基式外交：实施布什的愿景 @《基式外交研究》2025年第11期

作者：亨利・A・基辛格

来源：大外交青年智库基式外交研究中心《基式外交研究》2025年第11期

文源：Kissinger, Henry A. "Implementing Bush’s Vision." The Washington Post, May 16, 2005.

声明：基式外交研究中心转载、编译与翻译的内容均为非商业性引用（学术研究），不作商用，如有问题请即刻联系

一、中文

近期全球民主进程取得显著进展：阿富汗、伊拉克、乌克兰和巴勒斯坦举行选举；沙特阿拉伯进行地方选举；叙利亚从黎巴嫩撤军；埃及开启总统选举改革；吉尔吉斯斯坦爆发反对专制政权的动荡。这一可喜趋势部分得益于布什总统的中东政策，而其第二任期就职演说将全球自由进程确立为美国外交政策核心目标，则进一步加速了这一进程。

学界权威人士将这一系列事件诠释为美国外交政策路线之争中“理想主义者”对“现实主义者”的胜利。事实上，美国或许是全球唯一将“现实主义”用作贬义词的国家。真正意义上的现实主义者不会主张权力即正义，理想主义者也不应忽视权力对理想传播的作用。政策制定的关键在于平衡两者间关系，任何一方的过度强调都将导致战略停滞或力量透支。

价值观是确立目标的根本，而战略则是通过设定优先事项和时机把握来实现目标的艺术。

制定战略的前提是承认自由议程并未使地缘政治分析失去意义。某些领域若以十字军东征式的狂热推进改革，往往南辕北辙。中国崛起本质上是地缘政治挑战，而非意识形态之争。

美印关系是另一典型案例。冷战期间，印度认为无需为民主事业对抗共产主义，柏林自由等议题与其国家利益无关。如今两国成为战略伙伴，并非源于制度趋同，而是基于东南亚及印度洋地区的安全利益契合，以及在遏制激进伊斯兰势力方面的共同诉求。

为有效推进自由议程，需秉持以下原则：

・民主化进程并非一蹴而就，亦非单凭一项决策即可完成。选举虽为必要起点，但更关键的是接受选举结果的政治意愿，而建立少数派可和平转化为多数派的制度则更为复杂。

・美国必须清醒认识到，成功不仅不会终结其参与，反而可能加深责任。介入国际事务意味着需对意外后果负责，不能因民意波动而随意改变承诺。

・选举未必带来民主结果。真主党和哈马斯等激进势力正利用民主程序破坏民主制度，以实现全面控制。

作为全球主导民主国家，美国必须将价值观与实力相结合，使政治变革与地缘战略需求相协调。在存在权力真空且驻有美军的地区，美国影响力显著，但不可将欧美同质化社会历经数百年形成的模式简单移植到中东、亚洲和非洲的多元族群社会。在多民族国家，多数决若缺乏强有力的联邦结构和制衡机制，将导致少数群体永久被压制。在相互视对方统治为生存威胁的派别间通过协商建立此类制度堪称世纪难题，而这将决定伊拉克（及一定程度上阿富汗）民主目标的实现程度。

黎巴嫩局势揭示了问题的另一面。驱逐叙利亚驻军的运动既彰显了民众觉醒，也反映了战略环境的变化。叙利亚在实力不济情况下选择撤军，或许盘算着局势终将重陷混乱，届时可名正言顺再度干预。历史经验颇具警示：1958年美国介入、1976年叙利亚出兵、1982年以色列干预，三次外部力量介入均旨在阻止黎巴嫩基督教、逊尼派、什叶派及德鲁兹教派间的暴力冲突，以维持各派力量平衡。当前宪法安排已无法反映实际人口结构，导致教派矛盾进一步激化。

当前黎巴嫩政治动力更多源于民粹主义而非民主精神，各派通过竞争性示威试图压制对手。考验在于美国和国际社会能否促成各方接受的政治框架，并建立国际存在以防止冲突重演，遏制外部势力干预。

在埃及和沙特阿拉伯，权力真空尚属潜在威胁。明智政策应在打破停滞与避免现有体制崩溃之间寻求平衡，警惕激进派系斗争或某一派系独大。沙特地方选举中宗教极端势力的胜利即凸显这一风险。政策偏差可能使这些国家成为整个中东战略的致命弱点。美国虽明确主张反映民意的民主演进是长期必然，但尚未阐明该进程的具体内涵和实施路径。

伊朗革命的教训值得深思：1960-70年代拖延改革导致原教旨主义崛起，而卡特政府的过度施压则催生了比巴列维王朝更专制的政权。如何妥善处理这些敏感问题，关系包括巴勒斯坦谈判前景在内的重大战略利益。

最后，如何应对中国、俄罗斯等在全球化进程中较少借鉴西方政治传统的国家，是重大挑战。这些国家以自身历史和民族认同为发展指引。美国应通过何种方式、在多大程度上影响这一进程？需要怎样的历史文化认知才能确保政策有效性？我们准备为中期战略利益付出何种代价？

没有任何国家强大到具备足够的国力和智慧同时介入全球所有政治变革进程。基于国家利益设定优先事项至关重要，否则可能导致战略透支和国际反美联盟的形成。

布什总统提出了宏伟愿景，当前国家辩论应聚焦于具体实施路径。非政府组织在强调议题重要性后，应积极参与构建负责任的政策框架。实施自由议程需要国内外共识，这将决定我们是在把握系统性变革机遇，还是仅参与一场历史插曲。

二、英文

Extraordinary advances of democracy have occurred in recent months: elections in Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, and Palestine; local elections in Saudi Arabia; Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon; the opening up of the presidential election in Egypt; and upheavals against entrenched authoritarians in Kyrgyzstan. This welcome trend was partly triggered by President Bush’s Middle East policy and accelerated by his second inaugural address, which elevated the progress of freedom in the world to the defining objective of U.S. foreign policy.

Pundits have interpreted these events as a victory of “idealists” over “realists” in the debate over conduct of American foreign policy. In fact, the United States is probably the only country in which “realist” can be used as a pejorative epithet. No serious realist should claim that power is its own justification. No idealist should imply that power is irrelevant to the spread of ideals. The real issue is to establish a sense of proportion between these two essential elements of policy. Overemphasis of either leads to stagnation or overextension.

Values are essential for defining objectives; strategy is what implements them by establishing priorities and defining timing.

Strategy must begin with the recognition that the freedom agenda does not make geopolitical analysis irrelevant. There are issues for which crusading strategies tend to be off the mark. The rise of China is, in essence, a geopolitical challenge, not a primarily ideological one.

U.S. relations with India are another case in point. During the Cold War, India saw no imperative to support the cause of democracy against communism. Its national interest was not involved in issues such as the freedom of Berlin. Now India is, in effect, a strategic partner, not because of compatible domestic structures but because of parallel security interests in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, and vis-à-vis radical Islam.

In its own terms, a clear-eyed commitment to the freedom agenda should keep these principles in mind:

• The process of democratization does not depend on a single decision and will not be completed in a single stroke. Elections, however desirable, are only the beginning of a long enterprise. The willingness to accept their outcomes is a more serious hurdle. The establishment of a system that enables the minority to become a majority is even more complex.

• Americans need to understand that successes do not end their engagement but most probably deepen it. For as we involve ourselves, we bear the responsibility even for results we did not anticipate. We must deal with those consequences regardless of our original intentions and not act as if our commitments are as changeable as opinion polls.

• Elections are not an inevitable guarantee of a democratic outcome. Radicals such as Hezbollah and Hamas seem to have learned the mechanics of democracy in order to undermine it and establish total control.

As the world’s dominating democratic power, we must relate values to power, institutional political change to geopolitical necessities. In countries where a vacuum must be filled and U.S. forces are present, the American capacity to affect events is considerable. Even then, however, it is not possible to automatically apply models created over centuries in the homogeneous societies of Europe and the United States to ethnically diverse and religiously divided societies in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. In multiethnic societies, majority rule implies permanent subjugation of the minority unless it is part of a strong federal structure and a system of checks and balances. To achieve this by negotiation between parties that consider dominance by the other groups a threat to their very survival is an extraordinarily elusive undertaking. It will, however, determine the degree to which democratic goals in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, in Afghanistan can be achieved.

Lebanon illustrates another aspect of these considerations. The upheaval that expelled Syrian forces is a testimony to the growth of popular consciousness but also to the changed strategic environment. Syria, too weak to resist international pressures, may calculate that withdrawal eventually will return the situation to the chaos that triggered Syrian intervention in the first place.

Three times since 1958 – the United States that year, Syria in 1976 and Israel in 1981 – foreign intervention held the ring in Lebanon to prevent collapse into violence and to arbitrate among the Christian, Sunni, Shiite and Druze groups that constitute the Lebanese body politic. The internal conflict is made all the sharper because the established constitutional arrangement no longer reflects the actual demographic balance.

At this point, the driving force in Lebanon is less democratic than populist; it is a contest by which the factions organize competitive demonstrations partially designed to overawe their opponents. The test will be whether the United States and the international community are able to bring about an agreed political framework and whether they can mobilize an international presence to guarantee that the conflicting passions do not once again erupt into violence, and that outside adventures are discouraged.

In Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the vacuum is potential, not actual. A wise policy will navigate between efforts to overcome stagnation and pressures that will dissolve the existing political framework into a contest of radical factions or the victory of one of them. The fundamentalist victory in the local elections in Saudi Arabia illustrates this danger. Policies erring in either direction could turn these countries into the Achilles’ heel of the entire Middle East policy. The United States has made clear its conviction that a democratic evolution reflecting popular aspirations is a long-term necessity. But it has not yet defined what it means either by that phrase or an appropriate evolutionary process.

The revolution in Iran teaches the lesson of the risks of procrastination in the 1960s and 1970s before the fundamentalist upheaval, but also of the perils of pressures in the Carter administration that resulted in a system far more autocratic than the shah’s. Major strategic issues are at stake in a sensitive handling of these concerns, including the viability of Palestinian negotiation.

Finally, there is the challenge of how to deal with societies such as China and Russia, which so far have relied on the Western political tradition only to a small degree, if at all, in their transition to the globalized world. They have used their own histories or national senses of identity as guides. To what extent and by what means can the United States influence this process? And in what direction? What level of understanding of domestic context, influenced by centuries of history, is necessary to produce confidence in desired outcomes? What price in medium-term strategic interests are we prepared to pay?

No single nation is strong enough or wise enough to involve itself in every political evolution around the world simultaneously. Priorities based on the national interest are imperative. Otherwise, psychological exhaustion and physical overextension are a real possibility, along with a global coalition of the resentful and nationalistic resisting perceived American hegemony.

President Bush has put forward a dramatic vision. The national debate now needs to focus on the concrete circumstances to which it must be applied. The nongovernmental groups should participate in this process.

Having made their point about the importance of the subject, they should now contribute to the development of a responsible substance. A strategy to implement the vision of the freedom agenda needs consensus-building, both domestically and internationally. That will be the test as to whether we are seizing the opportunity for systemic change or participating in an episode.