President Trump has created the conditions for another quagmire in the Middle East, and the question is whether American military excellence can rescue him from his own impulsiveness and incompetence.

特朗普总统已经为中东的又一个泥潭创造了条件，现在的悬念在于，美国卓越的军事实力能否将他从自身的冲动与无能中拯救出来。

Here is the present situation, in a nutshell: The United States and Israel have established absolute air dominance over the nation of Iran. In a few short days, our combined forces have destroyed Iran’s ability to protect its own airspace, have killed much of Iran’s senior military and civilian leadership, and have sunk much of Iran’s navy.

简单来说，目前的情况是这样的：美国和以色列已经在伊朗上空建立了绝对制空权。在短短几天内，联军摧毁了伊朗保卫本国领空的能力，消灭了伊朗相当一部分高级军政领导人，并重创了它的海军力量。

At the same time, the United States and Israel are damaging Iran’s nuclear program from the air, and they are destroying Iran’s ability to manufacture and deploy ballistic missiles. They are also attacking the internal security forces that maintain the Iranian regime’s hold on the population.

与此同时，美以正通过空袭破坏伊朗的核计划，摧毁其制造和部署弹道导弹的能力。他们还在攻击那些维持伊朗政权对民众控制的内部安全部队。

The intention of the air campaign is clear: to destroy the regime’s capacity to harm its neighbors while also creating the conditions for a revolution on the ground.

这场空中行动的意图十分明确：既要削弱伊朗政权伤害邻国的能力，也要为地面发生革命创造条件。

If that’s the extent of the military mission, the military is accomplishing it with remarkable efficiency. Iran is being badly battered. Even if the war ended today, it would take years for the Iranian military to fully recover from the losses it has suffered so far.

如果此次军事任务仅限于此，那么军方执行得相当高效。伊朗正遭受沉重打击。即便战争今天结束，伊朗军队也需要数年时间才能从目前的损失中完全恢复。

While Iran’s drones and missiles have inflicted damage on American forces and our allies, that damage is far less than what the U.S. and Israel have inflicted on Iran. There are no confirmed reports of Iran shooting down any American or Israeli aircraft (it has destroyed a number of drones), and it hasn’t yet sunk a single American or Israeli warship.

虽然伊朗的无人机和导弹也对美军及其盟友造成了一定损害，但远不及美以对伊朗造成的破坏。目前没有确认的报道显示伊朗击落过任何一架美国或以色列战机（它确实摧毁了一些无人机），也未击沉任何一艘美军或以色列军舰。

So why, then, is Trump lashing out at American allies? Why was he “shocked” that Iran struck Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait in response to American attacks?

那么，特朗普为何还要严厉斥责美国的盟友？当伊朗袭击沙特、卡塔尔、阿联酋和科威特以报复美军攻击时，他为何感到“震惊”？

Perhaps the answer lies in a Wall Street Journal report from last Friday. According to The Journal, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned Trump that Iran might attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz and Trump shrugged off the threat and launched the attack anyway.

答案或许可以从《华尔街日报》上周五的一篇报道中找到。报道称，美军参谋长联席会议主席丹·凯恩将军曾警告特朗普，伊朗可能试图封锁霍尔木兹海峡，但特朗普对这一威胁嗤之以鼻，坚持发动进攻。

“He told his team that Tehran would likely capitulate before closing the strait,” The Journal wrote, “and even if Iran tried, the U.S. military could handle it.”

“他告诉团队，德黑兰很可能在封锁海峡之前就会投降，”《华尔街日报》写道，“即便伊朗真的尝试这么做，美军也能搞定。”

But Iran did not capitulate. There is no real sign the regime is in danger of falling. Instead, it has effectively closed the strait, and it’s reportedly done so without choking off its own oil exports. In other words, while other nations can’t ship oil through the strait, Iran still is.

但伊朗并未屈服。目前没有明显迹象表明该政权面临崩溃。相反，它实际上已经有效封锁了这条海峡，而且据称是在没有阻断自身石油出口的情况下做到的。换句话说，当其他国家无法通过海峡运送石油时，伊朗仍然可以。

Iran may not be able to seriously damage Israel with its missiles (though a few missiles have gotten through Israel’s defenses and killed Israeli civilians), and it may not be able to sink American ships, but it can still potentially plunge the world economy into a state of crisis. It could well emerge from the conflict with its regime intact (and perhaps even more hard-line) and its power over the world economy undiminished.

伊朗的导弹或许无法对以色列造成严重破坏（尽管确实有少数导弹突破了以色列的防御系统，造成以色列平民死亡），也无法击沉美国军舰，但它仍然有可能让世界经济陷入危机。冲突结束后，其政权可能依然完好无损（甚至可能更加强硬），对世界经济的控制力也未削弱。

In a recent post, the Institute for the Study of War described the problem well: “A weakened regime that remains in power after this war would be able to disrupt shipping whenever and for however long it pleases with little effort if its current, relatively limited, strike campaign on shipping proves sufficient to cause the U.S. and Israel to surrender.”

战争研究所最近在一篇贴文中很好地描述了这个问题：“如果它目前针对航运相对有限的打击行动就足以让美以屈服的话，那么一个在战后依然掌权的遭到削弱的政权，将能够随心所欲地干扰航运，且几乎不费吹灰之力。”

“A failure to demonstrate the will and ability to deny Iran the ability to disrupt traffic,” it wrote, “will make it enormously harder to deter Iran from future disruptions.”

“如果不能展示出阻止伊朗破坏航运的意愿和能力，”文章写道，“未来将更难威慑伊朗再次进行破坏。”

That’s the logic that leads to a quagmire. If America declares victory now, when the Iranian regime is still in power and the strait is closed, then Iran perversely can claim that it won. It took a huge punch, absorbed the blow, and still forced America to climb down. It employed its ultimate weapon — closing the strait — and America had no effective answer.

这正是走向泥潭的逻辑。如果美国现在宣布胜利，而伊朗政权依然存在、海峡仍被封锁，那么伊朗反而可以宣称自己获胜。它承受了重击，挺住了伤害，却仍迫使美国退让。它动用了终极武器——封锁海峡，而美国却没有有效应对之策。

Commit to opening the strait (and keeping it open) by force, and the U.S. may well find itself in yet another open-ended, costly conflict with at least some American soldiers on Iranian soil. This would be war on our enemy’s terms and terrain, with the potential of slowly but surely inflicting casualties and costs on the American military until we grow tired of the conflict and leave.

如果美国决心通过武力重新开放（并维持开放）该海峡，那么很可能会再次陷入一场旷日持久、代价高昂的冲突，甚至可能有美国士兵踏上伊朗领土。这将是一场在对手设定的条件和地盘上进行的战争，它有可能缓慢但确定无疑地给美军带来伤亡和消耗，直到我们厌倦冲突而离开。

The only way to cut this Gordian knot is with a military miracle — a fast campaign with minimal casualties that can quickly reopen the strait, minimize harm to the international economy and leave Iran almost entirely toothless, unable to inflict military or economic damage on its foes.

破解这个难题的唯一办法是创造一场军事奇迹——一场速战速决、伤亡最小的战役，迅速重新开放海峡，将全球经济受到的冲击降到最低，并让伊朗几乎彻底失去反击能力，无法再对对手造成军事或经济伤害。

Trump’s recklessness has left the United States with few good options. Indeed, the dilemma America now faces is a perfect illustration of why Trump should have taken his case for war to the Congress and the American people before he fired the first missile.

特朗普的鲁莽让美国几乎没有好的选择。事实上，美国目前面临的困境完美诠释了为什么特朗普在发射第一枚导弹之前，本该向国会和美国人民陈述他的开战理由。

I’ve had friends ask me, “Well, if he didn’t think Congress would approve, what do you expect him to do? Sit on his hands?” The answer is simple: The Constitution doesn’t give the president the power to disregard Congress. So, no, don’t go to war if you can’t get Congress to approve.

有朋友问我：“好吧，如果他觉得国会不会批准，你指望他怎么做？难道什么都不做吗？”答案很简单：宪法没有赋予总统无视国会的权力。所以，是的，如果不能获得国会批准，就不要发动战争。

And if a Republican president can’t get a Republican Congress to support his war, perhaps that provides even more reason to doubt the wisdom of the conflict.

如果一位共和党总统甚至无法说服共和党控制的国会支持他的战争，那么也许这更有理由让人怀疑这场冲突是否明智。

Had he made the case for war, he could have prepared the people for potential economic hardship. He would have been forced to precisely define our war aims and the means he’d choose to pursue those aims. Had he not alienated key allies through economic warfare and threats to seize Greenland, it could have been easier to assemble, in advance, an allied force to protect the Strait of Hormuz.

如果他当初就战争的必要性给出过阐述，他本可以让民众对潜在的经济困境做好心理准备。他将被迫精确地定义我们的战争目标，以及他选择用来实现这些目标的手段。如果他没有通过经济战和“夺取格陵兰岛”的威胁来疏远关键盟友，那么提前组建一支联合部队来保护霍尔木兹海峡本会容易得多。

Instead, Trump launched a major war on his own initiative while announcing competing and potentially contradictory war aims. Is the goal regime change? Unconditional surrender? Or is it much narrower — the destruction of Iran’s missile and drone forces, sinking its navy, stopping its nuclear program and destroying its ability to wage war through its proxy forces, including Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and the kaleidoscope of allied militias in Syria and Iraq.

相反，特朗普在自行发起一场大规模战争的同时，宣布了相互冲突甚至可能自相矛盾的战争目标。目标是政权更迭吗？是无条件投降吗？还是更具体的目标——摧毁伊朗的导弹和无人机部队，击沉其海军，停止其核计划，并摧毁其通过代理人部队（包括真主党、哈马斯、胡塞武装以及叙利亚和伊拉克境内错综复杂的盟友民兵组织）发动战争的能力？

The Iranian regime, by contrast, has a single, simple theory of victory: Survive. If the regime is still standing at the end of the conflict, then Iran lives to fight again. And if it survives at least in part through closing the Strait of Hormuz, then it knows exactly how to fight again.

相比之下，伊朗政权只有一个简单而明确的胜利理论：生存。如果战争结束时政权依然屹立不倒，那么伊朗就能重整旗鼓。如果它至少部分通过关闭霍尔木兹海峡而存活下来，那么它就确切地知道下一次该如何战斗。

Even when wars are carefully planned, with allies brought on board and a majority of the public in support, they are still highly volatile and unpredictable. The best analysts in the world can be confounded by the way events actually unfold. For example, we are now in the fifth year of a war in Ukraine that many people expected would end in few days.

即使是经过周密计划、拉拢盟友并获得多数民众支持的战争，依然极具波动性和不可预测性。世界上最顶尖的分析师也可能被事态的实际演变所迷惑。例如，我们现在正处于乌克兰战争的第五年，而许多人最初曾预计这场战争在几天内就会结束。

The best way to analyze events isn’t to ask, “Will this plan succeed?” but rather, “Have you created the conditions for success?” And, “Have you carefully considered what happens next?”

分析事件的最佳方式不是问“这个计划会成功吗？”，而是问：“你是否创造了成功的条件？”以及“你是否仔细考虑了接下来会发生什么？”

In the military context that can mean that your troops are well supplied, well trained, well led and acting according to a solid, achievable battle plan. You can still fail under those circumstances, but your chances of failure are far less.

在军事语境下，这意味着你的部队补给充足、训练有素、领导得力，并根据稳健且可实现的作战计划行动。在这种情况下你仍可能失败，但失败的机会要小得多。

My great concern is that Trump has created the conditions for failure. He has taken our well-supplied, well-trained and well-led troops and has deployed them on a mission that lacks clear public support (especially compared to previous American wars), lacks clearly defined objectives, and may not ultimately be achievable without a large-scale escalation.

我最大的担忧是，特朗普创造了失败的条件。他带着我们补给充足、训练有素、领导得力的部队，将他们投入到一项缺乏明确公众支持（尤其是与以往美国战争相比）、缺乏明确目标且如果不进行大规模升级可能最终无法实现的使命中。

And now, dismayed that the war has not resulted in the regime’s immediate capitulation or destruction, he’s flailing about, once again threatening the viability of NATO if our allies don’t come and bail him out from a war they did not start and did not ask for.

而现在，由于对战争没能导致伊朗政权的立即投降或毁灭感到沮丧，他开始手忙脚乱，再次威胁北约的生存，要求盟友们来解救他——而这场战争既不是盟友挑起的，也不是他们想要的。

As an American, I want our forces to succeed, once they are committed. I want to see the military open the Strait of Hormuz as quickly and painlessly as possible. I want to see the Iranian regime collapse and replaced by a democracy. That regime is loathsome. It’s an enemy of the United States. It deserves to fall. If it does, I will cheer its demise.

作为一名美国人，一旦部队投入战斗，我希望他们获胜。我希望看到军方尽可能迅速且无痛地打通霍尔木兹海峡。我希望看到伊朗政权垮台并被民主政体取代。那个政权是可憎的，是美国的敌人，它理应倒台。如果它倒了，我会为其灭亡而欢呼。

At the same time, however, my patriotism can’t blind me to reality. This is not how our democracy should go to war. Trump is not the right man to lead our nation into battle. People I respect applaud Trump for his courage in taking on Iran. But I don’t see courage. I see recklessness. I see thoughtlessness.

然而与此同时，我的爱国情怀不能让我无视现实。这不应该是我们民主国家走向战争的方式。特朗普不是领导国家走向战场的合适人选。一些人赞扬特朗普对抗伊朗的勇气，对此我表示尊重，但我看到的不是勇气，而是鲁莽，是轻率。

I see a man who plunged a nation into a conflict without fully comprehending the risks. I see a man full of hubris after achieving success in much more limited military engagements. And he’s now counting on two of the world’s most competent militaries to essentially bail him out.

我看到的是一个人在没有完全理解风险的情况下将国家推向冲突。我看到的是一个在取得极其有限的军事成功后满脑子傲慢的人。他现在正指望世界上最精锐的两支军队来替他收拾残局。

He’s counting on them accomplishing a mission without clear precedent in military history: destroying a hostile regime and forcing its compliance entirely from the air and sea, and to do so quickly enough that the economic pain doesn’t overshadow the military gains. Previous successful aerial campaigns, such as NATO’s campaigns in the Balkans and the allied campaign in Libya, were supplemented by local allied ground forces who could take and hold the land.

他指望他们在没有军事史先例的情况下完成一项任务：完全依靠空军和海军摧毁一个敌对政权并迫使其屈服，而且动作要快到让经济阵痛不至于掩盖军事胜利。此前成功的空中战役，如北约在巴尔干半岛的行动和盟军在利比亚的行动，都有当地盟友地面部队的补充，从而能占领并守住土地。

Or he can just declare “victory” and try to extricate the United States from the fight. He can point to the smoking ruins of the Iranian military and say that we’ve accomplished something substantial. We’ve “mowed the grass,” to use a term applied to Israeli counterterror operations before the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas.

或者，他可以干脆宣布“胜利”，并试图让美国从战斗中抽身。他可以指着伊朗军队的废墟说，我们已经取得了一些实质性的成就。我们已经“修剪了草坪”——这是以色列在哈马斯去年10月7日袭击之前，对其反恐行动所使用的术语。

In other words, you may not have defeated the enemy, but you’ve hurt the enemy, and it will take years for it to recover. In fact, there are signs that the administration is moving to exactly that position. Its messaging has begun to slide from regime change and “unconditional surrender” to objectives that look a lot like mowing the grass — damaging the Iranian military enough that it will take considerable time to rebuild.

换句话说，你可能没有击败敌人，但你重创了敌人，它需要数年时间才能恢复。事实上，有迹象表明政府正在转向这一立场。它的调门已经从政权更迭和“无条件投降”滑向了看起来极像“修草坪”的目标——即重创伊朗军力，使其在相当长的时间内无法重建。

But Oct. 7 should have demonstrated to all of us that mowing the grass doesn’t make anyone safer. Instead it prolongs the conflict. It hardens the combatants. It plants the seeds for vengeance. Israel should know this now, and we should know it as well.

但10月7日的事件应该向我们所有人证明，“修草坪”并不能改善任何人的安全。相反，它延长了冲突，使战斗人员变得更强硬，并播下了复仇的种子。以色列现在应该明白这一点，我们也应该明白。

When Saddam Hussein faced a catastrophic defeat during Operation Desert Storm, he doubled down. He tried to kill George H.W. Bush, he supported the second intifada against Israel, his troops fired on American pilots. He harbored terrorists. Defeat did not make him any less of an enemy to the United States, and in 2003 we fought him again, in a much longer and bloodier war.

当萨达姆·侯赛因在“沙漠风暴”行动中面临惨败时，他变本加厉。他试图刺杀老布什，支持针对以色列的第二次大起义，他的部队向美国飞行员开火，他窝藏恐怖分子。失败并没有让他减少对美国的敌意。到了2003年，我们再次与他开战，那是一场漫长得多、也血腥得多的战争。

Trump has only himself to blame. He led America into an unconstitutional war. And now he’s compounding that sin by proving to be every bit as reckless a commander as he is a president.

特朗普只能怪他自己。他领导美国进入了一场违宪的战争。而现在，他正在变本加厉，证明自己不仅是一个鲁莽的总统，更是一个彻头彻尾的鲁莽统帅。