台湾、修昔底德和美中战争

 台湾、修昔底德和美中战争

如果目前的美国和中国政府能做的最好的事情就是像往常一样进行国事活动--这就是我们在过去一周所看到的--那么我们就应该期待历史如常。

作者：Graham Allison

通往中国和美国之间血腥战争的最快途径是通过台湾。

如果目前由众议院议长南希-佩洛西不合时宜的旅行和中国强有力的军事反应所挑起的危机导致中国和美国海军舰艇或飞机之间的碰撞，即使是一个 "意外 "也能提供点燃大火的火花。

1914年6月，弗朗茨-斐迪南大公被建议不要去萨拉热窝--正如佩洛西议长在访问前被五角大楼建议的那样。

但没有人想到，在他访问期间，他将被暗杀，提供了点燃大火的火花，其破坏性之大，历史学家不得不创造一个全新的类别。

世界大战。

幸运的是，美国和中国政府都知道，一场热战对双方都是一场灾难。

两国政府中没有一个严肃的人想要战争。

不幸的是，历史提供了许多例子，在这些例子中，其领导人并不希望战争，但却发现自己被迫做出致命的选择，一方面接受他们判断为不可接受的损失，另一方面采取增加战争风险的措施。

一个与塞尔维亚政府有不正当关系的恐怖分子暗杀了他的继任者，奥匈帝国的皇帝判断他必须强行惩罚塞尔维亚。

由于奥地利是其唯一的盟友，德国认为它别无选择，只能给予其全面支持。

俄罗斯认为有义务支持其在塞尔维亚的东正教兄弟。

一个步骤导致另一个步骤，这种行动和反应的恶性循环使整个欧洲在五周内陷入战争。

在更大的历史舞台上，当一个迅速崛起的大国严重威胁要取代一个主要的统治国时，这种竞争往往以战争告终。

在过去的500年里，有16个这样的修昔底德式的竞争案例。

其中12次导致了战争。

在每个案例中，战争的近因包括意外、非自愿的错误和不可避免的选择的意外后果，其中一个主角接受了更多的风险，希望另一个主角能退缩。

但在这些原因之下，修昔底德在解释古典希腊的两个主要城邦如何在伯罗奔尼撒战争中相互摧毁时，强调了潜在的结构性驱动因素。

正如他所写的：

"正是雅典的崛起和它给斯巴达带来的恐惧，使战争不可避免"。

今天，美国和中国正在进行GOAT（Greatest of All Time）史上最棒之争--有史以来最大的竞争。

在这场斗争中，对台湾的战争是不可避免的吗？

历史记录表明，战争的可能性比不可能更大。

但正如过去五十年所显示的，这不一定是这样。

50年前的1972年，当尼克松和基辛格打开与中国的关系时，美国和中国在台湾问题上的分歧肯定是不可调和的。

但政治家们表明，不可调和并不意味着无法控制。

他们创造了一个战略模糊的框架，在这五十年里，海峡两岸的公民在收入、健康和福祉方面的增长超过了他们悠久历史上的任何同等时期。

关于今天中国和美国在台湾问题上的对峙，有三个残酷的事实。

首先，不仅是习近平，而且整个中国领导层和国家都明确地致力于防止台湾成为一个独立国家。

如果被迫在接受一个独立的台湾和一场摧毁台湾和中国大部分地区的战争之间做出选择，习近平和他的团队将选择战争。

第二，温斯顿-丘吉尔所说的国内政治中的 "致命潮流 "现在在美国和中国都很猖獗。

美国政治的一个基本原则是禁止让一个严重的竞争对手在国家安全问题上获得自己的权利。

因此，共和党和民主党的政治家都急于显示谁能比对方对中国更强硬。

有望成为总统的迈克-蓬佩奥呼吁美国承认一个独立的台湾，鉴于共和党人之间的动态，这可能会成为共和党在2024年总统竞选中的一个共同纲领。

在台北，佩洛西预示着美国 "庄严宣誓......支持台湾的防御"。

本周，外交关系委员会的民主党主席鲍勃-梅嫩德斯参议员和国防问题的共和党领袖林赛-格雷厄姆参议员提出了《台湾政策法案》，该法案将指定台湾为 "主要非北约盟友"，并承诺提供45亿美元的军事援助。

同时，由于习近平正在为开创第三个总书记任期和虚拟终身皇帝的先例安排政治环节，要求他在台湾问题上站在美国一边并保持强势的压力比以往任何时候都要大。

第三，虽然大多数美国政治家尚未认识到这一点，但自上一次台湾危机以来的四分之一世纪里，台湾海峡的军事平衡已经发生了变化。

当地的力量平衡已决定性地转向对中国有利。

正如我去年在这里发表的一篇文章中所解释的那样，美国可能在台湾问题上输掉一场战争。

事实上，正如前国防部副部长罗伯特-沃克公开表示，在五角大楼最现实的模拟和敏感的战争游戏中，在仅限于台湾的冲突中，比分是十八比零，而这十八人不是美国队。

如果美国为台湾打一场局部战争，总统很可能会面临一个致命的选择，即在失败和升级为一场更广泛的战争之间，美国将占上风。

尽管美国在军事能力上有了巨大的飞跃，但它仍然主导着中国赖以进口能源和出口产品的蓝水海域。

当然，这种更广泛的战争可能进一步升级。

而这个升级的阶梯的上层包括使用核武器。

在核领域，美国可以将中国从地图上抹去的事实是毫无疑问的。

同样毋庸置疑的是，如果中国不以核打击进行报复，它就无法做到这一点，而核打击将杀死大多数美国人。

中国现在有一个强大的核武库，创造了一个被冷兵器时代称为MAD的条件：

相互保证的毁灭。

在一场核战争中，美国和中国都不可能在不被摧毁的情况下摧毁对方。

在那个世界里，正如罗纳德-里根总统教导我们的那样，

"核战争不可能获胜，因此必须永远不打"。

但是，尽管没有一个理性的领导人会选择打一场核战争，冷战的历史包括一些对抗，在这些对抗中，领导人选择承担更大的战争风险，而不是接受苏联夺取柏林或在古巴部署核弹头导弹。

如果目前的美国和中国政府所能做到的最好的事情就是像往常一样进行国家事务处理--这就是我们在过去一周所看到的--那么我们应该期待历史如常。

可悲的是，历史如常将意味着一场灾难性的战争，可能会摧毁双方。

Graham T. Allison是哈佛大学肯尼迪学院的道格拉斯-狄龙政府学教授。他是哈佛大学贝尔弗中心的前主任，也是《注定的战争：美国和中国能否摆脱修昔底德的陷阱？

图片。路透社。

Taiwan, Thucydides, and U.S.-China War

If the best the current U.S. and Chinese governments can manage is statecraft as usual—which is what we’ve seen this past week—then we should expect history as usual.

by Graham Allison

The fastest track to bloody war between China and the United States runs through Taiwan. If the current crisis provoked by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s untimely trip and China’s robust military response leads to a collision between Chinese and American naval vessels or aircraft, even an “accident” could provide the spark that ignites a great fire. In June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was advised not to go to Sarajevo—as Speaker Pelosi was by the Pentagon before her visit. But no one imagined that during his visit he would be assassinated, providing the spark that ignited a conflagration so devastating that historians had to create an entirely new category: World War.

Fortunately, the American and Chinese governments know that a hot war would be a disaster for both. No serious person in either government wants war. Unfortunately, history offers many examples in which rivals whose leaders did not want war nonetheless found themselves forced to make fateful choices between accepting what they judged an unacceptable loss, on the one hand, and taking a step that increased the risks of war on the other. The classic case is World War I. After a terrorist with shady ties to the government of Serbia had assassinated his successor, the Emperor of Austria-Hungary judged that he had to forcefully punish Serbia. Since Austria was its single ally, Germany felt it had no option but to give it full backing. Russia felt obliged to support its Orthodox Christian brothers in Serbia. One step led to another in a vicious cycle of actions and reactions that had all of Europe at war within five weeks.

On the larger canvas of history, when a rapidly rising power seriously threatens to displace a major ruling power, the rivalry most often ends in war. The past 500 years have seen sixteen cases of such Thucydidean rivalries. Twelve resulted in war. In each case, the proximate causes of war included accidents, unforced errors, and unintended consequences of unavoidable choices in which one of the protagonists accepted increased risks hoping that another would back down. But beneath these were underlying structural drivers that Thucydides highlighted in explaining how the two leading city-states of classical Greece destroyed each other in the Peloponnesian War. As he wrote: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.”

Today, the United States and China are engaged in the GOAT rivalry—the greatest rivalry of all time. In this struggle, is war over Taiwan inevitable? The historical record suggests war is more likely than not. But as the past five decades show, it ain’t necessarily so. Fifty years ago in 1972, when Nixon and Kissinger opened relations with China, the differences between the United States and China over Taiwan were certainly irreconcilable. But statesmen demonstrated that irreconcilable did not mean unmanageable. They created a framework of strategic ambiguity that has provided five decades in which citizens on both sides of the straits have seen greater increases in their incomes, health, and well-being than in any equivalent period in their long histories.

The brute facts about the face-off between China and the United States over Taiwan today are three. First, not just Xi Jinping but the entire Chinese leadership and nation are unambiguously committed to preventing Taiwan from becoming an independent state. If forced to choose between accepting an independent Taiwan and a war that destroys Taiwan and much of China, Xi and his team will choose war.

Second, what Winston Churchill called the “deadly currents” in domestic politics are now running rife in both the United States and China. A fundamental axiom of American politics forbids letting a serious competitor get to one’s right on an issue of national security. Republican and Democratic politicians are thus rushing to show who can be tougher on China than the other. Presidential hopeful Mike Pompeo has called for the United States to recognize an independent Taiwan, and given the dynamics among Republicans, this will likely be a common plank in the Republican Party’s platform in the 2024 presidential campaign. In Taipei, Pelosi heralded the United States’ “solemn vow … to support the defense of Taiwan.” And this week, Sen. Bob Menendez, the Democratic chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican leader on defense issues, introduced the Taiwan Policy Act, which would designate Taiwan a “major non-NATO ally” and commit $4.5 billion in military aid. Meanwhile, as Xi is arranging the political pieces for a precedent-breaking third term as general secretary and virtual emperor for life, the pressure for him to stand up to the United States and stand strong on Taiwan is more powerful than ever.

Third, while most American politicians have yet to recognize it, the military balance in the Taiwan Strait has been transformed in the quarter century since the last Taiwan crisis. The local balance of power has shifted decisively in China’s favor. As I explained in an article published here last year, the United States could lose a war over Taiwan. Indeed, as former Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work has stated publicly, in the Pentagon’s most realistic simulations and sensitive war games, in conflicts limited to Taiwan, the score is eighteen to zero, and the eighteen is not Team USA.

Were the United States to fight a local war over Taiwan, the president would likely face a fateful choice between losing and escalating to a wider war in which the United States would have the upper hand. Despite its huge leap forward in military capabilities, the United States continues to dominate the blue water seas on which China is dependent both for the import of energy and for exporting its products. Of course, that wider war could escalate further. And the upper rungs of this escalation ladder include the use of nuclear weapons.

In the nuclear domain, there is no question about the fact that the United States could erase China from the map. There is also no question about the fact that it could not do so without China retaliating with nuclear strikes that would kill most Americans. China now has a robust nuclear arsenal that creates a condition Cold Warriors called MAD: mutually assured destruction. In a nuclear war, neither the United States nor China could destroy the other without being destroyed itself. In that world, as President Ronald Reagan taught us, “a nuclear war cannot be won and must therefore never be fought.” But while no rational leader would choose to fight a nuclear war, the history of the Cold War includes a number of confrontations in which leaders chose to take increased risks of war rather than to accept the Soviet seizure of Berlin or the emplacement of nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba.

If the best the current U.S. and Chinese governments can manage is statecraft as usual—which is what we’ve seen this past week—then we should expect history as usual. Tragically, history as usual would mean a catastrophic war that could destroy both.

Graham T. Allison is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is the former director of Harvard’s Belfer Center and the author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?