When future historians study the arc of American foreign policy, they will probably fold all the major events since 2020 — our pell-mell withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran — into a unified narrative of global conflict.

當未來的歷史學家研究美國外交政策的軌跡時，他們可能會把2020年以來的所有重大事件——我們從阿富汗的倉皇撤軍、俄羅斯入侵烏克蘭，以及以色列在加薩、黎巴嫩和伊朗的衝突——納入一個關於全球衝突的統一敘述。

If we’re fortunate, that will yield academic treatises with titles like “The Empire Tested: America and the World, 2021-2030.” If we’re unlucky — meaning, basically, if the United States and China eventually fall into a ruinous war — then the struggles in Ukraine and the Middle East will be retroactively assigned to histories of World War III.

如果我們幸運的話，那麼這一切最終將催生出一些學術論文，標題可能會是《經受考驗的帝國——美國與世界，2021-2030》。如果我們不幸的話——也就是說，如果美國和中國最終陷入一場毀滅性的戰爭——那麼烏克蘭和中東的鬥爭將被後人倒推性地歸入第三次世界大戰中。

We are not, as yet, inside that kind of conflagration. But it’s useful for Americans to think about our situation in global terms, with Russia and Iran and China as a revisionist alliance putting our imperial power to the test. And it’s also important to recognize that this kind of conflict is an endurance test, a long and winding road, in which it’s easy to fall prey to mood swings and judge the outcome prematurely.

到目前為止，我們還沒有陷入那樣的戰火紛飛之境地。但對美國人來說，以全球視野審視時局是有益的，俄羅斯、伊朗和中國組成的修正主義聯盟正在考驗我們的帝國力量。同樣重要的是要認識到，這種衝突是對耐力的考驗，是一條漫長而曲折的道路，在這條道路上，很容易受情緒波動的影響，讓人過早地去下定論。

We’ve had a lot of these swings in the last few years. In 2021 and early 2022, the rout in Afghanistan and our overpromising to a vulnerable Ukraine made America look ineffectual … right up until Vladimir Putin actually invaded his neighbor, at which point his military setbacks and our success in rallying support for the Ukrainians yielded a lot of chest-thumping about the superiority of liberal democracy and the permanence of American hegemony.

在過去的幾年裡，我們經歷了很多這樣的波動。在2021年和2022年初，阿富汗的潰敗和我們對脆弱的烏克蘭的過度承諾讓美國看起來毫無作為……直到普丁悍然入侵鄰國，這時，隨著俄軍受挫以及我們成功地為烏克蘭人爭取到支持，又令自由民主優越論與美國霸權永續說甚囂塵上。

That optimistic mood lasted through the failure of Ukraine’s last major counteroffensive and the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, against Israel, at which point there was a swing back toward pessimism. American power was stretched too thin; our Israeli allies were taken unawares by their enemies, the Russians were regaining ground, our arsenal was almost certainly inadequate to protect Ukraine and Israel and defend Taiwan, and all of this under a president debilitated by advancing age, a grim symbol of a crumbling imperium.

這種樂觀情緒一直持續到烏克蘭最後一次重大反攻的失敗，以及哈馬斯在2023年10月7日對以色列的襲擊，在那一刻，人們又回到了悲觀情緒。美國的力量已經捉襟見肘；我們的以色列盟友被敵人打了個措手不及，俄羅斯人正在奪回陣地，我們的武器庫幾乎肯定不足以保護烏克蘭和以色列，也不足以保衛台灣，而所有這一切都發生在一位因年事已高而衰弱的總統任內，他是帝國搖搖欲墜的嚴峻象徵。

This sense of multi-theater crisis helped to restore Donald Trump to power. Then the initial months of his administration inspired fears that he would end the global conflict by effectively surrendering — abandoning allies and making deals with dictators while retreating to a Fortress North America.

這種多戰線的危機感幫助川普重新掌權。然後，在他執政最初的幾個月曾引發擔憂，他會通過事實上的投降來結束全球衝突——拋棄盟友、與獨裁者做交易，並退守北美堡壘。

Yet right now that’s not how the landscape looks. Trump’s decision to bomb the Iranian nuclear program and the muted Iranian response has capped off a period in which Tehran’s regional power has crumbled under sustained Israeli assault. Meanwhile, our NATO allies are boosting their military spending and Trump is suddenly praising the alliance, while Russia’s gains in Ukraine remain a punishing grind and there’s a possibility that Putin threw away the best deal he was likely to get. Add in the strength of the American economy, even amid the Trumpian trade war, and it seems that maybe we’re winning the world conflict again. “Rah-rah! Pax Americana forever!”

然而，目前的情況並非如此。川普轟炸伊朗核計劃的決定，以及伊朗的沉默回應，為德黑蘭的地區影響力在以色列的連番打擊下走向崩塌做了一個收場。與此同時，我們的北約盟友正在增加軍費開支，川普突然對北約表示讚賞，而俄羅斯在烏克蘭取得的進展仍然是一場代價高昂的苦戰，普丁有可能錯失了他可能得到的最好的協議。再加上美國經濟的強勁表現，即使在川普發動貿易戰的情況下，我們似乎又在贏得這場全球衝突。「好哇！美國治下的和平永世長存！」

OK, not quite. The damage to Iran’s nuclear program doesn’t mean we’ve eliminated the threat, and Israel’s Gaza war remains a humanitarian crisis without a clear political endgame. Trump’s walk-back of his Department of Defense’s attempt to triage resources by withholding weapons from Ukraine doesn’t change the reality that our weaponry is limited and does require triaging. Putin’s failure to make the most of Trump’s diplomatic outreach doesn’t change the fact that Russia is still slowly gaining ground.

好吧，並不盡然。對伊朗核項目的破壞並不意味著我們已經消除了威脅，以色列的加薩戰爭仍然是一場人道主義危機，沒有明確的政治結局。川普撤回了國防部通過不向烏克蘭提供武器來分配資源的做法，但這並不能改變我們的武器有限、確實需要資源調配的現實。普丁未能充分利用川普的外交接觸，但這並不能改變俄羅斯仍在緩慢取得進展的事實。

But both the Ukrainian stalemate and the Iranian retreat are clarifying reminders that the ultimate outcome of this conflict depends on the revisionist power, the People’s Republic of China, that hasn’t directly joined the fights. China is at once a much more serious rival to America than either Russia or Iran and also an extremely cautious player, content to watch its tacit allies make their plays without, say, handing Iran a nuclear deterrent or sending the People’s Liberation Army to help Russia take Kyiv.

但是，烏克蘭的僵局和伊朗的後撤都清楚地提醒人們，這場衝突的最終結果取決於尚未直接參戰的修正主義強國——中華人民共和國。與俄羅斯或伊朗相比，中國是美國更大的競爭對手，同時也是一個極其謹慎的參與者，它滿足於看著自己心照不宣的盟友發揮作用，卻不會——舉例來說——向伊朗提供核威懾，也不派遣人民解放軍幫助俄羅斯攻佔基輔。

This cautious distance could reflect a fundamental weakness of the revisionist bloc — that it’s purely an alliance of interest between regimes that don’t trust one another, don’t have as much in common as we still have with our European and East Asian allies and struggle to work effectively in concert.

這種謹慎的距離感可能反映了修正主義集團的一個根本弱點——它純粹是一種政權之間的利益聯盟，彼此互不信任，沒有我們與歐洲和東亞盟友那樣多的共同點，也難以有效地協同工作。

But it could also reflect a confidence on China’s part that time is on its side, that its investments in technology and energy are going to lap ours soon enough and that all our efforts now reflect a fateful squandering of resources given what Beijing has planned for the later 2020s.

但這也可能折射出中國方面的一種信心，它認為時間在它這一邊，它在技術和能源方面的投資很快就會超過我們，而我們現在的所有努力，不過是對北京在2020年代末戰略布局的致命浪費。

Without certain knowledge of those plans, American foreign policy needs both a better long-term strategy to stay ahead of China and a lot of short-term Trumpian flexibility. Not restraint or hawkishness alone, but both an openness to peace and a capacity for warmaking, matched to the ebb and flow of a global conflict that won’t have any simple end.

在不清楚這些戰略底牌的情況下，美國外交政策既需要更好的長遠戰略來保持對中國的領先地位，也需要大量川普式的短期靈活性。不是單純的剋制或鷹派，而是要兼具和平誠意與開戰能力，方能駕馭這場不會有簡單結局的全球衝突之此消彼長。