【英语国际】美国衰落的真相

Something puzzling just happened in Washington: a liberal American president who opposed the invasion of Iraq endorsed one of its chief neoconservative advocates. By embracing Robert Kagan’s essay, “The Myth of America’s Decline”, Barack Obama has done the author a turn. The essay is excerpted from Mr Kagan’s book, The World that America Made, which comes out later this month.

“America is back,” Mr Obama said in his State of the Union address 10 days ago. “Anyone who tells you America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about.” Mr Obama “loved” the Kagan essay, Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, later revealed on the talkshow presented by Charlie Rose. The president had gone over it point by point at a White House meeting.

Mr Kagan, who also wrote “Europeans are from Mars, Americans are from Venus”, the provocative post-Iraq book, has written a clear and powerfully-argued essay. But Mr Obama might want to scan it more closely. Start with its economic facts. Mr Kagan says that in 1969 the US had “roughly a quarter” of the world’s income. “Today it still produces roughly a quarter,” Kagan wrote. “America’s share of the world’s GDP has held remarkably steady.”

That would seem pretty conclusive. Here are more precise measures. In 1969, the US accounted for 36 per cent of global income at market prices, according to the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook. America’s share had fallen to 31 per cent by 2000. Then it started to plummet. By 2010, the US accounted for just 23.1 per cent of world income. In one decade America lost 7 per cent of world share. More than half that loss occurred before the Great Recession.

China’s economy, meanwhile, was barely an eighth the size of the US’s in 2000. Today it is 41 per cent – and that is based on current exchange rates. Were Beijing to float the renminbi, China’s economy could be valued considerably higher. Far from being “remarkably steady”, the shift over the past decade has been uniquely rapid by any historic measure. Another decade like that and America’s pre-eminence will look very shaky. Indeed, as Arvind Subramanian writes, China would surpass the US within 12 years even if its growth slowed to 7 per cent a year and the US hit an unlikely annual pace of 3 per cent.

But the book’s real subject is American exceptionalism. Mr Kagan believes that it is largely up to Americans to decide whether their country’s dominance will continue. In a clear echo of the author’s criticisms of Bill Clinton in the 1990s, Mr Kagan fears the US is losing its will for muscular world leadership. “In the end, the decision is in the hands of Americans,” he writes. “Decline, as Charles Krauthammer [a commentator] has observed, is a choice.”

And here we arrive at the book’s main puzzle. Mr Kagan denies America is in relative decline – and mistakenly insists there is no economic evidence for it. Yet he argues that America’s decline is being actively willed by unnamed “politicians and policymakers”. They are “in danger of committing pre-emptive superpower suicide out of a misplaced fear of declining power”.

It is a tension that runs through the book. If America isn’t declining, who cares? If, on the other hand, America is willing its decline, who are these lemmings exactly? One clue would be Mr Obama. Here is an even richer clue from Mitt Romney (to whom Mr Kagan serves as a senior foreign policy adviser): “Our president thinks America is in decline,” the Republican frontrunner recently said. “It is if he [Obama] is president. It is not if I am president.”

It would be only a mild exaggeration to take Mr Romney’s following words as a summary of Mr Kagan’s core thesis. “President Obama believes America’s role as leader in the world is a thing of the past,” Mr Romney said in Florida last week. “I will insist on a military so powerful no one would ever think of challenging it.”

In practise, Mr Obama has negotiated a modest, and arguably illusory, trim to the US defence budget – 8 per cent in the next decade from a generous baseline. US military spending will still be far higher after the cuts have gone through than it was on the eve of September 11. Mr Romney promises to reverse them.

Mr Kagan believes America’s future will hinge largely on taking a very different turn to the one in which US foreign policy and the Pentagon is apparently headed. The continuation of the international liberal order depends on the presence of a strong and active US, he argues.

Imagine a scenario where China became the top dog, he says. Would it uphold the system that got it there? Mr Kagan answers by way of a fable. A frog agrees to carry a scorpion on his back across the river on the promise he will not be stung. “How can I sting you when I would also drown?” asks the scorpion. As the frog drowns, it asks why the scorpion broke its word: “Because I am a scorpion,” comes the reply.

With that Mr Kagan pretty much dismisses two generations of China strategy. The wealth China has earned by global integration, and the numbers lifted from poverty, may in the end count for little against its true nature, he suggests. Which brings us back to the main quandary: the book’s real target is American declinists; yet America’s declinist-in-chief loves its thesis. Who knows, perhaps it is one of those instances of co-option at which presidents excel. In which case, it is fair to ask who is carrying whom?

华盛顿最近发生了一件让人困惑的事：一位反对入侵伊拉克的自由派美国总统，对一位新保守主义学者、同时也是入侵伊拉克的主要支持者之一予以了认可。巴拉克?奥巴马(Barack Obama)肯定了罗伯特?卡根(Robert Kagan)的文章——《美国衰落之谜》(The Myth of America’s Decline)，他对这位作者的态度也因此有了180度的转变。这篇文章摘自卡根所著的《美国制造的世界》(The World that America Made)，该书将于本月晚些时候出版。

奥巴马在数日前发表的国情咨文演讲中说，“美国回来了”。“那些告诉你美国正走向衰落、或我们的影响力正在减弱的人，根本不知道自己在说什么。”美国国家安全顾问汤姆?多尼隆(Tom Donilon)后来在查理?罗斯(Charlie Rose)主持的一档脱口秀节目中透露，总统“很喜欢”卡根的这篇文章。奥巴马曾在一次白宫会议上将这篇文章的观点逐项分析了一遍。

卡根还著有《欧洲人来自火星，美国人来自金星》(Europeans are from Mars, Americans are from Venus)，那是一本带有煽动性色彩的、论述后伊拉克战争时代的书。《美国衰落之谜》这篇文章观点清晰，论证有力。不过，奥巴马或许应该更细致地将该文研读一番——首先从该文罗列的经济事实开始。卡根提到，1969年时，美国占世界收入的“四分之一左右”。“如今，它依然占四分之一左右，”卡根写道，“美国在全球GDP中所占的比例相当稳定。”

这一事实貌似确凿无疑。但这里有一些更准确的数字。根据国际货币基金组织(IMF)的《世界经济展望》(World Economic Outlook)，以市场价格衡量，1969年时，美国占全球收入的36%。到2000年时，这一比例降至31%。随后，该数字开始直线下滑。到2010年时，美国在全球收入中所占比例仅为23.1%。在10年的时间里，美国的占比下滑了7个百分点。这一下滑有一半以上是出现在“大衰退”(Great Recession)之前。

另一方面，2000年时，中国的经济规模仅相当于美国的八分之一。今天，这一比例已升至41%，而且这还是基于当前汇率得出的。如果北京方面允许人民币汇率自由浮动，中国经济的估值还将大幅提高。无论以哪种重要指标衡量，过去十年间的这种变化都难称“相当稳定”；相反，这种变化可谓极其迅速。要是下个十年也是如此，美国的领先地位将岌岌可危。的确，正如阿文德?萨勃拉曼尼亚(Arvind Subramanian)所指出的，即便中国经济年增速放缓至7%，并且美国经济能实现3%的年增长率（可能性很小），中国也仍会在12年后超过美国。

不过，《美国制造的世界》一书真正的主题是美国例外论。卡根认为，从很大程度上来说，决定美国霸主地位能否延续下去的是美国人自己。他担心，美国正在丧失掌控世界霸权的意愿。这一观点也是对作者本人在上世纪90年代对比尔?克林顿(Bill Clinton)所作批评的清晰呼应。“归根结底，决定权掌握在美国人手中。”他写道，“就像（评论人士）查尔斯?克劳特哈默(Charles Krauthammer)所指出的，衰落是一种选择。”

下面我们来谈谈该书的最大疑问。卡根否认美国已处在相对衰落之中，并错误地坚持认为没有经济上的证据证明这一点。然而他却宣称，一些他未提及姓名的“政客和政策制定者”正在主动促成美国的衰落。这些人“出于对臆想中的衰落的恐惧，很可能贸然采取相应对策，把一个超级大国引上自杀之路。”

这种自我矛盾贯穿全书。假如美国并未处在衰落之中，那么人们为何要关注这个问题？另一方面，如果美国正主动促成自身的衰落，那么到底谁是那些“旅鼠”呢？线索之一指向奥巴马。米特?罗姆尼（Mitt Romney，卡根担任其高级外交政策顾问）的一番话提供了更加丰富的线索：“我们的总统认为美国正处在衰落之中。”在共和党总统候选人提名战中“领跑”的罗姆尼近日表示，“如果奥巴马是总统，那么事情就是这样。如果我是总统，事情便不会如此。”

若用罗姆尼下面这番话作为对卡根核心论点的总结，虽然有些夸张，却并不过分。“奥巴马总统认为，美国扮演世界领袖角色的时代已经过去，”罗姆尼近日在佛罗里达州说，“我坚持认为美国应当拥有足够强大的军力，以至于永远不会有人想对它提出挑战。”

实际上，奥巴马已同相关方面商定小幅（可以说不具实质意义）削减美国国防预算——未来十年将在目前庞大国防预算的基础上削减8%。削减后的美国军费开支仍比“9?11”前夕高出许多。而罗姆尼承诺将取消削减军费开支的计划。

卡根认为，美国的未来在很大程度上将取决于实行一种明显不同于以往的政策，通过这种转变，美国的外交政策和国防政策显然将成为国家事务的重中之重。他指出，国际自由秩序的延续有赖于一个强大而活跃的美国身影。

他说，设想一下中国成为全球霸主的那一天。它会维护帮它成就这一切的体系吗？卡根用一则寓言做出了回答。一只青蛙答应驮一只蝎子过河，但要蝎子保证不要蜇它。“蜇了你我也会淹死，我怎么会蜇你呢？”蝎子说。结果青蛙还是被蛰了，在它快要淹死之时，它责问蝎子为何出尔反尔。蝎子答道：“因为我是只蝎子。”

通过这则寓言，卡根大体表达出对两任美国总统对华战略的不屑。他暗示，中国通过全球一体化积聚起来的财富，以及该国大量脱贫的人口，或许最终不会对该国的本性产生丝毫影响。让我们回到上面那个令人不解的问题上：这本书真正的矛头所指是美国的衰落主义者，而美国的头号衰落主义者却很欣赏书中的观点。天晓得这是怎么一回事。也许这就是总统们所擅长的那种“为己所用”吧。若果真如此，那么我们该问的问题是：到底谁在驮着谁？

译者/何黎