为什么欧洲人可以尝试社会民主甚至共产主义政治， 而她的国家却被永远夺走了。

 这与华盛顿的欧洲资本主义盟友的现实非常不同。

弗朗西斯卡和她的家人于1968年来到荷兰，

立即看到西欧充满活力的成功社会与苏哈托政权有多么不同。

This was a very different reality from that of Washington’s European, capitalist allies.

 Francisca and her family arrived in Holland in 1968, and saw immediately how different Western Europe’s dynamic, successful societies were from the Suharto regime.

共产党在最近的荷兰选举中赢得了几个席位，并参加了议会。

在法国和意大利，与莫斯科结盟的共产党仍然是主要角色。

法国共产党在1967年获得了超过20%的选票，并与社会党和激进党组成了议会反对派。3 

意大利共产党在上次选举中获得了第二名，并在全国拥有坚实的基础。

在西德，没有有影响力的共产党。

但主要的中左翼政党，即排名第二的社会民主党，是在马克思还活着的时候作为一个马克思主义政党成立的，其领导人选择了一条比列宁主义者更温和的道路，因为他们在资本主义民主中取得了成功。

The Communist Party had won a few seats in the most recent Dutch election, and participated in Parliament.

 In France and Italy, the communist parties aligned with Moscow were still major players.

 The PCF—Parti Communiste Français—got more than 20 percent of the vote in 1967 and formed parliamentary opposition with the Socialists and Radicals.3 The Italian Communists had gotten second place in the previous election, and held solid chunks of the country as their loyal base.

 In West Germany, there was no influential communist party.

 But the main center-left party, the second-place Social Democrats, was founded as a Marxist party while Marx was still alive, and its leaders had chosen a more moderate path than the Leninists because of their success working within capitalist democracy.

弗朗西斯卡上次见到西欧时，也就是战后不久，情况非常不同。

早在1940年代，获得肉类和黄油的机会受到严格限制，每个人都在争相重建自己的生活。

在1960年代，它是公正、丰富和轻松的。

由于马歇尔计划，该地区的经济已经按照更多的美国路线进行了重建。

但这些国家在处理自己的事务时并不狂热地反对共产主义。

当然没有美国那么多，也远没有印度尼西亚或巴西那么多。

尽管所谓的红色威胁就在东边几英里处，准备吞噬他们，但西欧人对它的恐惧远不及坐在半个地球之外的美国。

The last time Francisca had seen Western Europe, just after the war, it was very different.

 Back in the 1940s, access to meat and butter was strictly limited, and everyone was scrambling to rebuild their lives.

 In the 1960s it was just, rich and relaxed.

 The region’s economies had been rebuilt along more American lines thanks to the Marshall Plan.

 But these were not fanatically anticommunist nations when it came to their own affairs.

 Certainly not as much as the US, and nowhere near as much as Indonesia or Brazil.

 Even though the supposed Red Menace was just a few miles to the east, ready to swallow them up, Western Europeans were far less afraid of it than the United States, sitting half a world away.

弗朗西斯卡非常清楚，

为什么欧洲人可以尝试社会民主甚至共产主义政治，

而她的国家却被永远夺走了。

It was very clear to Francisca why Europeans were allowed to experiment with social democracy and even communist politics, while her country had been taken away from her forever.

种族主义，非常简单。

欧洲白人得到了宽容和同情的待遇，而我们却没有。

“Racism, very simply.

 White Europeans are offered tolerance and sympathetic treatment, while we are not.”

当弗兰克-维斯纳和霍华德-琼斯在二战后致力于重新设计西德的金融体系时，

美国政府在创建新的德国马克时抹去了所有公共和私人债务。

让人不寒而栗的是，

如果一个被视为反美或 "共产主义 "的第三世界主要领导人在独立战争后试图做同样的事情，他的国家会受到怎样的待遇。

When Frank Wisner and Howard Jones were working to re-engineer West Germany’s financial system after World War II, the US government wiped out all public and private debt as they created the new deutsche mark.

 One shudders to think how a major Third World leader perceived as anti-American or “communist” would have been treated if his country tried the same thing after a war of independence.

在西欧的资本主义民主国家，温和的和激进的左翼政党都从制度内部对经济秩序进行了不断的批评，但从未完全接管它。

当然，中情局仍然活跃在欧洲，以我们仍然无法真正理解的方式策划着。

从维斯纳早期发展起来的格拉迪奥行动 "留守 "网络一直持续到1980年代。

但是，当欧洲政府对公民来说转变得太右时，选民就会转向左边的政党，反之亦然，而这是被允许的。

In Western Europe’s capitalist democracies, moderate and radical left-wing parties alike served as constant critics of the economic order from within the system without ever taking it over entirely.

 Of course, the CIA was still active in Europe, scheming in ways we still don’t really understand.

 The Operation Gladio “stay-behind” networks that grew out of Wisner’s early days continued into the 1980s.

 But when European governments shifted too far right for citizens, voters shifted to the parties on the left, and vice versa, and that was allowed.

当类似的政策取向导致第三世界的暴力干预时，

为什么冷战时期的华盛顿让西欧 "逃脱 "了

所有这些轻型社会主义？

难道正如弗朗西斯卡所说，

美国人只是相信他们的欧洲表亲--他们是白人，因此有责任感--能够处理管理民主的任务？

一个补充性的解释可能是，

这些国家--有些仍在监督殖民帝国的残余--非常富有和强大。

即使华盛顿想这么做，也很难对它们施加压力，而且--也许更重要的是--它们位于世界经济的顶端。

他们正被完全纳入美国领导的体系，

因此，

他们试图从根本上重塑全球秩序的风险要小得多，

因为全球秩序对他们来说是很好的。

Why did Cold War Washington let Western Europe “get away” with all this light socialism when similar policy orientations led to violent intervention in the Third World? Was it only that, as Francisca said, Americans simply trusted their European cousins—who were white, and therefore responsible—to handle the task of managing democracy? A complementary explanation might be that these countries, some still overseeing remnants of colonial empire, were incredibly rich and powerful.

 They were much harder to push around, even if Washington had wanted to, and—perhaps more importantly—they sat at the top of the world economy.

 They were being fully integrated into the US-led system, and so there was much less of a risk they would try to radically reshape the global order, because it had served them quite well.