坚决的军事措施，甚至抵制采取其他措施，比如在东欧部署更多军队，支持乌克兰军队等等。此外，让普京在与华盛顿打交道时具有优势的，不只是其愿意顺应形势并从对方角度看问题。

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.”

遗憾的是，世界其他地方危机加剧也可能对克里姆林宫是好消息。随着伊拉克冲突爆发和五角大楼以大难临头的语气谈论基地组织(al-Qaeda)分支“伊拉克与黎凡特伊斯兰国”(ISIS)的危险，随着以色列在加沙开战以及国内爆发种族主义骚乱，奥巴马政府无法集中精力应对乌克兰日益激化的战争，除非他们被逼得这么做。一位前高官有一天告诉我：“我担心奥巴马及其团队的精力现在被吸引到伊拉克冲突上，而不再关注乌克兰。”人们将再次老调重弹：“欧盟必须挑头。”

And does anyone really think that it will?

真的有人认为欧盟会挑头吗？