美国的大国机会的局限性
观点>国家安全
美国的大国机会的局限性
作者：Andrew Latham，观点撰稿人 - 08/15/22 3:30 pm et
撰稿人所表达的观点是他们自己的观点，并不代表山丘的观点。
在过去十年左右的时间里，"大国竞争"（GPC）的想法已经从死亡的地缘政治陈词滥调的墓地中出现，并像僵尸一样回到了华盛顿特区的权力走廊中出没。但是，人们普遍认为，冷战时期的两极意识形态竞争和冷战后的单极 "美国和平 "时刻已经刺穿了它的心脏--在美国更是如此，在那里，历史的终结和（新）自由主义国际主义的胜利即将到来的愿景将所有的替代方案排挤在外。
现在，随着 "新自由主义的终结和历史的重生"，大国竞争的概念被重新找回并重新激活，被学者和实践者用来理解当代国际秩序。事实上，尽管对这一概念对美国外交政策的具体影响可能存在分歧，但毫无疑问，大国竞争正在成为当代的 "传统智慧"，影响和制约着美国及其他国家的官方和民间地缘政治话语。
**美國的大國機遇：振興美國外交政策以應對戰略競爭挑戰Americas Great-Power Opportunity Revitalizing U.S. Foreign Policy to Meet the Challenges of Strategic Competition (Ali Wyne)
在他刚刚出版的《美国的大国机遇》一书中。振兴美国外交政策以应对战略竞争的挑战"，Ali Wyne对这种新的传统智慧提出了挑战，提出了可能是迄今为止对大国竞争框架的第一个系统性批评。Wyne首先提请我们注意大国竞争框架的错误的类比基础和它的反作用影响。关于前者，他阐明了一般历史类比的局限性，以及特别是在战时和冷战类比中所存在的问题，这些类比是GPC框架的基础。
在后一个方面，他对冷战时期叙事的驳斥尤其有益，这种叙事在美国外交政策机构内部和周围获得越来越多的支持。关于后者，Wyne强调了 "无限制的竞争 "的危险，他认为这必然来自于GPC框架。在这方面，他有益地
阐明了将当前时刻视为类似于战时和冷战时期的做法，
如何同时助长了美国的地缘政治焦虑，
促使华盛顿采取最终不可持续的原始主义大战略来缓解这些焦虑，
并促使朋友和对手作出反应，威胁到美国在世界的地位。
怀恩总结说，
更好的做法是采取更加克制的国际姿态，
避免单边主义，
依靠盟友和伙伴来维持地区平衡，
并以其他方式为国内复兴创造条件。
这是一本雄心勃勃的书，因此有很多值得推荐之处。然而，像每一本雄心勃勃的书一样，它的影响力在某些方面超过了它的把握。
怀恩书中最重要的错误可以在其结论中找到，即正确地理解，
一个新的全球伙伴关系时代的到来为美国提供了真正的机会，
不仅是为了自我更新，
而且是为了建立一个能够应对当前历史上独特挑战的新的国际秩序。
虽然这是一种高尚的情感，而且抽象地讲也许是无可非议的，但对于一本用大量篇幅系统地强调历史类比的局限性的书来说，这却是一个奇怪的刺耳的结论。因为
虽然Wyne很有能力地拆掉了 "1930年代的翻版 "和冷战时期的框架，
但他在书的结尾却偷换了另一个不恰当的类比
--1945年的战后秩序建设时刻。
尽管没有完全阐明，但《美国的大国机遇》中不可否认的收获是，2020年代在许多方面与1940年代类似。
当时，在全球大萧条和世界大战之后，
美国处于独特的地位来建立一个新的国际秩序，这个秩序反映了美国的价值观和利益，即使它试图为冲突管理、经济稳定和集体问题的解决创造新的规范和制度。
抓住这一时机，华盛顿构建了战后自由主义国际秩序。
现在，在冷战和冷战后的单极时刻之后，Wyne声称，美国再次处于独特的地位，以反映其利益和价值观的方式改造世界秩序的制度架构，同时应对当前的独特挑战。
阻碍实现这一崇高理想目标的是国内腐朽的双重挑战，它破坏了美国榜样的吸引力，而基于GPC的大战略既过于雄心勃勃又过于被动，无法指导任何积极的更新项目。
怀恩的建议？
如同1945年一样，华盛顿应该抓住时机，在国内同时开展意义深远的国内革新，同时领导一项雄心勃勃的努力，在国外建立一个新秩序。
底线是什么？
如果你在寻找对GPC叙事的批评，你不需要再看了。毫无疑问，"美国的大国机遇 "作为对目前流传的更简单的大国政治概念的一种解毒剂是非常宝贵的。但是，如果你正在寻找一种分析，为下一代美国大战略提供一个概念基础，这种大战略更加克制--更加致力于谨慎的平衡，对又一次建立国际秩序的活动不感兴趣--那么这部作品一定会让你感到失望。我属于后一种阵营。
安德鲁-莱瑟姆是明尼苏达州圣保罗市马卡莱斯特学院的国际关系教授，也是华盛顿特区国防优先组织的非常驻研究员。
标签 中国 冷战 冷战二 大国竞争 俄罗斯 美国外交政策
OPINION>NATIONAL SECURITY
The limits of America’s great power opportunity
BY ANDREW LATHAM, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 08/15/22 3:30 PM ET
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
Over the last decade or so, the idea of “great-power competition” (GPC) has emerged from the graveyard of dead geopolitical tropes and returned zombie-like to haunt the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. At the turn of the 20th century, of course, the idea of multipolar rivalry among the great powers was very much alive, shaping the geopolitical imaginations of statesmen around the world. But the Cold War-era of bipolar ideological rivalry and the post-Cold War unipolar moment of pax Americana were widely believed to have driven a stake through its heart — and nowhere more so than in the United States, where visions of the end of history and the imminent triumph of (neo) liberal internationalism crowded out all the alternatives.
Now, with the “end of neoliberalism and the rebirth of history,” the concept of great-power competition has been retrieved and reanimated, employed by scholars and practitioners alike to make sense of the contemporary international order. Indeed, while there may be disagreements over the specific implications of this for U.S. foreign policy, there can be little doubt that great-power competition is emerging as the “conventional wisdom” of the contemporary era, shaping and constraining both official and popular geopolitical discourse in the United States and beyond.
In his just-released book, “America’s Great Power Opportunity: Revitalizing U.S. Foreign Policy to Meet the Challenges of Strategic Competition,” Ali Wyne challenges this new conventional wisdom, offering what is perhaps the first systematic critique of the frame of great-power competition to date. Wyne begins by drawing our attention to both the faulty analogical foundations of the GPC frame and to its counterproductive implications. With respect to the former, he articulates the limits of historical analogies in general and the problems of drawing on the interwar and Cold War analogies that underpin the GPC frame in particular.
Especially salutary in this latter respect is his debunking of the Cold War II narrative that is gaining increasing traction in and around the U.S. foreign policy establishment. With respect to the latter, Wyne highlights the dangers of “boundless competition” that he argues necessarily flow from the GPC frame. In this connection, he usefully illuminates how treating the current moment as analogous to both the interwar and Cold War eras simultaneously feeds U.S. geopolitical anxieties, pushes Washington to adopt an ultimately unsustainable primacist grand strategy to assuage those anxieties and prompts reactions among both friends and adversaries that threaten to weaken the United States’s standing in the world.
Far better, Wyne concludes, to adopt a more restrained international posture, to eschew unilateralism, to rely on allies and partners to maintain regional balances and otherwise to create the conditions for domestic renewal.
This is an ambitious book and, as such, has much to recommend it. Like every ambitious book, however, its reach in some ways exceeds its grasp. The most significant fault in Wyne’s book can be found in its conclusion that, properly understood, the advent of a new age of GPC presents real opportunities for the United States not merely to renew itself, but to build a new international order capable of addressing the historically unique challenges of the current moment.
While this is a noble sentiment, and perhaps unobjectionable in the abstract, it is an oddly jarring conclusion to a volume that devotes so much space to systemically highlighting the limits of historical analogies. For while Wyne capably demolishes the “1930s redux” and Cold War II frames, he ends his book by smuggling in another inapt analogy — that of the postwar order-building moment of 1945.
Although nowhere fully articulated, the undeniable takeaway from “America’s Great-Power Opportunity” is that the 2020s are in many ways analogous to the 1940s. Then, in the aftermath of a global depression and world war, the United States was uniquely positioned to build a new international order, one that reflected American values and interests even as it sought to create new norms and institutions for conflict management, economic stability and collective problem solving.
Seizing this moment, Washington constructed the postwar liberal international order. Now, in the aftermath of the Cold War and the post-Cold War unipolar moment, Wyne claims that the United States is once again uniquely positioned to renovate the institutional architecture of world order in ways that reflect its interests and values while addressing the unique challenges of the moment.
Standing in the way of realizing that lofty aspirational goal are the twin challenges of domestic decay, which undermines the attractiveness of the American example, and a GPC-based grand strategy that is both too ambitious and too reactive to guide any positive project of renewal. Wyne’s recommendation? As in 1945, Washington should seize the moment, simultaneously embarking on far-reaching domestic renewal at home while leading an ambitious effort to build a new order abroad.
The bottom line? If you are looking for a critique of the GPC narrative, you need look no further. “America’s Great-Power Opportunity” is without question invaluable as an antidote to the more simplistic notions of great-power politics currently in circulation. But if you are looking for an analysis that might provide a conceptual foundation for a next-generation U.S. grand strategy that is more restrained – more committed to prudent balancing and less interested in yet another exercise in international order building – then this work is bound to leave you disappointed. Count me in the latter camp.
Andrew Latham is a professor of international relations at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minn., and a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities in Washington, D.C. Follow him on Twitter @aalatham.
TAGS CHINA COLD WAR COLD WAR II GREAT POWER COMPETITION RUSSIA US FOREIGN POLICY
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