What Donald J. Trump promised in his first term in office was America First. What he delivered, as his allies, adversaries and many of his former aides remember it, was chaotic foreign policymaking.

唐纳德·特朗普在第一个任期内承诺的是“美国优先”。在他的盟友、对手和许多前任助手的回忆中，他所交付的是混乱的外交决策。

Most of what Mr. Trump has said in his campaign to return to office suggests that in a second term, he plans more of the same, that he considers unpredictability to be his signature weapon. He revels in it, telling The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board in October that he wouldn’t have to threaten China with the use of American military force over Taiwan because President Xi Jinping “respects me and he knows I’m crazy,” using an expletive before “crazy” for emphasis.

在竞选谋求再度入主白宫的过程中，特朗普说过的大多数话都表明，他计划中的第二个任期不会有多少不同，他认为不可预测性是他的标志性武器。他对此乐此不疲，10月份曾对《华尔街日报》编辑部说，在台湾问题上，他用不着拿美国出兵来威胁中国，因为习近平主席“尊重我，他知道我是个疯子”，为了强调，他在“疯子”前使用了脏话。

Foreign policy experts often cast the choice Americans will make next week as one that will decide whether America moves back toward isolationism or stays with some version of President Biden’s alliance-building, internationalist approach.

外交政策专家通常认为，美国人下周做出的选择将决定美国是重新走向孤立主义，还是继续采用拜登总统的某种建立联盟的国际主义方法。

That is partially true: If Mr. Trump is defeated, his single term in office could very likely be viewed in history as a blip in America’s post-World War II approach to the world.

这种说法有一部分是正确的：如果特朗普落选，在后人眼中，他的唯一任期很可能会成为二战后美国对世界态度的一个小插曲。

If Ms. Harris loses, however, it would mean that Mr. Biden’s term was the definitive end of an era in which the United States was a reliable guarantor of Western security.

然而，如果贺锦丽落选，将意味着美国作为西方安全可靠保障者的时代在拜登的任期彻底画上句号。

Mr. Trump was never a true isolationist, of course, and for all his internationalist talk Mr. Biden has demonstrated more than a few streaks of nationalism. But should Mr. Trump prevail, it will almost certainly mark a return to an era of foreign policy decrees, untethered to any policy process, at a moment of maximum international peril.

当然，特朗普从来都不是一个真正的孤立主义者，而拜登虽然口口声声说自己是国际主义者，却也表现出不少民族主义倾向。但是，如果特朗普获胜，几乎可以肯定的是，这将标志着在国际危机最严重的时刻，外交政策又回到了一个没有任何政策程序的政令时代。

Policy-by-Impulse

以冲动制定政策

To read the memoirs of Trump officials who tried to manage foreign-policy-by-declaration is to page through a litany of anger-management incidents and decisions made without benefit of any real policy process or consultation of allies. But perhaps the most striking is how Mr. Trump’s aides — or at least those whom he later fired — recount story after story of keeping a naïve president from being manipulated by authoritarians, from Kim Jong-un of North Korea to Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

特朗普政府的官员们竭力维持着以宣言为政策的外交运作，阅读他们的回忆录，就像翻阅一连串的愤怒管理事件，以及在没有任何真正的政策程序或与盟友协商的情况下做出的决定。但最令人震惊的或许是特朗普的助手们——至少是那些后来被他解雇的助手们——如何讲述了一个又一个故事，关于他们如何让一个天真的总统免受从朝鲜的金正恩到俄罗斯的弗拉基米尔·普京等独裁者的操纵。

2020年，特朗普在椭圆形办公室打电话。外国领导人和主要捐助人有时会打电话给他，劝说他改变政策。

There was the moment recalled by H.R. McMaster, Mr. Trump’s second of four national security advisers, when Mr. Trump wanted to send a congratulatory note to the Russian leader and attached a clipping from The New York Post with the headline, “Putin Heaps Praise on Trump, Pans U.S. Politics.” But it was only days after Russian agents had deployed a rare nerve agent to try to kill the dissident Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Britain.

特朗普的四位国家安全顾问中的第二位H·R·麦克马斯特回忆说，当时特朗普想给俄罗斯领导人发一封贺信，并附上《纽约邮报》的剪页，其标题是“普京盛赞特朗普，抨击美国政治”。但就在几天前，俄罗斯特工使用了一种罕见的神经毒剂，试图在英国杀害持不同政见者谢尔盖·斯克里帕尔和他的女儿。

Mr. McMaster never sent the note, prompting Mr. Trump’s anger. “Putin would have almost certainly used the note to embarrass you” and alleviate international condemnation over the Skripal incident, Mr. McMaster told the president, according to his recently published memoir, “At War With Ourselves.” He also recalled warning Mr. Trump that the note, when public, would “reinforce the narrative that you are somehow in the Kremlin’s pocket.”

麦克马斯特没有发出那封贺信，这引起了特朗普的愤怒。根据麦克马斯特最近出版的回忆录《与我们自己为敌》(At War With Ourselves)，他对前总统说：“普京几乎肯定会利用这封贺信让你难堪，”并减轻国际社会对斯克里帕尔事件的谴责。他还回忆说，他曾警告特朗普，贺信一旦公开，将“强化你在替克里姆林宫做事的叙事”。

With Ukraine, Looking for Deals

对于乌克兰，寻求交易

Mr. Trump once portrayed himself as Ukraine’s defender, the man willing to give it weaponry — mostly Javelin anti-tank weapons — that President Barack Obama had refused it. “Ukraine wouldn’t be having a chance without them,” he told a crowd in March 2022, shortly after the Russian invasion. “That was all sent by me.”

特朗普曾把自己描绘成乌克兰的捍卫者，他愿意向乌克兰提供贝拉克·奥巴马总统拒绝提供的武器——主要是标枪反坦克武器。“没有这些，乌克兰是没机会的，”2022年3月，他在俄罗斯入侵后不久对人群说。“那都是我送过去的。”

But early in his 2016 run he complained that the United States should not care about Ukraine more than Germany and other European neighbors. During his presidency, Mr. Trump famously withheld security assistance to Ukraine and asked President Volodymyr Zelensky to implicate Mr. Biden, then a presidential candidate, in Ukraine-related scandals.

但在2016年竞选初期，他曾抱怨说，美国不应该比德国和其他欧洲邻国更关心乌克兰。在他担任总统期间，特朗普曾拒绝向乌克兰提供安全援助，并要求乌克兰总统泽连斯基将当时的总统候选人拜登牵扯进与乌克兰有关的丑闻中，这些事都广为人知。

In the days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Mr. Trump, by then out of office, initially called Mr. Putin’s move “genius” and “savvy.” He dialed that back after he was widely condemned for it. Now he insists that the war never should have happened because the right “deal” would have prevented it, presumably one in which Ukraine would have agreed to placate Mr. Putin by turning over part of its territory.

2022年2月俄罗斯入侵乌克兰后的几天里，当时已卸任的特朗普一开始称普京的举动是“天才的”和“精明的”。在遭到广泛谴责后，他又收回了这一说法。现在，他坚称战争本不该发生，因为正确的“交易”本可以阻止战争的发生，想必指的是乌克兰会同意通过交出部分领土来安抚普京。

That approach appears to be what Mr. Trump has in mind when he says he would end the war “in 24 hours,” or perhaps even before taking office. That probably means he would force Ukraine to accede or lose American military aid, which he has opposed. In the latter part of the campaign he has also overstated the depletion of American arms stockpiles, claiming in August that “now we have no ammunition because we’ve given it all away.”

特朗普说他将在“24小时内”，甚至可能在上任之前就结束战争，这种方式可能就是他的想法。这可能意味着他将迫使乌克兰同意，否则就会失去美国的军事援助，而他一直反对美国提供援助。在竞选后期，他还夸大了美国武器库存的消耗情况，在8月声称“现在我们没有弹药了，因为我们已经把它们都送走了”。

麦克马斯特是特朗普的一系列国家安全顾问之一，他曾试图防止特朗普被俄罗斯总统普京操纵。

But to underscore the incoherence of his policy, when he spoke to The Wall Street Journal in October he again portrayed himself as Ukraine’s great defender. “I said, ‘Vladimir, if you go after Ukraine, I am going to hit you so hard, you’re not even going to believe it. I’m going to hit you right in the middle of fricking Moscow,’” Mr. Trump said — describing a conversation with Mr. Putin that no aides have ever reported took place.

其政策不连贯性的突出表现是，10月接受《华尔街日报》采访时，他再次把自己描绘成乌克兰的伟大捍卫者。“我说：‘弗拉基米尔，如果你对乌克兰下手，我会狠狠地揍你，你甚至不敢相信。我会直接打到你那该死的莫斯科市中心去，’”特朗普说，他描述了与普京的一次谈话，但从未有任何助手报告过这次谈话曾经发生。

He has told similar stories about threats to other leaders, in other places.

他曾在其他地方讲述过威胁其他领导人的类似故事。

Trump’s China Strategy: Tariffs

特朗普的中国战略：关税

China is the most challenging problem in American national security: Its leader has vowed the country will be the world’s No. 1 economic, military and technological power by 2049, the 100th anniversary of Mao’s revolution. It is already the fastest-growing nuclear power, a program that became clear during Mr. Trump’s term and accelerated during Mr. Biden’s. And the coming together of Russia and China — with ever-deeper links to North Korea and Iran — has become the newest, and arguably among the most dangerous, geopolitical developments in recent years.

中国是美国国家安全领域面临的最大挑战：中国领导人誓言，到2049年——也就是毛泽东的革命胜利100周年时，中国将成为世界头号经济、军事和技术强国。中国已经是发展最快的核武大国，而其核武扩张趋势是在特朗普总统任期内逐渐显现的，并在拜登总统任期内进一步加速。俄罗斯与中国的结盟关系日益密切，两国与朝鲜和伊朗也加强了联系，这已成为近年来最新、可以说是最具危险性的地缘政治发展之一。

Almost none of that has been discussed or debated in this presidential campaign. Vice President Kamala Harris has said almost nothing about it. Mr. Trump, for his part, has offered a single solution to all ills: tariffs, “the most beautiful word in the dictionary. More beautiful than love, more beautiful than respect.”

在本次总统竞选中，几乎没有人对这些问题展开讨论或辩论。副总统贺锦丽几乎对此只字未提。特朗普则提供了一个万应灵药般的单一解决方案：关税，“字典里最美的词，比爱更美丽，比尊重更美丽。”

It has a populist ring, even if many economists say Mr. Trump’s promise of tariffs of “100 percent, 200 percent, 1,000 percent” would strike consumers hard, the poor hardest, and might tank the American economy. But it also does not address the vast security challenge that China poses, from the South China Sea to Taiwan to cyberspace, or the technology competition that is at the core of the China challenge.

这具有民粹主义色彩，尽管许多经济学家指出，特朗普承诺的“100%、200%、甚至1000%的关税”将给消费者——尤其是贫困人群——带来沉重打击，甚至可能使美国经济陷入低谷。而这也没有解决中国带来的巨大安全挑战，包括南海、台湾和网络空间，以及构成中国挑战核心问题的科技竞争。

During his term in office, Mr. Trump’s foreign policy team reoriented American national security strategy toward a focus on superpower conflict and began to develop plans for restricting China’s ability to obtain key technology — in advanced semiconductors, work on quantum computers and artificial intelligence — from the U.S. and its allies. Some of Mr. Biden’s aides have credited the Trump administration, if grudgingly, for focusing the government on those key elements.

在其任期内，特朗普的外交政策团队重新调整了美国的国家安全战略，重新聚焦于超级大国之间的冲突，并开始制定计划，限制中国从美国及其盟国获取关键技术——包括先进半导体、量子计算机和人工智能方面的技术。拜登的一些助手也曾勉强称赞特朗普政府将工作重点放在了这些关键要素上。

But Mr. Trump himself often undercut them, offering to lift key export controls in return for the elusive big trade deal with China that he never achieved. And the other day, he attacked the CHIPS and Science Act, passed with overwhelming Republican support, complaining that it had given government support to key American competitors.

但特朗普本人经常削弱这些努力，为了达成那个若有若无、始终未能实现的中美贸易大协议，他甚至提出可以解除一些关键出口管制。最近，他还批评了在两党支持下通过的《芯片和科学法案》，抱怨该法案为美国的主要竞争对手提供了政府支持。

9月，特朗普在纽约会见乌克兰总统泽连斯基。特朗普有时将自己描绘成乌克兰的捍卫者，但他也赞扬过俄罗斯的入侵。

On the Middle East, a P.R. Problem

中东：一个公关问题

If Ms. Harris loses on Tuesday, one reason may be that she has lost the support of Arab Americans and young voters who believe the Biden administration failed to use its leverage to limit Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza following last year’s Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. Most estimates put the loss of life from the Israeli military action at more than 40,000, including Hamas terrorists.

如果贺锦丽在周二落败，其中一个原因可能是她失去了阿拉伯裔美国人和年轻选民的支持，这些人认为拜登政府未能充分利用其影响力限制以色列在去年10月7日哈马斯袭击后的轰炸行动。大多数估计认为，以色列军事行动造成的死亡人数超过4万人，其中包括哈马斯恐怖分子。

There are few more complex issues on the diplomatic agenda than how to balance Israel’s self-defense with the creation of a new dynamic in the Middle East and alleviate the humanitarian crises worsened by multiple wars. Mr. Trump has largely steered clear of both the political and moral complexities. His strongest argument has centered on the optics of the bombing campaign. In April he said Israel was “absolutely losing the PR war,” and added, “Let’s get back to peace and stop killing people. And that’s a very simple statement.”

在外交议程中，如何平衡以色列的自卫权与中东新态势的形成、缓解多场战争加剧的人道主义危机，几乎是最复杂的问题之一。特朗普基本上回避了政治和道德上的复杂性。他最有力的论点集中在轰炸行动的公众观感上。今年4月，他说以色列“绝对输掉了公关战”，还说：“让我们恢复和平，停止杀人。这是一个非常简单的声明。”

But he has offered no cease-fire plan and no ideas for winning the release of hostages held by Hamas. When he spoke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after Israel killed the leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas, he expressed his admiration for the skill of the operations and then told him: “Do what you have to do.”

但他并没有提出任何停火计划，也没有针对如何解救哈马斯扣押的人质提出方案。在以色列击毙真主党和哈马斯领导人后，特朗普与以色列总理内塔尼亚胡通话，对其行动能力表示钦佩，然后告诉他：“做你必须做的事。”