In 1910, a British journalist published “The Great Illusion,” one of the worst-timed best sellers in history.

1910年，一位英国记者出版了《大幻觉》(The Great Illusion)一书，这本书堪称史上“最不合时宜的畅销书”之一。

The author, Norman Angell, argued that the growing interconnection of the world economy meant that no one could ever truly win a world war. Even if Germany were to invade Britain and take all the gold held in the Bank of England, the integration of Europe’s banking systems guaranteed a financial crisis that would leave the Germans worse off than if they’d just stayed home.

作者诺曼·安吉尔认为，世界经济日益紧密的互联意味着没有人能真正赢得一场世界大战。即使德国入侵英国并夺走英格兰银行的所有黄金，欧洲银行体系的高度一体化也会引发金融危机，使德国的处境比按兵不动还要更糟。

This fact did not make war impossible, Mr. Angell wrote. But it made conflict much more costly and destructive for everyone. Four years later, World War I began. In the hyper-connected world of 1914, the war’s shocks reverberated far beyond the battlefields, leaving enduring political and economic instability in their wake.

安格尔写道，这一事实并不意味着战争不可能发生，而是令冲突对每个人的代价和破坏性都大大增加。四年后，第一次世界大战爆发。在1914年这个高度互联的世界里，战争的冲击远远超出战场范围，在其后留下了持久的政治和经济不稳定。

Now that the United States and Iran have declared a two-week cease-fire, the question is whether the war’s economic disruption will be short-lived or lasting. The lessons from history are sobering: In an interdependent global economy, the shock of the outbreak of war can produce long-term instabilities overnight, many of which become apparent only over time.

如今，在美国与伊朗宣布为期两周的停火后，一个关键问题是：战争带来的经济冲击究竟是短暂的，还是长期存在的。历史的教训令人警醒：在一个相互依赖的全球经济体系中，战争爆发所带来的冲击可能在一夜之间引发长期的不稳定，而其中许多影响往往需要假以时日才会显现出来。

When the United States attacked Iran, it should have come as no surprise that Iran would blockade the Strait of Hormuz. Yet few could have foreseen the exact downstream effects: not just the worst disruption to oil supplies in history, but also shortages of materials that not many people realized they relied on — urea and ammonia used to grow the world’s staple food crops, helium for making computer chips and naphtha, a petroleum product crucial for the manufacture of many household plastic items, including garbage bags and water bottles.

当美国对伊朗发动攻击时，伊朗封锁霍尔木兹海峡本不令人意外。然而，几乎没有人能够预见其具体的连锁反应：不仅出现了史上最严重的石油供应中断，还有一些原料的短缺也出现了，而很多人并没有意识到自己离不开它们——例如用于种植全球主要粮食作物的尿素和氨、用于制造芯片的氦气，以及石脑油——制造垃圾袋和矿泉水瓶等日常塑料制品所必需的石油产品）。

The history of World War I shows us how long destabilization can last. In 1914, before war was officially declared, it quickly became clear that a major conflict would have unintended economic consequences. While the assassination of the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, did not cause markets to collapse, the ultimatum Austria-Hungary presented to Serbia about a month later — interpreted as making war inevitable — prompted a chaotic flight to financial safety around the world.

第一次世界大战的历史表明，动荡可能持续很长时间。1914年，在战争尚未正式爆发之前，人们很快就意识到，一场重大冲突将带来意想不到的经济后果。虽然奥地利大公弗朗茨·斐迪南及其妻子索菲遇刺并未导致市场崩溃，但大约一个月后，奥匈帝国向塞尔维亚发出的最后通牒——被普遍解读为战争不可避免——引发了全球范围内一场混乱的金融避险潮。

Investors and depositors dumped risky assets and raced to get gold. Bank runs broke out widely, and nearly every stock exchange closed — from London to Johannesburg, Shanghai and Sydney. Banks in London, the financial center of the world, nearly collapsed. Traders everywhere lost access to the credit they needed to do business.

投资者和储户纷纷抛售高风险资产，争相兑换黄金。银行挤兑现象大范围爆发，几乎所有证券交易所——从伦敦到约翰内斯堡、上海和悉尼——都关闭了。世界金融中心伦敦的银行体系几近崩溃。各地的交易商都失去了开展业务所需的信贷渠道。

Then global shipping seized up. In the face of a conflict of uncertain scale and duration, the cost of marine insurance fluctuated significantly. Vessels and cargoes sat idle; ports around the world grew congested. Meanwhile, the blockades and German invasions of Belgium and France prevented continental Europe’s largest markets from absorbing more than a small fraction of the normal quantity of imports.

随后，全球航运陷入瘫痪。面对一场规模和持续时间都不确定的冲突，海上保险费用大幅波动。船只和货物滞留，全球各地的港口日益拥堵。与此同时，海上封锁以及德国对比利时和法国的入侵使得欧洲大陆最大的市场只能吸收正常进口量的极小一部分。

Before any trenches even appeared on the Western Front, world trade was thus hit by a crippling triple whammy: the disappearance of credit, ships and markets. The effects were immediate, worldwide and severe: unemployment, spiking inflation and mass unrest. By 1915, global commerce, at least among the allied countries and neutral countries, seemed to be recovering. Ships began to sail again, trade was redirected along different routes and to new markets, and the war unleashed incredible demand for goods, such as nitrates from Chile and jute from India.

因此，在西线战场尚未有战壕出现之前，世界贸易就遭受了致命的三重打击：信贷消失、船运中断和市场萎缩。其影响立刻显现，它波及全球且极为严重：失业、通胀飙升和大规模动荡。到1915年，全球商业——至少在协约国和中立国之间——似乎开始复苏。船只重新起航，贸易改道至不同的航线和新的市场，战争还释放出对某些商品的惊人需求，例如来自智利的硝酸盐和来自印度的黄麻。

But lasting damage had already been done.

但持久性的损害已经造成。

The British government, acting alongside the Bank of England, saved Britain’s leading banks from insolvency in August 1914. But the panic that broke out that summer weakened Britain’s banking sector, which allowed Wall Street to replace it as the world’s financial center. Almost overnight, the global balance of financial power shifted sharply.

1914年8月，英国政府与英格兰银行联手，挽救了英国主要银行免于破产。但当年夏天爆发的恐慌削弱了英国的银行体系，使得华尔街得以取而代之成为世界金融中心。全球金融力量的格局几乎在一夜之间发生了剧烈转变。

Then, the shortage of ships, combined with rising insurance premiums and freight rates, increased the price of goods around the world, particularly for food and other necessities. As the war continued, these pressures worsened; by 1918 and 1919, they had reached unprecedented heights. In the United States, the price of bread doubled between 1913 and 1920.

与此同时，船舶短缺、海运保险费及运费上涨推高了全球商品价格，尤其是食品和其他必需品。随着战争持续，这些压力进一步加剧；到1918年和1919年，这种上涨已达到前所未有的水平。在美国，面包价格在1913年至1920年间翻了一番。

Finally, the combined losses of credit, shipping and markets caused the total volume of world trade to plummet. It took years to recover to prewar levels. The economic historian David Jacks has estimated that, over the first two years of the war, world exports fell by nearly 25 percent in real terms — more than after the financial crisis of 2008.

最后，信贷、航运和市场的同时崩塌使全球贸易总量大幅下滑，恢复到战前水平耗费了多年时间。经济史学家戴维·贾克斯估计，在战争最初两年里，全球出口的实际价值下降了近25%——比2008年金融危机后的降幅还要大。

Even the European victors of the war lost ground. After the war, Europe’s share of world trade had fallen. In the war’s opening days, supply chains and trading networks were rerouted away from Europe, which benefited two rising powers: the United States and Japan. European trade never fully recovered.

即便是欧洲的战胜国也未能幸免。战后，欧洲在全球贸易中的份额下降。在战争初期，供应链和贸易网络就已开始绕开欧洲，这让两个正在崛起的国家受益：美国和日本。欧洲的贸易此后再未完全恢复。

Of course, the Iran war has been nowhere near the scale or duration of World War I. Yet even if this shaky cease-fire holds, there are reasons to believe that its shocks will be felt long after.

当然，伊朗战争的规模和持续时间都远不能与第一次世界大战相提并论。然而，即便这一脆弱的停火能够维持，我们也有理由相信，其冲击将在很长时间内持续显现。

First, energy prices are unlikely to fall immediately to prewar levels. Snarled supply chains will take months to untangle, and damaged production facilities in the Persian Gulf will take even longer to repair. Shipping won’t all come back online at once, either — particularly since Iran has discovered that it need only threaten a few tankers with cheap drones to have a major effect on global trade. If Iran now charges fees to ships passing the Strait of Hormuz, and threatens to sink those that don’t pay, freight rates and insurance premiums will remain elevated.

首先，能源价格不太可能立即回落到战前水平。受阻的供应链需要数月时间才能理清，波斯湾受损的生产设施则需要更长时间来修复。航运也不会在短时间内全部恢复——尤其是考虑到伊朗已经发现，它只需用廉价无人机威胁几艘油轮就能对全球贸易产生重大影响。如果伊朗现在向通过霍尔木兹海峡的船只收费，并威胁击沉不付费的船只，运费和保险费将继续居高不下。

Now, there are fertilizer shortages at the beginning of the spring planting season for foods including rice, which means that we may eventually see reduced crop yields and higher prices. As the experience of the Covid pandemic made clear, supply chain disruptions like these can produce inflationary surges with long tails, which, before they abate, can have damaging secondary effects, from higher mortgage rates to fiscal crises to political unrest.

眼下，随着水稻等粮食作物的春播季节开始，化肥短缺意味着未来可能出现减产和价格上涨。正如新冠疫情期间的经验所表明，这类供应链中断可能引发持续很长时间的通胀飙升，而在其消退之前，还可能带来一系列有害的次生影响——从抵押贷款利率上升到财政危机，再到政治动荡。

It’s impossible to know for sure how the dust will settle. Yet, as was true with the other supply shocks of the 2020s, low- and middle-income countries will most likely bear the brunt. While rising costs of food and energy can bring economic hardship and political turmoil to wealthy countries like the United States, they can, quite literally, be a matter of life and death elsewhere. Some countries in the Horn of Africa that are already facing severe food insecurity depend on imported fertilizers that ordinarily pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

尘埃将如何落定，我们无法确切知晓。然而，正如2020年代的其他供应冲击一样，中低收入国家最有可能首当其冲。虽然食品和能源价格上涨会给美国这样的富裕国家带来经济压力和政治动荡，但在其他地方，它们实际上可能是生死攸关的问题。非洲之角一些本已面临严重粮食不安全的国家依赖通过霍尔木兹海峡运输的进口化肥。

If these are the consequences of just a month of war, imagine the effects of a larger and more protracted conflict — one whose likelihood, some believe, is greater now than at any other moment in recent history.

如果仅仅一个月的战争就能造成这样的后果，那么可以想象，一场规模更大、持续更久的冲突会带来怎样的影响——而在一些人看来，这种冲突发生的可能性如今比近年任何时候都要高。

Looking out over a devastated Europe in 1919, the French prime minister, Georges Clemenceau, said that it was “far easier to make war than to make peace.” The same is true when it comes to the world economy: It’s much easier to spark a global panic than to deal with its long-term fallout.

1919年，法国总理乔治·克列孟梭在俯瞰满目疮痍的欧洲时曾说：“发动战争远比缔造和平容易。”对于全球经济而言也是如此：引发全球恐慌远比应对其长期后果容易得多。