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.

当未来的历史学家研究美国外交政策的轨迹时，他们可能会把2020年以来的所有重大事件——我们从阿富汗的仓皇撤军、俄罗斯入侵乌克兰，以及以色列在加沙、黎巴嫩和伊朗的冲突——纳入一个关于全球冲突的统一叙述。

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.

如果我们幸运的话，那么这一切最终将催生出一些学术论文，标题可能会是《经受考验的帝国——美国与世界，2021-2030》。如果我们不幸的话——也就是说，如果美国和中国最终陷入一场毁灭性的战争——那么乌克兰和中东的斗争将被后人倒推性地归入第三次世界大战中。

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.

到目前为止，我们还没有陷入那样的战火纷飞之境地。但对美国人来说，以全球视野审视时局是有益的，俄罗斯、伊朗和中国组成的修正主义联盟正在考验我们的帝国力量。同样重要的是要认识到，这种冲突是对耐力的考验，是一条漫长而曲折的道路，在这条道路上，很容易受情绪波动的影响，让人过早地去下定论。

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.

在过去的几年里，我们经历了很多这样的波动。在2021年和2022年初，阿富汗的溃败和我们对脆弱的乌克兰的过度承诺让美国看起来毫无作为……直到普京悍然入侵邻国，这时，随着俄军受挫以及我们成功地为乌克兰人争取到支持，又令自由民主优越论与美国霸权永续说甚嚣尘上。

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.

这种乐观情绪一直持续到乌克兰最后一次重大反攻的失败，以及哈马斯在2023年10月7日对以色列的袭击，在那一刻，人们又回到了悲观情绪。美国的力量已经捉襟见肘；我们的以色列盟友被敌人打了个措手不及，俄罗斯人正在夺回阵地，我们的武器库几乎肯定不足以保护乌克兰和以色列，也不足以保卫台湾，而所有这一切都发生在一位因年事已高而衰弱的总统任内，他是帝国摇摇欲坠的严峻象征。

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.

这种多战线的危机感帮助特朗普重新掌权。然后，在他执政最初的几个月曾引发担忧，他会通过事实上的投降来结束全球冲突——抛弃盟友、与独裁者做交易，并退守北美堡垒。

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，目前的情况并非如此。特朗普轰炸伊朗核计划的决定，以及伊朗的沉默回应，为德黑兰的地区影响力在以色列的连番打击下走向崩塌做了一个收场。与此同时，我们的北约盟友正在增加军费开支，特朗普突然对北约表示赞赏，而俄罗斯在乌克兰取得的进展仍然是一场代价高昂的苦战，普京有可能错失了他可能得到的最好的协议。再加上美国经济的强劲表现，即使在特朗普发动贸易战的情况下，我们似乎又在赢得这场全球冲突。“好哇！美国治下的和平永世长存！”

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，并不尽然。对伊朗核项目的破坏并不意味着我们已经消除了威胁，以色列的加沙战争仍然是一场人道主义危机，没有明确的政治结局。特朗普撤回了国防部通过不向乌克兰提供武器来分配资源的做法，但这并不能改变我们的武器有限、确实需要资源调配的现实。普京未能充分利用特朗普的外交接触，但这并不能改变俄罗斯仍在缓慢取得进展的事实。

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，乌克兰的僵局和伊朗的后撤都清楚地提醒人们，这场冲突的最终结果取决于尚未直接参战的修正主义强国——中华人民共和国。与俄罗斯或伊朗相比，中国是美国更大的竞争对手，同时也是一个极其谨慎的参与者，它满足于看着自己心照不宣的盟友发挥作用，却不会——举例来说——向伊朗提供核威慑，也不派遣人民解放军帮助俄罗斯攻占基辅。

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.

这种谨慎的距离感可能反映了修正主义集团的一个根本弱点——它纯粹是一种政权之间的利益联盟，彼此互不信任，没有我们与欧洲和东亚盟友那样多的共同点，也难以有效地协同工作。

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.

但这也可能折射出中国方面的一种信心，它认为时间在它这一边，它在技术和能源方面的投资很快就会超过我们，而我们现在的所有努力，不过是对北京在2020年代末战略布局的致命浪费。

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.

在不清楚这些战略底牌的情况下，美国外交政策既需要更好的长远战略来保持对中国的领先地位，也需要大量特朗普式的短期灵活性。不是单纯的克制或鹰派，而是要兼具和平诚意与开战能力，方能驾驭这场不会有简单结局的全球冲突之此消彼长。