作者：孟捷慕（James Mann）2012年3月10日 The Washington Post
When White House officials do call attention to a book from the presidential reading list, there is often an implicit message or theme. In 2002, when George W. Bush and his advisers began appearing in public with Eliot A. Cohen’s “Supreme Command” — which argues that civilian leaders should make the key decisions on strategy in wartime — it seemed a signal to the military to show deference to the White House on Iraq.
So what should we make of the fact that President Obama has recently been touting parts of Robert Kagan’s new book, “The World America Made”? The president let it be known before his State of the Union address that he had been reading an essay adapted from the book, published by the New Republic under the title “The Myth of American Decline.”
On the surface, this seems surprising. Kagan’s writing at the Weekly Standard in the 1990s helped spark the revival of the neoconservative movement. He worked in John McCain’s presidential campaign four years ago and is advising Mitt Romney this year. Obama famously called the war in Iraq a “dumb war”; Kagan was among its leading supporters.
Yet when one looks more closely, Obama’s praise for Kagan is not so implausible. As president, Obama has hardly been a 1960s-style antiwar dove on foreign policy. And for his part, Kagan has never bought into the anti-Obama demonology. He seems to care less about partisanship than about ideas, particularly his advocacy for a powerful American role in the world. When Obama’s actions and rhetoric have been in line with Kagan’s views (in the surge in Afghanistan, for example), the author has been willing to praise the president — much as Kagan, unlike most Republicans, supported President Bill Clinton for his military intervention in the Balkans.
And there is much in “The World America Made” that fits Obama’s interests and principles. One of Kagan’s main arguments is that the United States is not in decline. That notion is of help to Obama or any other American president overseas; when you negotiate with other countries and leaders, you’d prefer that they perceive you as strong and powerful, not weak and faltering.
Kagan’s argument against decline also helps Obama at home, at least to some extent. His critics — the Republican presidential candidates among them — have been blaming Obama for somehow causing America to fade. The argument that the United States is and will remain for decades the most powerful nation in the world undercuts this line of attack.
Some of Kagan’s points are not all that new. Other intellectuals and policymakers, Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton among them, have been seeking to dispel the notion of American decline by pointing out that similar predictions have been made in the past and have proved wrong. We heard the same refrain — so the argument goes — with China’s communist revolution in the 1940s, Russia’s launch of Sputnik in the 1950s, the Vietnam War in the 1960s, the OPEC cartel of the 1970s and Japan’s economic prosperity in the 1980s. Like other anti-declinists, Kagan points to America’s adaptability, its open political system and its ability to reward innovation.
Kagan’s more novel and interesting argument is that those who believe in decline have a romanticized, exaggerated view of how much power America used to have. “It’s true: the United States is not able to get what it wants much of the time. But then, it never could,” he writes. “To compare American influence today with a mythical past of overwhelming dominance can only mislead us.”
Although “The World America Made” has attracted considerable attention for debunking the idea of American decline, this critique is merely one part of Kagan’s larger argument — one that should prove even more controversial on both the left and the right, once fully grasped: He maintains that the United States should continue to serve as the world’s benign hegemon, its global cop.
He starts with the idea that American power has been crucial to the spread of democracy and free trade and to the maintenance of peace among the world’s leading powers. From this arguable assertion, he leaps to the more sweeping and dubious claim that other nations accept the legitimacy of U.S. hegemony and are eager for pax Americana to endure. “Indeed, America’s great power has been more than tolerated,” he says. “Other nations have abetted it, encouraged it, joined it, and, with surprising frequency, legitimated it in multilateral institutions like NATO and the UN, as well as in less formal coalitions.”
Here Kagan is unconvincing. While the world certainly is less anti-American than it seemed at the time of the Iraq war, it is not nearly so enamored of the United States as he contends. He argues cogently for the importance of supporting democratic change; yet in many countries, the end of authoritarian rule could mean less, not more, acceptance of the supposed legitimacy of U.S. power. Witness Egypt.
En route to his conclusions, Kagan challenges the thinking of a number of other prominent writers: Francis Fukuyama’s idea that the nations are moving inevitably toward a liberal world order, Steven Pinker’s contention that the world is becoming less violent, Henry Kissinger’s devotion to a balance of power, Paul Kennedy’s theory that America is overstretched. But above all, “The World America Made” is intended as a rebuttal to the liberal theorist John Ikenberry, who has argued that a liberal world order, based on international law and institutions, is self-sustaining and could exist even without American power to support it.
The virtue of Kagan’s book is that his ideas and logic are so clearly laid out that readers can see where they agree or disagree. Its defect lies in what is left out. Kagan doesn’t focus on the possibility that the United States could at once be an enduring military power and a declining economic one. Any American diplomat or military officer can see that the United States doesn’t have as much money as China or Saudi Arabia to throw around overseas these days.
Nor does he say much about the domestic underpinnings of U.S. power. Will the United States continue to support the large defense budget Kagan seeks at a time of mounting income disparities, when many poor and middle-class people believe that the country is already in decline at home? Kagan says the country’s budget deficits are attributable mostly to “ballooning entitlement spending,” without mentioning the role that tax cuts have played.
Obama is taken with Kagan’s spirited argument against perceptions of American decline. National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor confirmed to Foreign Policy’s blog, the Cable, that Obama had recommended Kagan’s ideas to television anchors in a briefing before the State of the Union address in January. “Obama liked Kagan’s [New Republic] article so much that he spent more than 10 minutes talking about it . . . going over its arguments paragraph by paragraph,” the Cable’s Josh Rogin reported.
But it is doubtful, at best, that Obama subscribes to Kagan’s prescriptions for how to avoid decline. Kagan debunks the notion that the United States should redirect its attention from overseas to “nation building at home.”
Guess which president has espoused that idea?
Guess which president has espoused that idea?
总统们读书多是私下进行的。他们床头柜上放什么书不在《信息自由法》的管辖范围内。总统睡觉前读的是无聊的小说还是中央情报局的报告，我们无从知道。
如果白宫官员提醒人们注意总统读的某一本书，那往往传达出一种隐含的信息或意图。2002年，乔治.W.布什及其顾问开始拿着埃利奥特·A·科恩的著作《最高指令》公开露面——该书认为，在战争时期，政治领导人应该作出重要的战略决定——这似乎向军方发出一个信号，促其在伊拉克问题上服从白宫。
因此，对于奥巴马总统最近称许罗伯特·卡根的新书《美国打造的世界》的部分内容，我们应该如何解读呢？在发表《国情咨文》前，奥巴马总统透露，他读了《新共和》周刊刊登的该书摘要，标题为《美国衰落的神话》。
表面上看，这似乎出人意料。20世纪90年代，卡根在《旗帜周刊》发表的一篇文章对于新保守运动的复兴起了推波助澜的作用。4年前，他参与了约翰·麦凯恩竞选总统的工作，而今年又给米特· 罗姆尼当起了顾问。众所周知，奥巴马曾称伊拉克战争为“愚蠢的战争”；卡根就是那场战争的主要支持者之一。
然而，如果仔细琢磨，奥巴马称赞卡根不是那么不合情理。作为总统，奥巴马在对外政策方面并非20世纪60年代式的反战主和人士。而从卡根个人来说，他从来不在反奥巴马人物名单上。他似乎不太在意党派之分，而更在乎思想观点，特别是他主张美国在世界上发挥强大作用。当奥巴马的言行符合卡根的看法（比如在阿富汗增兵问题上），这位作者就乐于称赞总统，这与多数共和党人截然不同。
反驳美国衰落观点
《美国打造的世界》一书有很多内容也符合奥巴马的利益和原则。卡根的一个主要观点是，美国并没有衰落。这种观点有利于奥巴马或其他任何总统的外交：当你与其他国家及其领导人谈判时，你希望他们认为你强盛，而非衰弱。
卡根不认同美国衰落的观点也有利于奥巴马的内政，至少在某种程度上是这样。批评奥巴马的人，包括共和党总统竞选人，指责他在某种程度上造成了美国的衰微。卡根认为美国现在是——而且几十年后仍将是——世界最强大国家的观点驳斥了这种攻击。
卡根的观点有些并不那么有新意。其他有识之士和决策者，也包括奥巴马和希拉里·克林顿，一直在努力反驳美国衰退的观点，指出过去有过类似的预言，且已经证明是错的。在20 世纪40年代中国共产主义革命、50年代苏联发射人造地球卫星、60年代越南战争爆发、70年代石油输出国组织垄断集团形成和80年代日本经济繁荣等时期，我们都曾听过这种老调重弹。与其他反衰落论者一样，卡根强调了美国的适应能力、开放的政治制度和回报创新的能力。
卡根较有新意和令人关注的观点是，美国衰落论者神化和夸大了美国过去的实力。他在书中写道：“事实是，美国在当今很多时候不能随心所欲。而在以前，它根本就不能随心所欲。将美国今天的影响力与虚构的过去不可一世的主宰地位相比，只能导致我们误入歧途。”
坚称应做全球警察
尽管《美国打造的世界》一书因反驳美国衰落论而备受关注，但这只是卡根更重要观点的一部分——这种观点一旦被充分认识，不管是左派还是右派，都将对其产生更大争议：他主张美国应该继续充当世界的仁慈的霸权，充当全球警察。
他首先指出，美国的实力对于民主和自由贸易的传播和世界列强之间保持和平发挥了至关重要的作用。从这个有待商榷的看法，他跳跃到更具疑义的观点：其他国家承认美国霸权的合法性，迫切希望永葆美国强权下的和平。他说：“实际上，对于美国的强权，不只是忍受。其他国家在支持、鼓励、参与其中，而且非常频繁地通过北约和联合国等多边组织以及不太正式的联盟使之合法化。”
卡根的这些话没有说服力。尽管全世界肯定不像伊拉克战争时期那么反美，但也不像他说的那样对美国近乎迷恋。他中肯地指出了支持民主变革的重要性；然而在很多国家，独裁统治的结束意味着对所谓的美国强权合法性的认可程度降低，而不是升高。埃及就是证明。
在下结论前，卡根对不少著名作家的观点提出了质疑：弗朗西斯·福山认为各国必然迈向自由的世界秩序：史蒂文· 平克指出世界正在变得不那么暴力：亨利·基辛格笃信均势；保罗·肯尼迪则提出了美国管得太宽的观点。不过，首要的是，《美国打造的世界》旨在反驳自由主义理论家约翰·伊肯伯里，因为他认为基于国际法和国际机构而建立起来的自由世界秩序是自立的，甚至可以在没有美国强权支持的情况下存在。
避谈经济实力衰落
卡根此书的优点是他的观点和逻辑编排清晰明了，对于哪里同意或不同意，读者一目了然。它的缺陷是有遗漏。卡根没有谈到可能存在美国军事实力久盛不衰而经济实力日趋衰落的情况。美国外交官或军官可能发现，美国现在不像中国或沙特有那么多钱到国外四处去撒。
他也没有多谈美国实力的国内基础。在收入差距不断扩大、很多穷人和中产阶级认为美国国内已经衰落之际，美国会继续支持卡根主张的庞大国防预算吗？卡根说，美国的预算赤字主要是“不断扩大的福利开支”造成的，没有提到减税的作用。
奥巴马为卡根激昂反驳美国衰落论所吸引。国家安全委员会发言人汤米·维托向《外交》杂志“链接”博客证实，在1月份发表《国情咨文》前的吹风会上，奥巴马向电视主持人推荐卡根的观点。“链接”博客的乔希·罗金报道说：“奥巴马很喜欢卡根（发表在《新共和》周刊上）的文章，用了10多分钟谈这篇文章……逐段复述其观点。”
不过，从最乐观的一方面看，奥巴马未必赞成卡根提出的避免衰落的方案。卡根驳斥了美国应将注意力从海外转向 “国内建设”的说法。
试想，哪个总统赞成过这种主意？
