BRET STEPHENS2026年8月27日 Thomas Peter/ReutersShortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, I wrote a column under the headline “This Is How World War III Begins.” More than four years on, I wonder how much I got right.2022年俄罗斯全面入侵乌克兰后不久，我写了一篇题为《第三次世界大战将如何开始？》的专栏文章。四年多过去了，我想知道我的预测有多少是准确的。My argument was based on the origins of World War II, which did not simply start with Germany’s invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. Instead, the war was an accumulation of regional wars and crises, beginning with Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931, which gradually gathered into a single global conflict.我的论点基于第二次世界大战的起源——二战并非单纯地始于1939年9月1日德国入侵波兰。这场战争是一系列局部战争和危机的不断累积，从1931年日本入侵满洲开始，最终汇聚成一场全球冲突。That gathering, abetted by the converging ambitions of the totalitarian states and the divisions and vacillations of the democracies, led to catastrophe. Added to this was a revolution in military technology and tactics that gave the dictatorships an early advantage in offensive combat. Also an advantage: their willingness to inflict — and endure — a level of brutality and suffering their adversaries were initially reluctant to match.这种汇聚在极权国家的勃勃野心以及民主国家的分歧与动摇的推波助澜下最终导致了灾难。此外，军事技术和战术的革命使得独裁政权在初期进攻中占据了优势。他们还有一个优势：他们所愿意施加——并且承受——的残酷和苦难是他们的对手在一开始无法比拟的。In 2022, I saw a similar pattern unfolding: Decades of Western appeasement of Vladimir Putin had given the Russian strongman a sense that he could get away with nearly anything. His burgeoning ties with North Korea, Iran and especially China — memorialized by the pledge of a “no limits” partnership with Beijing announced weeks before the invasion — gave him additional confidence. So did the spectacle of American weakness during our shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan just six months earlier.2022年，我看到了类似的模式正在重演：西方几十年来对弗拉基米尔·普京的绥靖政策让这位俄罗斯强人产生了一种“几乎可以为所欲为而无需承担后果”的错觉。他与朝鲜、伊朗，以及特别是和中国之间日益密切的关系——在入侵前几周宣布与北京建立“无上限”的伙伴关系就是明证——给了他额外的信心。而在六个月前我们从阿富汗混乱撤军期间表现出的美国虚弱景象也同样起到了壮胆作用。But Ukraine did not, as I had feared, turn out to be the France of 1940. It was more like Britain, prepared to fight, as Churchill put it that May, “however long and hard the road may be.” The Biden administration, for all its fatal hesitation about letting Kyiv take the war to Russia, at least helped ensure that Ukraine didn’t lose. Ukraine has also held the technological edge, pioneering equipment and tactics that are finally stimulating a long-overdue rethink about how wars of the future will be fought.但乌克兰并没有如我担心的那样沦为1940年的法国。它更像英国，做好了战斗的准备，正如丘吉尔在当年5月所说的那样，“无论道路多么漫长和艰难。”拜登政府尽管在允许基辅将战火烧向俄罗斯本土方面存在致命的犹豫，但至少帮助确保了乌克兰不会失败。乌克兰还占据了技术优势，其首创的装备和战术最终引发了人们对未来战争打法的长期反思。That’s the good news. There’s far more by way of bad news.这些是好消息。而坏消息则要多得多。First, as in the 1930s and ’40s, the spheres of conflict have multiplied and are merging.首先，就像在1930年代和40年代一样，冲突范围正在倍增并相互交织。Russia’s battlefield reversals seem to have done nothing to diminish Putin’s appetite for risk as he expands his campaign, in barely concealed attacks and threats, against Moldova, Poland and Germany, among other states, while his political allies repeatedly call for direct strikes on Europe and the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine. Hamas’s assault on Israel in 2023 became, in stages, a war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran; then a war between Iran, the United States and the Gulf states. More recently, Ukraine has directed long-range strikes in the Caspian Sea to disrupt Iranian military supplies to Russia. And decisions in one theater directly affect outcomes in the other: The expenditure of missile interceptors in the Middle East means that few can now be spared for Ukraine.俄罗斯在战场上遭遇的逆转似乎丝毫没有削弱普京对风险的胃口。他正在扩大其针对摩尔多瓦、波兰和德国等国的行动，进行几乎毫不掩饰的攻击和威胁；与此同时，他的政治盟友不断呼吁直接打击欧洲，并对乌克兰使用核武器。2023年哈马斯对以色列的袭击已逐步演变成以色列与真主党、胡塞武装及伊朗之间的战争；进而演变成伊朗、美国和海湾国家之间的战争。最近，乌克兰在里海实施了远程打击，以切断伊朗向俄罗斯的军事补给。而且，一个战区的决策会直接影响另一个战区的结果：在中东的拦截导弹消耗意味着现在几乎没有富余的弹药能留给乌克兰。Second, the Axis of Authoritarians has become a fully operational military alliance.其次，威权轴心已演变为一个全面运作的军事联盟。Russia is providing North Korea with help to modernize its armed forces, while the North has returned the favor by sending millions of artillery rounds and is now reportedly prepared to send thousands of additional troops to fight for Russia in Ukraine. China supplies Russia with most of the electronic components used in its drones and other military hardware. Russia has given Iran critical targeting intelligence to strike U.S. bases and ships in the Middle East. In the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan, Beijing could call in its chips with Moscow by engaging the aid of Russia’s powerful Pacific submarine fleet, as detailed in a new paper from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.俄罗斯正在帮助朝鲜实现其武装部队的现代化，作为回报，朝鲜已送去数百万发炮弹，据报道目前还准备再派遣数千名士兵前往乌克兰为俄罗斯作战。中国向俄罗斯提供了其无人机和其他军事硬件所需的大部分电子元件。俄罗斯向伊朗提供了关键的目标情报，以打击美国在中东的基地和船只。如果中国对台湾发动攻击，正如澳大利亚战略政策研究所的一份新报告所详述的那样，北京可能会要求莫斯科提供协助，即出动俄罗斯强大的太平洋潜艇舰队。Third, the West is a mess.第三，西方阵营一片混乱。President Trump complains of our allies’ weakness. The allies complain of Trump’s bullying, capriciousness, callowness, mendacity and incompetence. Both sides are right. The latest U.S. tariff salvo on Canada is a case in point: politically ill advised, economically self-defeating, strategically enervating.特朗普总统抱怨我们盟友的软弱。盟友们则抱怨特朗普的恃强凌弱、反复无常、缺乏经验、虚伪和无能。双方都没错。美国最近对加拿大发起的关税攻势就是一个恰当的例子：此举在政治上是不明智的，在经济上是作茧自缚，在战略上则是对自身力量的削弱。Yet none of that erases the fact that Canada, a trade-dependent nation with the world’s longest coastline, barely has a navy to speak of, or that its government’s “new strategic partnership” with China is immoral, unwise and unsound — unless Mark Carney, the prime minister, really thinks that Trump’s idiotic outbursts are a graver long-term threat to Canada and the free world writ large than the patient designs of the People’s Republic.然而，这一切都无法抹杀这样一个事实：加拿大作为一个拥有世界上最长海岸线的贸易依赖国，却几乎没有一支值得一提的海军；或者说，其政府与中国建立的“新战略伙伴关系”是不道德、不明智且不稳妥的——除非马克·卡尼总理真的认为特朗普那些白痴般的突发奇想对加拿大和整个自由世界构成的长期威胁要比中国的徐徐图之要严重得多。Fourth, we are militarily unprepared.第四，我们在军事上毫无准备。The war against Iran revealed not just the munitions shortages, which helped bring the war to a premature close, but also America’s acute sensitivity to military fatalities and economic pain, which gave Iran’s leaders an asymmetric advantage given their own tolerance for human suffering. The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that even the most sophisticated U.S. military kit is entering obsolescence thanks to the advent of A.I.-assisted drone warfare. The tanks we and our allies supplied Kyiv during the Biden administration “now mostly sit idle, hidden in forests and collecting cobwebs,” as The Times reported this week.对伊朗的战争不仅暴露了弹药短缺（这促使战争提前结束），还暴露了美国对军人伤亡和经济痛苦的极度敏感。鉴于伊朗领导人自己对人类苦难的容忍度，这赋予了他们一种不对称的优势。乌克兰战争证明，由于人工智能辅助的无人机战争的出现，即使是美国最先进的军事装备也正在走向过时。正如《纽约时报》本周报道的那样，我们和盟友在拜登政府期间提供给基辅的坦克“现在大部分都闲置着，隐藏在森林里积满蛛网”。Yet Pete Hegseth, our testosterone-obsessed defense secretary, last week decided to phase out an Army drone unit, seemingly because it was championed by generals he didn’t like. The travails of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln during the carrier’s long deployment are a national scandal. But they should call attention to the historically small size of the fleet and our depleted industrial base that struggles to build and maintain ships. Democrats blocking the defense appropriations bill aren’t helping things, either.然而，我们那位睾酮上脑的国防部长皮特·海格塞斯上周决定逐步淘汰一支陆军无人机部队，原因似乎仅仅是因为这支部队得到了他不喜欢的将军们的支持。亚伯拉罕·林肯号航母在漫长部署期间的种种困境简直是国家丑闻。但这些问题理应让人们注意到，舰队规模正处于历史低点，而我们空心化的工业难以建造和维护船只。民主党人阻挠国防拨款法案的做法更是雪上加霜。Fifth, we may be near the economic brink.第五，我们可能正处于经济崩溃的边缘。One great difference between the 1930s and the present is that, unlike then, we are not in the midst of a worldwide depression. But the warning signs of a sharp and abrupt downturn are everywhere. What happens if or when the A.I. boom starts to run out of steam, much as the dot-com boom did at the beginning of the century? Or if the currency crisis in Japan causes it to start selling off its U.S. Treasury bonds? Stanley Druckenmiller, the legendary investor, recently warned in The Wall Street Journal that the Treasury Department’s bond buybacks were all but destined to fail: Ultimately, the price of a $40 trillion national debt will be felt in sharply higher interest rates and the risks they pose to every sector of the economy that’s depended for too long on cheap credit.1930年代与现在的一个巨大不同之处在于，我们目前并未处于全球性萧条之中。但严重且急剧衰退的警告信号无处不在。如果人工智能热潮开始退去，就像本世纪初的互联网泡沫破裂时那样，会发生什么？或者如果日本的货币危机促使它开始抛售其持有的美国国债，又会怎样？传奇投资者斯坦利·德鲁肯米勒最近在《华尔街日报》上警告说，财政部的债券回购注定会失败：最终，40万亿美元国家债务的代价将体现为急剧上升的利率，以及这些债务给依赖廉价信贷多时的经济各部门构成的风险。A deep U.S. recession, or a global financial panic, will inevitably worsen every trend mentioned above. In periods of economic distress, democracies almost always become more risk-averse, while dictatorships become risk-prone. That’s a pattern of history worth recalling as we continue to drift, only dimly aware, toward the gathering storm.深度衰退的美国或全球金融恐慌将不可避免地导致上述所有趋势恶化。在经济困难时期，民主国家几乎总是变得更加规避风险，而独裁政权则变得更加倾向于冒险。这是值得铭记的历史规律，因为我们正继续在半梦半醒中，随波逐流地驶向那场正在酝酿的风暴。Bret Stephens是时报观点版面专栏作者，写作领域包括外交政策、美国国内政策以及文化议题。 欢迎在Facebook上关注他。翻译：纽约时报中文网点击查看本文英文版。