英国不应对国际事务漠不关心

Shortly after David Cameron’s arrival in Downing Street, an official observed that the UK prime minister showed slight interest in global affairs. In a phrase recalling the biting satire of the television sitcom Yes Minister, the aide continued that Mr Cameron was more inclined to see the world as “somewhere to go on holiday”.

在英国首相戴维•卡梅伦(David Cameron)入住唐宁街之后不久，一位官员评论称，卡梅伦对全球事务兴趣不大。这位助手接着说了一句令人想起幽默电视剧《是，大臣！》(Yes Minister)中的辛辣讽刺的话，他说，卡梅伦更倾向于将世界看作一个“度假的地方”。

At the time I thought this a touch unfair. In the British system it is rare for incoming prime ministers to know, or care, much about foreign affairs. Five years later it is evident that the principal markers of Mr Cameron’s foreign and defence policies have been drift and retreat. Some weeks ago he told his office to clear his diary of all “discretionary” travel. America’s Barack Obama and Germany’s Angela Merkel could be left to douse the fires raging in Ukraine and the Middle East. He had an election to fight. So his appearance at this week’s Brussels summit was only a brief break from the campaign.

当时我认为这有点不公平。在英国体系下，新任首相很少有了解或关心外国事务的。五年过去，卡梅伦外交和防务政策上的主要特点很明显是放任自流和向后撤退。数周前，他让首相办公室取消所有“随意”旅行的行程。美国的巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)和德国的安格拉•默克尔(Angela Merkel)完全可以自己去扑灭乌克兰和中东地区的“大火”。卡梅伦得应对选战，因此他出现在上周的布鲁塞尔峰会只是选举活动中的短暂休息。

In retrospect, the signs were indeed there in the early days. The new government embarked on what was called a strategic defence review, promising to reshape the armed forces in the light of new threats and capabilities. The exercise was anything but strategic. The Treasury took control. Unsurprisingly given the size of the nation’s fiscal deficit, the result was a series of deep and haphazard spending cuts.

回过头来看，这方面的确早有端倪。新政府当初启动了所谓的战略防务评估，承诺根据新的威胁和能力重塑军力。这绝对和战略无关。它由英国财政部掌控。考虑到英国财政赤字的规模，该评估的结果是一系列重大而随意的减支也就不奇怪了。

Politically sensitive projects such as an order for two aircraft carriers and a commitment to renew the Trident nuclear deterrent survived the axe. Much else did not. The army is being cut by a fifth to 82,000 troops. Britain is now among a handful of island nations without any maritime surveillance aircraft. When Russian submarines prowl the waters near Trident’s base, Britain must beg aerial assistance from allies. It struggled to find a few ageing Tornado bombers to join the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

一些政治敏感项目逃过了被裁减的命运，比如两艘航母的订单以及更新三叉戟核威慑系统的承诺。其他许多项目则未能幸免。军队人数削减五分之一，至8.2万人。英国现在是少数几个没有任何海上侦察机的岛国之一。当俄罗斯潜艇在三叉戟基地附近海域潜行时，英国不得不请求盟友的空中支援。它勉强才找到几架老化的“狂风”(Tornado)轰炸机来参加对“伊拉克和黎凡特伊斯兰国”(ISIS)的作战。

The aircraft carriers are due in service from 2020 but the Ministry of Defence has yet to work out what to do with them. The problem is money. A carrier group can be a powerful statement of military prowess but the carrier needs the protection of destroyers and frigates as well as aircraft to sit on the deck. A typical US carrier operates with about 72 fixed-wing aircraft. The British ships are promised 12. The shortage of escorts may limit ocean-going deployments to three months. If the carrier were to set off for, say, the Pacific it would have to turn around almost as soon as it arrived.

英国的新航母将从2020年起服役，但英国国防部迄今仍未制定出相关计划。问题出在资金方面。一个航母编队可能展示出强大的军力，但航母需要驱逐舰和护卫舰的保护，而且还要有舰载机。一艘普通的美国航母通常载有大约72架固定翼飞机。而英国的航母被许诺了12架。缺少护卫可能让远洋航行时间限制在3个月之内。比如说，如果航母的目的地是太平洋，那它差不多刚抵达那里就不得不返航。

Mr Cameron has surrendered the security of the realm to the Treasury’s bean counters. A prisoner of fiscal fundamentalism, the Treasury wants five more years of austerity if the Conservatives are re-elected. The prime minister has thus reneged on a pledge that the 2010 defence cuts would be followed by modest increases from 2015. He has refused to renew a commitment to hold spending to a Nato target of 2 per cent of national income. Instead he wants to fiddle the figures by including spending on intelligence in the Nato calculation.

卡梅伦将国家安全拱手交给了财政部那帮精打细算的“数豆人”。如果保守党再次当选，作为财政原教旨主义的囚徒，英国财政部希望再过五年的紧缩日子。因此卡梅伦已经食言——他在2010年削减国防预算时曾承诺从2015年起将会小幅增加国防预算。他拒绝继续承诺将国防开支占国民收入的比例保持在北约(NATO)制定的2%的目标。相反，他希望将情报支出算作国防开支来糊弄这一目标。

A promise that the army will be spared further cuts has been emptied of meaning by the budgetary arithmetic. A report by the Royal United Services Institute, a respected think-tank, suggests that the army may soon be heading down towards 50,000, the smallest since Britain lost the American colonies during the 18th century. Little wonder the US administration thinks that Britain is becoming an unreliable partner.

此前承诺的不会对英国陆军进一步裁军，在预算数字面前也成空头支票。根据受敬重的智库英国皇家联合军种研究院(Royal United Services Institute)的报告，英国陆军可能很快会削减至5万人，缩小至自18世纪失去美洲殖民地以来的最小规模。难怪美国政府认为英国正变成一个不可靠的伙伴。

Once or twice Mr Cameron has shown a taste for liberal interventionism — in Libya and in a thwarted attempt to back air strikes against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. He has had some tough things to say about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. These are exceptions to prove the rule. His typical response to the present era of tumultuous geopolitical upheaval is insouciant indifference.

卡梅伦有过一两次表现出他对自由干涉主义的偏好，比如在利比亚局势上，以及在一个遭到否决的企图上——卡梅伦曾欲支持对叙利亚巴沙尔•阿萨德(Bashar al-Assad)政权的空中打击。他对俄罗斯入侵乌克兰也发表过一些犀利言论。这些反常行为只是证明了一条定律——对于当今时代动荡的地缘政治剧变，他的典型反应是漠不关心。

Even before he promised a referendum that could see Britain quit the EU, Mr Cameron had stepped back from Europe. British policy had been always to keep a seat at the table, even when it chose not to join a particular enterprise. Now the government exults in leaving an empty chair. The prime minister says his preference is for Britain to remain in a “reformed” EU. He never answers the question as to why. As for the rising powers, China, India and the rest are viewed as markets or sources of investment rather than as potential allies or adversaries. The Foreign Office has been rebadged as a sales force for Britain PLC.

甚至在卡梅伦答应举行可能导致英国退出欧盟(EU)的全民公决前，他就已经退出了欧洲。英国过去的一贯政策是保留一席之地，哪怕是它选择不加入某个特定计划时。而现在英国政府正洋洋得意地留下一个空椅子。英国首相表示他更愿意让英国留在一个“改革后”的欧盟里，却从不回答为什么要这么说。而对于中国、印度等正在崛起的大国，卡梅伦将它们视作市场或投资来源，而不是潜在的盟友或对手。英国外交部已经改头换面成了英国这一“商号”的销售部门。

In some ways all this fits the temper of the times. Economic circumstances have been tough and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have damped public enthusiasm for expeditionary warfare. There is a mood abroad that says Britain has done its fair share.

在某些方面，这一切都顺应了当今时代的脾性。经济环境一直不太乐观，伊拉克和阿富汗的连番战火已降低了大众对远征作战的热情。国外有舆论表示英国已经做好了分内工作。

But why then is Mr Cameron building aircraft carriers and nuclear-armed submarines? Explicable as it may be the temptation to retreat collides with two central facts of geopolitics. The first is that world is a more dangerous and unpredictable place than it has been since the end of the cold war — think, most obviously, of the spread of jihadi terrorism from west Africa to south Asia and, closer to home, of the efforts of Mr Putin to upend the peace in Europe.

但是，那为什么卡梅伦还要造航母和核武器潜艇呢？后撤的诱惑虽然可以理解，但与地缘政治两大核心事实相冲突。首先，现在这个世界比冷战结束以来的任何其他时候都要危险和不可预测，最明显的莫过于圣战恐怖主义从西非一直蔓延到南亚，而且就在英国家门口，普京在努力不懈地颠覆欧洲和平。

Secondly, however much Mr Cameron hides under the bedcovers, Britain’s security and prosperity are inextricably tied to events elsewhere in the world. A nation that aspires to be a global hub cannot be indifferent to international disorder. If nothing else, it must contribute towards making the world safe for the prime minister’s holidays.

其次，无论卡梅伦在床罩里藏得多么好，英国的安全和繁荣都与世界其他地区发生的事件密不可分。一个渴望成为全球中枢的国家不能对混乱的国际秩序无动于衷。最起码，它必须出力把世界变成一个安全的地方，好方便首相度假。