来源：本文刊于美国国家利益杂志2018年5-6月号， 公众号 学术plus全文翻译授权爱思想发布，（阅读和下载英文原版请点击"阅读原文"）。
2018年5-6月号的美国《国家利益》杂志的封面文章是《美国对阵中俄：欢迎加入第二次冷战》，该文从政治、军事、经济等角度分析了当今世界面临"第二次冷战"的现状与原因，比较了两次冷战的异同之处，认为美国在第二次冷战将注定失败。
2017年11月28日，夏威夷拉响了空袭警报，这是冷战后的来头一遭，是为了应对朝鲜核导弹威胁而强化国家紧急预警系统的一部分。但警报器的尖啸声可能也象征着第二次冷战（COLD WAR II）的到来。
历史学家从没能就第一次冷战开始的时间达成一致。1946年美国和英国在希腊内战中与苏联发生冲突？第二次世界大战结束？1917年10月在俄罗斯的共产主义政变？关于冷战结束的时间也没有共识：1986年戈尔巴乔夫在联合国发表关于放弃苏联外交政策的讲话？1989年柏林墙倒塌？苏联在1990年正式解体，叶利钦取代戈尔巴乔夫成为新成立的俄罗斯联邦的负责人？
未来的历史学家可能就"第二次冷战"何时开始开展类似的严肃辩论，是2014年俄罗斯吞并了克里米亚，激起美国及其欧洲盟友的反弹？还是从2008年的俄罗斯-格鲁吉亚战争开始？其他人可能会认为是中国在南海采取行动作为开始的时间。
但有一点很清楚：过去的几年里，叶利钦在1994年所说的俄罗斯与西方世界之间的"冷和平"，已变得更冷、更不和平。美国和中国在军事，外交和经济领域都变得越来越对立。冷和平已经结束，现在是第二次冷战时间。
第二次冷战是在第一次冷战相互对立的双方之间的"复赛"。一方面是美国及其东亚和欧洲盟友，包括欧洲中东部新的北约盟国和波罗的海。另一方面是俄罗斯和中国及其盟友。
两次冷战的相同之处还在于，双方都组织了相互竞争的军事联盟。冷战后，美国一直支持北约并将其扩展到俄罗斯边界，尽管遭到强烈反对。美国在东亚与日本，韩国和台湾保持冷战联盟，遏制中国以及后苏联时代的俄罗斯政策。为了应对中国军事力量和自信的崛起，美国还与日本，印度和澳大利亚一起参加了四方安全对话（Quad），这被广泛认为是事实上的反华联盟，是奥巴马政府称为美国"重返亚洲"以应对日益增长的中国力量的一部分。
曾经的华沙条约成员国中所有的非苏联国家，现在都是美国领导的北约联盟的成员。俄罗斯通过2008年与格鲁吉亚的战争，以及吞并克里米亚和支持乌克兰分离主义分子，阻止了北约吸纳格鲁吉亚和乌克兰的想法。同时俄罗斯试图巩固前苏联大部分领土的势力范围，部分以欧亚经济联盟的形式出现，其中包括俄罗斯，白俄罗斯，哈萨克斯坦，吉尔吉斯斯坦和亚美尼亚。
俄罗斯还与中国形成了松散结盟。并与其他国家形成了自己的欧亚联盟：上海合作组织（SCO）。上海合作组织成立于2001年，包括伊朗和印度，不包括美国的军事盟友，但巴基斯坦和土耳其除外。上海合作组织2005年拒绝了美国申请成为观察员的要求，由于中国和印度的参与，上海合作组织涵盖了世界两个人口最多的国家，以及俄罗斯这个面积最大的国家。
虽然上海合作组织的目的是打击恐怖主义，但中俄军事合作是该组织定期军事演习的中心（下一次将于2018年9月在俄罗斯举行）。上海合作组织的核心成员包括美国战略界视为主要对手的三个国家：中国，俄罗斯和伊朗（学术plus注：伊朗不是、伊朗不是、不是不是不是！！！）。
中国和俄罗斯也在加强与盟国的关系，以提高他们海外的权力。通过吞并克里米亚防止了克里米亚塞瓦斯托波尔港可能遭受的损失，俄罗斯介入叙利亚内战，部分是为了确保其在叙利亚的军事基地。
在美国及其许多邻国的反对下，中国大肆主张对南海的主权，并试图通过修建和强化人造岛屿来批准这些主权。所谓"珍珠链"是指中国海军基地和从南中国海到孟加拉国的民用港口和航运中心以及巴基斯坦瓜达尔港口的网络，有些人认为这是对印度的战略包围。中国在非洲之角吉布提建立了一个军事前哨基地，离同一个国家的美国基地不远。中国在非洲和拉丁美洲的大量民间投资和商业活动也扩大了其全球影响力。
军备竞赛更证明世界已经从冷和平走向冷战。在普京领导下的俄罗斯正在扩大其核武库时，中国似乎满足于用最低限度的威慑。
美国宣布将采取新的军事和经济措施，以报复俄罗斯部署一种新的导弹，根据华盛顿的说法，这违反了《中导条约》(INF)，该条约从欧洲取消了巡航导弹和弹道导弹。与此同时，华盛顿的一些人认为，INF条约不必要地束缚了美国军方的手脚，国会在2018年国防预算中拨款5800万美元用于开发陆基巡航导弹。2016年12月当选总统特朗普在推特上写道，"让它成为一场军备竞赛"，他在推特上宣布美国"必须大力加强和扩大其核能力，直到世界对核武器的感到满足为止。"在今年3月的年度讲话中，普京展示了一段高超音速导弹的动画视频，视频中显示的场景是美国的佛罗里达。
第二次冷战的间谍破坏活动也正在进行。美国国防科学委员会2017年2月报告，美国受到俄罗斯和中国以及伊朗和朝鲜的网络攻击威胁。美国声称与中国政府有关的黑客窃取了知识产权来帮助中国企业。当时特朗普的国家安全顾问麦克马斯特在二月份在慕尼黑宣布，莫斯科"无可辩驳"地干预了2016年美国总统选举。此外据美国称，外国在计算机网络中植入了可能影响美国电网的恶意软件，这种被指起源于俄罗斯政府的恶意软件"BlackEnergy"曾用来攻击乌克兰电网。
但美国拥有自己的网络战力量。据"纽约时报"报道，美国成功的朝鲜导弹发射进行了网络攻击，造成了很高的失败率。据称美国和以色列联合研制了一种恶意的电脑蠕虫"震网"（Stuxnet），旨在削弱伊朗核离心机项目。
两次冷战也都涉及太空竞赛，或者说太空竞争。尽管美国和中国都在谈论一些雄心勃勃的计划，比如派遣宇航员重返月球或火星，但第二次冷战的太空竞赛受到军事考虑的推动。2007年中国摧毁了自己的一颗卫星来验证反卫星能力，这种测试由于碎片造成的破坏而在20世纪80年代被美国和苏联阻止。
2017年夏天中国测试了卫星，凭借卫星和地面站之间的"量子纠缠"现象，中国在这一技术分支超越了美国。为了避免依赖美国制造的全球定位系统，中国已经建立了自己的全球卫星导航系统：北斗导航系统。
自航天飞机计划退役以来，美国已将载人航天的领导权交给了俄罗斯，俄罗斯一直将宇航员送到国际空间站。由于缺乏任何现有的载人航天能力，美国已经让宇航员乘坐俄罗斯火箭搭乘国际空间站。更尴尬的是，五角大楼将依靠俄罗斯制造的火箭发动机在未来几年发射军用卫星，同时为联合发射联盟，波音洛克希德马丁公司的合资企业以及马斯克的企业提供支持。
在第二次世界大战中，贸易为竞争双方的军事联盟提供了补充。美国在特朗普当选之前，就开始对中国采取更为强硬的路线。奥巴马政府以明确的反华言论刻画其贸易政策。《新闻周刊》2015年10月12日写道：
"TTIP和TPP都是关于美国在大西洋和太平洋地区为与中国竞争建立的联盟的......简而言之，这两个协议都被看作是美国和中国为制定21世纪贸易规则而进行的竞争。"
在2016年2月15日发送给白宫电子邮件中，奥巴马总统坦率地将TPP视为反对中国的措施，以影响全球贸易规则的零和竞争：
"这就是为什么我们必须确保美国 、而不是像中国这样的国家 ，作为编写本世纪世界经济规则的人......目前，中国希望制定亚洲商业规则。如果他们成功，我们的竞争对手将可以随意忽视基本的环境和劳工标准，使它们对美国工人有不公平的优势。我们不能让这种情况发生。我们要负责制定规则。"
为了捍卫TPP免受民粹主义批评，奥巴马政府动员了国家安全官员和外交政策人士，称该协议是由美国领导的全球反华联盟的重要组成部分。例如2017年1月，共和党参议员麦凯恩谴责特朗普基于地缘政治理由撤出TPP的决定："我担心的是我们将亚太地区委托给中国。"
特朗普政府蹂躏了TPP，而TTIP由于国内在欧洲和美国的反对而处于休眠状态。在" 总统的2017年贸易政策议程 "中，特朗普政府不认可冷战结束后其前任的多边主义偏好"美国第一"贸易方式：
"20多年来，美国政府一直致力于贸易政策，强调旨在促进外贸惯例渐进式变化的多边和其他协议以及遵守国际争端解决机制......[结果]我们发现在很多情况下，美国人在全球市场处于不公平的劣势。在这种情况下，是时候采用一种新的贸易政策来捍卫美国的主权，执行美国的贸易法，利用美国的杠杆作用开放海外市场，并且商定更公平，更有效的新贸易协定。"
特朗普政府的批评者经常把他的经济民族主义描绘成灾难性的重商主义，可能导致贸易冲突和世界大战的不可控制的漩涡，这忽视了特朗普及他的双边协议顾问，与奥巴马的多边方式具有相同的目标：阻止美国国内和全球市场份额进一步流入到中国政府支持的公司手中。
作为其对中国经济战略的一部分，特朗普政府拒绝将中国划分为"市场经济国家"，这是中国在加入条约下已经声明了的权利。 "中国制造2025"为了中国的利益而获取外国技术的蓝图震惊了国会中的共和党和民主党，他们都在考虑扩大美国对外投资委员会对中国投资的审查，其中涉及外国参与者的兼并和收购对美国国家安全的影响。
经济制裁是第二次冷战时代另一种大国对抗的手段。就俄罗斯而言，美国的制裁政策侧重于迫使俄罗斯和外国个人和公司为其在克里米亚和乌克兰的政策受到惩罚。美国财政部的外资控制办公室监督针对俄罗斯金融，能源和国防部门等的制裁。特朗普希望与俄罗斯改善关系，但俄罗斯与美国在ISIS和其他共同威胁方面的合作，受到2017年夏季国会颁布的对俄罗斯更严厉的制裁措施的阻挠。
第二次冷战中没有世界大战，马列主义的激进思想在地缘政治竞争增加了意识形态色彩，美国和英国建立了一种临时的资本主义国家联盟，包括白人至上的德国与日本帝国主义者（Japanese imperialists）。而第一次冷战时期则分化为共产主义国家和反共产主义国家。
有人认为第二次冷战涉及全球意识形态的斗争，即自由资本主义与新威权主义的较量，而普京和特朗普都是新威权的象征。这种论点的一种说法认为自由资本主义是支持"基于规则的自由全球秩序"，以及各种各样的国家资本主义或经济民族主义，他们之间也存在竞争，而新的"北京共识"则对政治和经济自由造成威胁。
这是没有说服力的。美国的盟友包含了埃及的军事专政，沙特阿拉伯的君主专制政体。普京的强人政治更像是北约盟国土耳其的埃尔多安，而非中国。具有讽刺意味的是，美国出现类似中国建制派的裙带关系的时期，是在克林顿和布什执政期间，而非民粹主义的外来者特朗普时代。
应该从宏大的历史视野看待今天的冷战。其前身第一次冷战是二十世纪的第三次世界大战，通过军备竞赛，代理人战争，经济战争和意识形态战争间接地进行的，因为传统战争和核战争的高成本阻止了直接的军事冲突。
1914年至1989年间的世界大战，起源于德国和俄罗斯对欧洲控制权的争夺。欧洲霸权对柏林和莫斯科来说都是必要的，它们可以把国家从单纯的地区力量转变为超级大国，其规模可以与美国竞争。
德意志帝国在第一次世界大战中的目标是统治欧洲。而希特勒更激进的选择是一个巨大的"种族纯粹"的民族国家，"雅利安"先驱定居在东欧和俄罗斯的一个新的农业中心地带，斯拉夫人，犹太人和吉普赛人从此种族灭绝，这是对美国的一种嘲讽。
1945年以后，苏联凭借其在欧洲东部的霸主地位成为第二个超级大国，红军在第二次世界大战中征服了德国。如果没有东欧（包括东德）技术人员和产业，仅俄罗斯即便包括苏联从沙俄继承的外围国家，也可能只是一个区域强国。如果西欧富裕但弱小的国家，特别是西德可能被吓倒成为中立国，苏联的经济基础可能会进一步扩大，这反过来又可能允许西欧的贸易和投资进一步加强苏联的实力。
虽然柏林和莫斯科的雄心勃勃的精英分子是前三次世界大战的煽动者，第二次冷战是当代唯一的全球大国：美国，在20世纪90年代和21世纪追求无限制的全球霸权，以及中国和俄罗斯对其的抵制造成的。
"进攻现实主义"是米尔斯海默推行的现实主义国际关系理论的变体，认为在一个没有主权的无政府主义世界中，国家将倾向于尽可能多的积累相对权力。大国永远不会觉得自己足够强大和安全。俗话说"最好的防守是好的进攻，"或者如梅·韦斯特的观点是:"好东西多多益善。"
纳粹德国力图成为超级大国就会演变为赤裸裸的侵略，与疯狂的种族主义阴谋论分不开。但像弗里德里希·诺曼和马克斯·韦伯这样的德国自由主义者支持德国的霸权，这个中欧集团可以在二十世纪对美国人，英国和俄罗斯帝国保持自己的地位。如果方案的另一端是德国和欧洲对盎格鲁撒克逊人或俄罗斯人的臣属，那么德国对欧洲的征服就可以合理化为一种自卫。
现在我们知道，二战后斯大林没有侵略西欧的计划。根据马列主义的理论，他认为德国和日本的最终复苏将引发新一轮类似前两次世界大战的资本主义内部战争。苏联要坚持扩大共产主义集团的机会，并准备在第三次世界大战中幸存下来，这可能会会从美国，英国，法国，德国和日本之间的冲突开始，从这个角度来看，苏联影响力的机会性扩张是预防性的。
在20世纪90年代，克林顿政府毫不犹豫的将北约扩张到后苏联时代的俄罗斯边界，作为美国未来可能对俄罗斯的对冲方式。我们同样没有理由怀疑布什政府和奥巴马政府的官员真的认为消灭萨达姆、卡扎菲和阿萨德，并在伊拉克、利比亚和叙利亚扶持亲美统治者将改善美国的安全。同样的道理也可以解释，美国为什么要继续成为东亚无可争议的军事霸主，而不是中国。
一个国家认为这是预防措施，其对手则视之为侵略。这就是米尔斯海默所说的"大国悲剧"。正是在这种悲剧性的背景下，美国对全球霸权的追求必须被审视。毫无疑问从莫斯科和北京的角度来看，华盛顿在自我保护和维护世界和平的作法，和美国努力包围和遏制俄罗斯和中国是一致的。
未来的历史学家可能认为，把看似无关的美国政策主题（包括北约扩张，美国中东战争，支持"颜色革命"、以及急于"锁定"自由贸易规则等等）联系起来会形成是一种感觉，即美国在享受美国价值观和利益的世界秩序方面只有短暂的机会窗口，中国的长期崛起以及西方财富和权力的扩散，正不可避免的削弱美国的影响力。那些将当代中国与20世纪的德意志帝国相提并论的人看走了眼，当代中国更像第一次世界大战前的沙俄：巨大、耐心和逐渐现代化。而美国的所作所为则和德意志帝国一模一样，德国精英们担心俄罗斯财富和权力的增长使德国的计划不可能实现，他们只有很短的时间来实现欧洲霸权。
未来的历史学家们可能会得出这样的结论：对中国实力崛起的担忧，促使美国几届政府匆忙采取草率行动，以巩固全球的"美式和平"(Pax Americana)，在过去的30年里，那些想要建立美国全球霸权的努力都失败了，美国的时间不多了。
因此我的第一个观点是，第二次冷战的根本原因是美国在第一次冷战后争夺全球霸权，并招致了中国和俄罗斯对它的抵制。我的第二个论点是，如果美国将胜利定义为克服抵抗、特别是克服中国的抵抗以实现美国的全球霸权，那么美国在第二次冷战中将被击败。
根据那些"新冷战斗士"的言辞，美国的目标应包括以下几点：中国接受美国对东亚的永久统治; 中国接受没有其参与的、由美国及其欧洲和亚洲盟友起草的世界贸易规则; 俄罗斯默许美国和北约在其边界永久存在，并把克里米亚还给乌克兰。
无需争辩，看这些地缘政治目标是不可取的，因为这些目标无论好坏都不可能实现。让国家参与不能完成的任务必将导致失败的屈辱。让我们仔细研究美国主流外交政策的这些目标：
1、中国接受美国在东亚的永久军事霸权。
在20世纪90年代的冷和平20年期间，美国的外交政策专家有时可能会听到说，尽管中国人可能会抱怨，但他们最终会默认美国在东亚营造的和平，因为它为他们服务商业利益或阻止了日本的军事化。
去年11月，罗伯特•卡根(Robert Kagan)在布鲁金斯学会(Brookings)的中国圆桌会议上总结了美国自由霸权主义的中国战略，放弃了理想主义面具:
"我认为中国在经济上做得很好，但你不能用你的军队来扩大你在这个地区的权力地位。这公平吗？不。这正义吗？不。我们有门罗主义而你没有。这就是它的方式，我很抱歉......我们遏制中国，中国人认为我们正在遏制他们。"
在1997年，至少可以相信中国和日本和德国一样，可能会接受美国的保护，并且专门成为出口导向型的民间力量。这种信念在今天是妄想。
美国在东亚的永久军事霸权是不可能的。鉴于中国的权力和财富持续增长，唯一的现实选择是中美在该地区开展一场包括其他地区大国的军事对抗，或者是美国在该地区的影响力下降后中国的地区崛起。
从美国及其盟国的角度来看，与中国进行长期的低烈度对抗，可能比美国对中国势力范围的默许（包括日本在内的所有邻国对中国的绥靖政策）要好一些，区域性的权力框架无法实现，但接受一个两极分化的东亚（包括美国不挑衅性中国的缓冲区），就标志着美国要从冷战后的乐观情绪中抽离出来，不再期望中国作为美国主导下的亚洲和世界中的平民贸易力量。
2、中国接受美国及其盟友在没有其参与的情况下起草的世界贸易规则。
第二次冷战的另一个受伤者是全球"基于规则的贸易体系"，如果这些规则是由美国及其盟国在TPP谈判过程中起草的，中国将被排除在外。奥巴马政府声称，为了参与TPP和TTIP将创造的跨国市场，中国可能会被迫采取更自由的规则，这是荒谬的。
首先，TPP主要由美国和日本组成，这些国家已经与中国经济有着深厚的联系，还有一些小型经济体，这些经济体也与中国存在大量贸易。至于跨大西洋TTIP，美国和欧洲渴望接触中国劳工，消费者。
在二十一世纪初，美国、欧洲和日本在没有中国参与的情况下"锁定"中国，并迫使其数十年或几代人都服从贸易和投资规则，这根本就是一种幻想。按购买力平价（PPP）衡量，中国已经是世界上最大的经济体; 在未来十年左右的某个时候，它很可能会在其他领域超过美国。尽管从发展中国家向中等收入国家转变的增长速度将放缓，但中国将保持比美国或其欧洲和亚洲发达国家盟友更高的增长速度。
根据普华永道估计，按照购买力平价计算中国的国内生产总值2050年将达到58.5万亿美元，而美国的这一数字为34.1万亿美元，日本仅为6.8万亿美元。可以肯定的是，美国和日本的人均国内生产总值可能仍将比中国高，其人口构成中产阶级消费者和工人的比例也会更高。但只有对中国实施挑衅和恐吓才能抑制其经济的稳定增长。
2015年，当中国主导的亚洲基础设施投资银行成为世界银行和亚洲开发银行的竞争对手时，奥巴马政府向美国的盟友施加压力不要参与。尽管如此，英国还是带领欧洲国家与亚投行的合作。正如新加坡的基肖尔马布巴尼当时在一篇题为" 为什么英国加入中国银行是美国衰落的迹象 "的文章中写道的那样，
"美国无法再主宰世界历史。新大国崛起了，与大多数其他中等国家一样，英国人决定对冲他们的赌注，同时与中国以及美国开展合作。这也是一个生存问题，如果伦敦不服务于中国崛起的金融和经济，它可能会在21世纪中陷入困境。因此，英国人别无选择，只能与中国合作。"
对背信弃义的阿尔比翁来说，真正的真理也适用于大多数美国的军事盟友，不要指望美国的欧洲盟国牺牲他们与中国在商业关系中的利益，日益增长的军事力量不会立即威胁到他们，他们曾经度过苏联红军占据半个欧洲的冷战期间。中国的"新丝绸之路"计划旨在把远在西欧的国家整合到一个新的泛欧亚经济体系中，这一倡议注定会在欧美经济联盟中被逐渐接受，因为欧洲国家自身的经济利益，以及其海外市场和海外劳动力市场的萎缩或缓慢增长。
3、俄罗斯默许美国和北约在其边界的永久军事存在，将克里米亚送还乌克兰。
在欧亚大陆的另一边，美国也可能被迫从冷战的目标中羞辱的退出，因为目标目前无法实现。
作为在柏林墙倒塌后争夺全球霸权的一部分，美国宣称"势力范围"的观念已经过时。2013年奥巴马的国务卿克里宣布："门罗主义时代已经结束。"
真的吗？ 公平竞争？ 如果以美国为首的北约抵达俄罗斯边界是合法的，那么俄罗斯的新基地是否也可以接受呢？美国是否可以不反对中国和墨西哥结成军事同盟，让中国在美墨边界建设军事设施、让中国军舰在墨西哥湾挑衅性自由航行？ 美国的所有邻国，包括墨西哥和加拿大都曾被美国入侵过，因此中国可以声称其建立北美军事联盟纯粹是防御性的。
无论是过去还是将来，美国都会发现"势力范围"是个好工具，美国全球霸权的倡导者经常将大国之间的非军事化区域与垫脚石之争等同于征服。作为避免冲突的一个技术手段，像比利时和瑞士这样的非军事区和中立国家在国际外交中一直很重要，十九世纪的美国和英国作为军事竞争对手，在俄勒冈地区分享了几十年，使大湖非军事化并就"中美洲运河"开展合作。
第二次世界大战期间，丘吉尔向斯大林建议，苏联战后应该在罗马尼亚获得90％的影响力，在保加利亚获得75％的影响力，而英国将与莫斯科分享对南斯拉夫和匈牙利的影响力，并拥有对希腊90％的有影响力。造成第一次冷战的原因不是苏联人在1945年后的边界附近缺乏进攻力量，而是他们在整个东欧建立了共产主义政权，加上其高度的军国主义和反西方外交政策。
美国通过尊重苏联在东欧的势力范围保持冷战初期的低调，拒绝在红军击溃德国、匈牙利和捷克斯洛伐克的叛乱时进行干预。在古巴导弹危机期间，肯尼迪政府坚持要求苏联撤出古巴的核导弹，并同意从苏联边界附近的土耳其移除北约导弹，从而解决了僵局。
美国和它的欧洲盟友实际上已经在格鲁吉亚和乌克兰承认了俄罗斯的势力范围。俄罗斯不可能将克里米亚送还乌克兰，好比美国把德克萨斯和加利福尼亚归还给墨西哥。乌克兰代理人战争的任何长久解决，将基于对亲俄罗斯地区的部分协商自治和乌克兰的整体中立化。在任何可以想象的政治制度里，俄罗斯和中国都不可能接受美国在其边界附近的军事设施和行动的合法性。在东亚除了持续冲突的唯一选择，就是协商中立和权力分享。
在"失败"迫使我们这样做之前，美国应该放弃冷战之后注定的全球霸权，并不再挑起第二次冷战。应该像哲学家约翰·格雷所描述的那样，在不同社会背景下按不可类比的价值观划分地缘政治的不同版本，或称为"暂行架构"（modus vivendi）。
一个全球性的"暂行架构"可能会有一些过去在大国协调和外交方面熟悉的特点。会有军控的企图，但不是完全的裁军，因为每个大国都有权维持对其防御至关重要的基本武装力量。
在新的"暂行架构"中，势力范围和非军事区将成为外交谈判的合法对象，以减少大国之间的紧张关系。小国和弱国可能会因其独立性的限制而感到不安，因为这种协议是强加的，但在一个无论国内政府模式如何、总是基于军事力量和经济实力支配的世界中，这种不适无法避免。
在经济政策方面，有一个实用方法来代替无法实现的宏伟设计。全球经济是不可能由一套单一规则（自由主义或其他方式）来管理的，在各种情况下和发展的各个阶段水平下，所有国家都从未采用过单一的经济模式。
在冷战时期，美国，社会民主瑞典，法国，经济民族主义日本，实行进口替代的保护主义拉美国家和中东封建撒克逊政府成为地缘政治盟友。在冷战结束后的一代中，所谓的支持自由资本主义的华盛顿共识一直被东亚成功国家所忽视。华盛顿共识不会被北京共识所取代，而会被经济多元化所取代。如果包括美国在内的国家发现他们的国家经济利益更适合双边主义和小众主义，就没有理由对放弃全球经济单一规则表示惋惜，这个乌托邦的吸引力从来没有超出技术专家，游说者和学者的狭隘圈子。
至于价值观，美国人不需要成为道德或文化相对主义者。个人和私人组织可以改变所谓的普世价值观（无论是以后现代世俗自由主义或福音派新教的形式）， 美国的国家利益也并不需要美国政府把拒绝分享它们的国家视为非法政权。
简言之，当真正的美国利益和有益的同盟关系处于危险的时候，美国应该对中国、俄罗斯或任何其他国家进行有力的防御。但把美国的国家利益与对手们拒绝"美式和平"(Pax Americana)划等号是愚蠢的，美国的盟友们不太可能为捍卫美国的利益而努力，只有平衡其资源和承诺，美国才能帮助世界从新冷战回到新的冷和平。
【附英文】
FOR THE first time since the Cold War ended, air-raid sirens sounded in Hawaii on November 28, 2017. The exercise was part of the revival of the state's emergency warning system in response to the possible threat of North Korean nuclear missile attack. But the wail of the siren could also symbolize the coming of Cold War II.
Historians have never agreed about when the first Cold War began: in 1946, when the United States and Britain clashed with the Soviet Union over the Greek Civil War? During the later stages of World War II? With the communist coup d'état in Russia in October 1917? Agreement is also lacking about when, exactly, the Cold War ended: with Gorbachev's 1986 address to the United Nations renouncing Soviet revisionist foreign policy? With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989? With the formal dissolution of the USSR in 1990, when Boris Yeltsin replaced Mikhail Gorbachev and became head of the newly minted Russian Federation?
The historians of the future may engage in a similar debate about when Cold War II started in earnest. Was it in 2014, with the unilateral Russian annexation of Crimea and the backlash this produced from the United States and its European allies? Or did Cold War II begin with the brief Russo-Georgian War of 2008? Others may seek the date in China's move to secure its claims over the South China Sea by modifying and militarizing a number of disputed islands and reefs.
One thing is clear: within the last few years, what Yeltsin in 1994 called "the cold peace" between Russia and the American-led Western alliance has become both colder and less peaceful. Relations between the United States and China have become increasingly conflictual, in the military, diplomatic and economic realms alike. The cold peace of the 1990s and 2000s is over. Cold War II is here.
THE SECOND Cold War is a rematch among the same teams that opposed each other for most of the First Cold War. On the one side are the United States and its East Asian and European allies, including new NATO allies in central and eastern Europe and the Baltic. On the other side are Russia and China and their allies and clients.
In Cold War II, as in Cold War I, the rivals have organized competing military alliances. Following the Cold War, the United States maintained the NATO alliance and expanded it to Russia's borders, over its intense objections. Similarly, in East Asia the United States maintained its Cold War alliances with Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, continuing an unstated policy of containing China as well as post-Soviet Russia. In response to the rise of Chinese military power and assertiveness, the United States has also taken part in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) along with Japan, India and Australia. The Quad is widely viewed as a de facto anti-Chinese alliance, part of what the Obama administration called the U.S. "pivot to Asia" in response to growing Chinese power.
All the non-Soviet states that were once members of the Warsaw Pact are now members of the U.S.-led NATO alliance. Russia has deterred NATO's offers of membership for Georgia and Ukraine by means of its 2008 incursion into Georgia on behalf of the breakaway Ossetian republic, and its annexation of Crimea and support for Russian-speaking separatists in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russia has tried to consolidate a sphere of influence in much of the former territory of the USSR, partly in the form of the Eurasian Economic Union, which includes Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia.
At the same time, Russia has allied itself loosely with China. The two great Eurasian powers, with other countries, have formed their own Eurasian alliance, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Founded in 2001, the SCO includes Iran and India and excludes U.S. military allies, with the exceptions of Pakistan and Turkey. In 2005 the SCO rejected a U.S. application for observer status. Thanks to the participation of China and India, the SCO includes the world's two most populous states as well as Russia, the country with the largest territory.
While the ostensible purpose of the SCO is to combat terrorism, Sino-Russian military cooperation is the center of the organization's periodic military drills (the next will be held in Russia in September 2018). The core members of the SCO include the three nations treated by U.S. military planners as America's major adversaries: China, Russia and Iran.
China and Russia are also strengthening their relations with allies to boost their ability to project power far from their homelands. Having forestalled the possible loss of its Crimean port of Sevastopol by annexing Crimea, Russia entered the Syrian Civil War in part to secure its military bases in Syria.
Over the objections of the United States and many of its neighbors, China has announced sweeping claims to sovereignty over the South China Sea and sought to ratify them by constructing and fortifying artificial islands. The so-called "string of pearls" refers to a network of Chinese naval bases and civilian ports and shipping centers from the South China Sea to Bangladesh and the port of Gwadar in Pakistan, which some interpret as strategic encirclement of India. China has built a military outpost in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, not far from the U.S. base in the same country at Camp Lemonnier. China's extensive civilian investment and commercial activity in Africa and Latin America also extend its global reach, insofar as Chinese firms are subordinate to China's authoritarian state.
Arms races are more evidence that the world has moved from cold peace to cold war. While Russia under Putin is expanding its nuclear arsenal, China has seemed content with a minimal arsenal for deterrence.
The United States has announced it will take new military and economic measures to retaliate against Russia's deployment of a new missile that, according to Washington, violates the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which eliminated both cruise and ballistic missiles from Europe. Meanwhile, some in Washington believe the INF treaty unnecessarily ties the hands of the American military. Republican hawks saw to it that Congress appropriated $58 million in the 2018 defense budget for the development of land-based cruise missiles. In December 2016, President-elect Trump tweeted, "Let it be an arms race," following on an earlier tweet in which he declared that the United States "must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes." In turn, during an annual address this March, Putin displayed an animated video of hypersonic, nuclear-capable missiles raining down on what appeared to be the state of Florida.
Cold War II is also underway in the realms of espionage and sabotage. According to a February 2017 report by the U.S. Defense Science Board, the United States is threatened by cyberattacks from Russia and China, as well as Iran and North Korea. The United States claims that hackers associated with the Chinese government have stolen intellectual property to help Chinese firms. H. R. McMaster, then Trump's national security adviser, announced in February in Munich that it is now "incontrovertible" that Moscow interfered in the 2016 American presidential election. In addition, according to the United States, foreign nations have planted malware in computer networks that can affect the U.S. electric grid. One form of malware, "BlackEnergy," it is claimed, originated with Russia's government and was used to attack the electric grid in Ukraine.
For its part, the United States has its own growing cyberwar capability. According to the New York Times, the United States has successfully hacked North Korean missiles, causing high rates of failure. Stuxnet, a malicious computer worm, is alleged to have been created by a joint U.S.-Israeli project to cripple Iran's nuclear centrifuge program.
Like Cold War I, Cold War II involves a space race—or rather, space races. While both the United States and China talk about ambitious projects like sending astronauts back to the moon or Mars, the space race in Cold War II is being driven by military considerations. In 2007, China demonstrated its antisatellite capability by destroying one of its own satellites, in a test of a kind stopped by the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1980s because of the damage done by debris clouds. In summer 2017, China tested an ultrasecure spy satellite relying on the phenomenon of "quantum entanglement" between the satellite and ground stations, leapfrogging the United States in this branch of technology. In order to avoid reliance on the U.S.-created Global Positioning System, China has created its own rival global satellite navigation system, BeiDou. Meanwhile, in 2013, Congress passed a law prohibiting NASA funds from being used to collaborate with China in any way.
Since the retirement of the Space Shuttle program, the United States has ceded leadership in manned spaceflight to Russia, which has continued to send cosmonauts to the International Space Station. Lacking any current manned spaceflight capability, the United States has been reduced to having its astronauts hitch rides to the International Space Station on Russian rockets. Even more embarrassing, the Pentagon will rely on Russian-made rocket engines to launch military satellites for years to come, while funding the development of American-built alternatives by the United Launch Alliance, a Boeing–Lockheed Martin joint venture, and entrepreneur Elon Musk's SpaceX.
IN COLD War II, rival trade blocs complement rival military alliances. Contrary to a widespread misconception, the United States began taking a harder line toward China before the election of Donald Trump, during the Obama administration. For example, Obama backed twenty-three trade-enforcement challenges at the World Trade Organization (WTO)—fourteen of them targeted at China.
The Obama administration portrayed its trade policy in explicitly anti-Chinese terms. This was the headline in Newsweek on October 12, 2015: "If the U.S. and Europe Don't Agree on Trade Pact, China Wins." According to the author, Judy Dempsey:
"Both the TTIP and TPP are about the United States building alliances—across the Atlantic and across the Pacific to deal with China. . . . In short, both pacts are seen as competition between the United States and China for setting the trading rules of the 21st century."
In a February 15, 2016 message to the White House email list, President Obama candidly treated the TPP as an anti-Chinese measure in a zero-sum rivalry for influence over global trade rules:
"That's why we have to make sure the United States—and not countries like China—is the one writing this century's rules for the world's economy. . . . Right now, China wants to write the rules for commerce in Asia. If it succeeds, our competitors would be free to ignore basic environmental and labor standards, giving them an unfair advantage over American workers. We can't let that happen. We should write the rules."
In its attempt to defend the TPP from populist and progressive criticism, the Obama administration mobilized national-security officials and foreign-policy figures to argue that the agreement was an essential part of a comprehensive anti-Chinese alliance system led by the United States. In January 2017, for example, Republican senator John McCain denounced Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the TPP on geopolitical grounds: "My concern is that we consign the Asia-Pacific region to China."
The Trump administration has scuttled the TPP, while the TTIP is dormant because of domestic opposition in Europe and the United States. In "The President's 2017 Trade Policy Agenda," the Trump administration repudiated the preference for multilateralism of its predecessors since the end of the Cold War for an "America First" approach to trade:
"For more than 20 years, the United States government has been committed to trade policies that emphasized multilateral and other agreements designed to promote incremental change in foreign trade practices, as well as deference to international dispute settlement mechanisms. . . . [As a result] we find that in too many instances, Americans have been put at an unfair disadvantage in global markets. Under these circumstances, it is time for a new trade policy that defends American sovereignty, enforces U.S. trade laws, uses American leverage to open markets abroad, and negotiates new trade agreements that are fairer and more effective."
Critics of the Trump administration frequently portray his economic nationalism as a catastrophic reversion to mercantilism, which could produce an uncontrollable spiral into trade conflict and world war. This is overblown. It neglects the fact that the preference of Trump and his advisors for bilateral agreements shares the same objective as Obama's more multilateral approach: stopping further losses of the United States' domestic and global market share to state-backed Chinese firms.
As part of its economic strategy toward China, the Trump administration is resisting the classification of China as a "market economy" instead of a "non-market economy," a helpful status which China claims as its right under the terms of its accession to the WTO in 2001. Alarmed by China's "Made in China 2025" blueprint for acquiring foreign technologies for the benefit of Chinese, both Republicans and Democrats in Congress are considering expanding the supervision of Chinese investments by the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, which reviews the national-security implications of mergers and acquisitions involving foreign actors.
Economic sanctions are another instrument of great-power rivalry in the era of Cold War II. In the case of Russia, U.S. sanctions policy focuses on pressuring Russian and foreign individuals and firms to punish the Russian government for its policies in Crimea and Ukraine. The Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Department of the Treasury supervises sanctions that target the Russian financial, energy and defense sectors, among others. Trump's desire for better relations with Russia and Russo-American collaboration against ISIS and other shared threats has been thwarted by the stiffer anti-Russian sanctions that Congress enacted in the summer of 2017.
IN COLD War II, Marxism-Leninism's nature as a militant faith added an ideological dimension to the geopolitical struggle that had been missing from the world wars, which had been characterized by strange-bedfellow alliances like the alliance of Soviet communists with the American and British capitalists, and of white supremacist German National Socialists with Japanese imperialists. During the first Cold War, Western democracies were divided among anticommunists, procommunists and anti-anticommunists.
Some claim that Cold War II involves global ideological struggle pitting liberal democracy against a new authoritarianism, symbolized by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping—and Donald Trump. In one version of this argument, there is also a rivalry in the economic sphere between liberal capitalism, which is alleged to support a "rules-based liberal global order," and nefarious state capitalism or economic nationalism of various kinds. A new "Beijing consensus" of authoritarian state capitalism is supposed to menace political and economic liberty simultaneously.
This is unpersuasive. American allies include Egypt, a military dictatorship, and Saudi Arabia, a despotic monarchy. Putin's strongman politics has more in common with that of Erdoğan in Turkey, a NATO ally, than with the rule of Communist Party "princelings" like Xi in China. Ironically, in their privileged backgrounds and technocratic approach to policy, the closest American parallels to the nepotistic princelings of the Chinese establishment are dynasties like the Clintons and the Bushes, not the populist outsider Donald Trump.
TODAY'S COLD War II needs to be seen in a broad historical perspective. Its predecessor, Cold War I, was the third world war of the twentieth century. It was fought indirectly by means of arms races, proxy wars, economic warfare and ideological war, because the high cost of conventional and nuclear warfare prevented direct conflict among the adversaries.
The three world wars of the twentieth century, between 1914 and 1989, originated in bids by regimes in Germany and Russia to dominate Europe. European hegemony was necessary for Berlin and Moscow to convert their countries from mere regional powers into superpowers on a scale that could compete with the United States, which, by the early twentieth century, even when its military potential was still latent, enjoyed an unprecedented combination of industry, wealth and population.
The goal of imperial Germany in World War I was a German-ruled European sphere of influence. Hitler's more radical alternative was a gigantic, "racially pure" German nation-state, a kind of parody of the USA, with "Aryan" pioneers settled on a new agrarian heartland in eastern Europe and Russia from which Slavs, Jews and gypsies had been removed by genocide, famine or ethnic cleansing.
Following 1945, the Soviet bid to become a second superpower depended on its suzerainty over the eastern part of Europe, which the Red Army had won by conquest from Germany in World War II. Without the skilled population and industry of eastern Europe (including East Germany), Russia alone, even with the peripheral nationalities that the USSR had inherited from the czarist empire, could be only a regional power at best. The economic base of the Soviet Union could be augmented even further, if the wealthy but weak nations of western Europe, particularly West Germany, could be intimidated into neutrality, which in turn could permit western European trade and investment on Soviet terms to bolster the USSR.
While ambitious elites in Berlin and Moscow were the instigators of the first three world wars, Cold War II has been caused by the bid of the United States—the sole global power at the time—for unlimited global hegemony in the 1990s and 2000s, and China and Russia's hostile reaction to the American power grab.
"Offensive realism," the variant of realist international-relations theory promoted by John Mearsheimer, holds that in an anarchic world with no sovereign to provide law and order, states will tend to amass as much relative power as they can. A great power can never be too powerful and secure. "The best defense is a good offense," the old saying goes. Or, if one prefers, there is Mae West's observation: "Too much of a good thing is wonderful."
The Nazi bid for superpower status was naked aggression, inseparable from demented racist conspiracy theories. But in the previous generation, German liberals like Friedrich Naumann and Max Weber supported the project of German hegemony in a central European bloc that could hold its own in the twentieth century against the Americans and the British and Russian Empires. If the alternative was the subordination of Germany and Europe to the Anglo-Saxons or Russians, German conquest of Europe could be rationalized as a form of self-defense.
We now know that Stalin did not have aggressive designs on western Europe after World War II. On the basis of Marxist-Leninist theory, he believed that the eventual recovery of Germany and Japan would spark another round of intra-capitalist wars similar to the first two world wars. The Soviet Union had to hold onto what it controlled, expand the communist bloc opportunistically and prepare to survive World War III, which would probably begin as a conflict among America, Britain, France, Germany and Japan. From this erroneous perspective, opportunistic expansion of Soviet influence was precautionary.
In the 1990s, the Clinton administration undoubtedly regarded the expansion of NATO up to the borders of shrunken, post-Soviet Russia as a prudent way of hedging America's bets against possible future Russian revanchism. Likewise, there is no reason to doubt that officials in the Bush and Obama administrations sincerely believed that removing Saddam, Qaddafi and Assad and installing pro-American rulers in Iraq, Libya and Syria would improve American security. The same may be said of the determination of presidents of both parties that the United States, not China, would remain the undisputed military hegemon of East Asia.
What one state views as precaution, its rivals can view as aggression. In this lies what Mearsheimer calls "the tragedy of great power politics." And it is in this tragic context that the American bid for global hegemony that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall must be viewed. Needless to say, from the perspective of Moscow and Beijing, what Washington rationalizes in terms of self-defense and world peace resembles an effort by the United States to encircle and contain Russia and China. They could dismiss Washington's support of nonviolent "color revolutions" in support of "liberal" and "democratic" reformers in targeted countries in Asia and Europe, like Ukraine, as the cynical weaponization of democracy promotion, particularly in light of the absence of U.S.-sponsored democratic revolutions in Saudi Arabia and other pro-American autocracies.
Historians of the future may conclude that the theme connecting seemingly unrelated American policies—including the expansion of NATO, American wars of regime change in the Middle East, support for "color revolutions" and the rush to "lock in" liberal rules of global trade by mechanisms, like the WTO and multilateral treaties, that deprived nations of economic sovereignty—was a sense that the United States enjoyed only a brief window of opportunity to shape a world order to American values and interests, in the interim before the long-term rise of China and the diffusion of wealth and power from the West inevitably diminished American influence. Those who compare contemporary China to the imperial Germany of the 1900s may get the comparison backward. Contemporary China is like czarist Russia before World War I: huge, patient and gradually modernizing under authoritarian auspices. It is the United States that has in fact been acting like imperial Germany. The German elites feared that they had only a short time to achieve European hegemony before the growth of Russian wealth and power made their plans impossible. The historians of tomorrow may conclude that a similar anxiety about rising Chinese power has motivated several American administrations to launch hasty and reckless efforts to consolidate a global Pax Americana. But the would-be architects of enduring American global hegemony in the past three decades have failed, and time is running out.
MY FIRST argument, then, is that the underlying cause of Cold War II is the American bid for global hegemony that followed Cold War I and Chinese and Russian resistance to it. My second argument is that, if American victory is defined as achieving American global hegemony in the face of their resistance, particularly the resistance of China, the United States is going to be defeated in Cold War II.
To judge by the rhetoric of the new cold warriors, the goals of the United States include, among others, the following: China's acceptance of permanent U.S. military domination of East Asia; China's acceptance of rules for world trade drafted by the United States and its European and Asian allies, without Chinese participation; Russia's acquiescence in a permanent U.S./NATO presence on its borders; and Russia's return of Crimea to Ukraine.
It is not necessary to argue that these geopolitical objectives are undesirable from an American perspective, for the simple reason that these objectives, whether good or bad, are impossible for the United States to achieve. To commit a nation to projects that cannot be accomplished must result in humiliating national failure.
Let us examine each one of these objectives of mainstream American foreign policy in detail.
China's acceptance of permanent U.S. military hegemony in East Asia. During the two decades of the Cold Peace in the 1990s and 2000s, American foreign-policy experts could sometimes be heard saying that, although the Chinese might grumble now and then, they would ultimately acquiesce in a Pax Americana in East Asia because it served their commercial interests or prevented the remilitarization of Japan.
In a Brookings roundtable on China in November, Robert Kagan summed up the China strategy of American liberal hegemonists, dropping the mask of idealism for crude Machtpolitik:
"My attitude toward China is, do well economically, but you cannot use your military to expand your power position in the region. Is that fair? No. Is there any justice to that? No. We get the Monroe Doctrine and you don't. That's just the way it is, I'm sorry. . . . We are containing China and the Chinese believe we are containing them."
In 1997, it was at least possible to believe that China, like Japan and Germany, might accept the status of a protectorate of the United States and specialize as an export-oriented, civilian power. Today that belief is delusional.
U.S. military hegemony in East Asia is not possible. Given the continuing growth in Chinese power and wealth, the only realistic alternatives are a bipolar Sino-American military rivalry in the region, a concert of power including both China and the United States and perhaps other regional powers, or Chinese regional hegemony following the decline of U.S. influence in the area.
From the perspective of the United States and its allies, protracted low-level competition with China may be preferable to American acquiescence in a Chinese sphere of influence and the appeasement of China by all of its neighbors, including Japan, if the third option of a regional concert of power is not achievable. But accepting a bipolar, divided East Asia, including buffer zones in which the United States will refrain from challenging China too provocatively, would in itself mark a retreat by the United States from the optimistic post–Cold War order in which China would accept a subordinate place as a civilian trading power in an Asia and a world run by Washington.
China's acceptance of rules for world trade drafted by the United States and its allies without Chinese participation. Another casualty of Cold War II is the idea of a global "rules-based trading system"—at least if the rules are drafted by the United States and its allies, in a process like the TPP negotiations from which China is excluded. The Obama administration's claim that China could be forced to play by more liberal rules in order to participate in the multinational markets that the TPP and the TTIP would create was always absurd. For one thing, the TPP's allegedly immense trading bloc would have consisted chiefly of the United States and Japan, already deeply linked with the Chinese economy, and a collection of smaller economies that already trade heavily with China as well. As for the transatlantic TTIP, America and Europe's hunger for access to Chinese labor, consumers or, in some cases, capital makes a mockery of claims that China would be forced to adopt liberal capitalism in order to break into a new, deeper Euro-American market.
The notion that the United States, Europe and Japan, in the early twenty-first century and without Chinese participation, could "lock in" trade and investment rules that China would be forced to obey for decades or generations to come is a fantasy. Measured by purchasing power parity (PPP), China is already the world's largest economy; at some point in the next decade or so, it is likely to surpass the United States by the other measure, market exchange rates. While its growth rate will slow as it transitions from a developing country to a middle-income nation, China will continue to grow more rapidly than the United States or its allies among developed nations in Europe and Asia.
By 2050, the consulting firm PwC estimates, in PPP terms the GDP of China will be $58.5 trillion—as compared to the United States' $34.1 trillion and Japan's mere $6.8 trillion. To be sure, per capita GDP in the United States and Japan probably will still be much higher, and so will the shares of their populations comprising middle-class consumers and workers. But only the most provocative and frightening behavior on the part of China can overcome the steady growth of its economic gravitational pull.
In 2015, when the China-dominated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank was founded as a rival to the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, both deferential to the United States, the Obama administration pressured America's allies not to take part. The "special relationship" notwithstanding, Britain led a stampede of European countries into partnership with the AIIB. As Singapore's Kishore Mahbubani wrote at the time, in an essay entitled "Why Britain Joining China-Led Bank is a Sign of American Decline,"
"The U.S. can no longer dominate world history. A new power has also arrived. The British, like most other middle powers, have decided to hedge their bets and work with China as well as the U.S. But this is also a matter of survival. If London does not serve the financial and economic interests of a rising China, it could become sidelined in the 21st century. Hence, the British have no choice but to work with China."
What is true for perfidious Albion is also true for most of America's military allies. America's European allies in particular cannot be expected to sacrifice their interests in commercial relationships with China, whose growing military power does not immediately threaten them as the presence of the Red Army in half of Europe did during Cold War I. China's "New Silk Road" initiative seeks to integrate countries as far away as those of western Europe into a new pan-Eurasian economic system. The idea of a Euro-American economic alliance against China is doomed in advance, thanks to the economic self-interest of European nations, looking outside their shrinking or slowly growing economies for foreign markets and offshore labor.
Russia's acquiescence in a permanent U.S./NATO military presence on its borders and the return of Crimea to Ukraine. On the other side of Eurasia, the United States may also be forced into humiliating retreat from objectives in Cold War II that it cannot realistically achieve.
As part of its bid for global hegemony following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States claimed that the very idea of spheres of influence was obsolete. In 2013 Obama's secretary of state, John Kerry, announced, "The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over."
Really? Is turnabout fair play? If the extension of the U.S.-led NATO alliance to the borders of Russia is legitimate, would new Russian bases in Cuba be acceptable as well? Would the United States really have no objection to a Sino-Mexican military alliance, complete with Chinese military installations on the U.S.-Mexican border and provocative freedom-of-navigation operations by Chinese warships in the Gulf of Mexico? All of America's neighbors, including Mexico and Canada, have been invaded in the past by the United States, so China could claim that its North American alliances were purely defensive in nature.
In the future, as in the past, Americans may find spheres of influence to be useful tools of statecraft. Advocates of U.S. global hegemony often equate demilitarized regions between great powers with stepping-stones to imperial conquest. But demilitarized zones and neutral nations like Belgium and Switzerland have always been important in international diplomacy, as one of a number of techniques to avert conflict. In the nineteenth century the United States and Britain, then military rivals, shared the Oregon Territory for several decades, demilitarized the Great Lakes and cooperated with respect to a possible Central American canal.
During World War II, Winston Churchill suggested to Stalin that after the war the USSR should get 90 percent influence in Romania and 75 percent in Bulgaria, while the UK would share influence over Yugoslavia and Hungary with Moscow fifty-fifty and have a 90 percent share of influence over Greece. What caused the Cold War was not the Soviets' insistence on a lack of offensive forces near their post-1945 borders, but their installation of communist puppet regimes throughout eastern Europe, combined with their high level of militarism and anti-Western foreign policy.
The United States helped keep the first Cold War cold by respecting the Soviet sphere of influence in eastern Europe, refusing to intervene when the Red Army crushed rebellions in Germany, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Kennedy administration insisted that the Soviets remove nuclear missiles from Cuba—and resolved the standoff by agreeing to remove NATO missiles from Turkey near the Soviet border.
Without admitting that they have done so, the United States and its European allies in practice have already recognized a Russian sphere of influence in Georgia and Ukraine, by shelving plans to incorporate both in NATO and the EU following Russia's hostile reaction. Russia is no more likely to give Crimea back to Ukraine than the United States is to return Texas and California to Mexico. Any stable settlement of the proxy war in Ukraine will be based on negotiated partial autonomy for pro-Russian regions and the neutralization of Ukraine as a whole. Here, as in East Asia, the only options are negotiated neutrality, power sharing or continuing conflict. Neither Russia nor China, under any conceivable political regime, is likely to accept the legitimacy of U.S. military installations and operations near its borders.
BEFORE FAILURE forces it to do so, the United States should abandon the doomed bid for global hegemony that followed Cold War I and has provoked Cold War II. The alternative should be a geopolitical version of what the philosopher John Gray, in the context of societies divided by incommensurable values, calls a "modus vivendi."
A global modus vivendi might have a number of features familiar from great-power concerts and diplomatic settlements in the past. There would be attempts at arms control—but not total disarmament, because each great power would retain the right to maintain basic armed forces essential for its defense.
In the new global modus vivendi, spheres of influence and demilitarized zones would be legitimate objects of diplomatic negotiation, in order to reduce tensions among great powers. Small and weak nations might chafe at the constraints on their independence such agreements impose, but their discomfort is unavoidable in a world that, regardless of models of domestic government, will always be organized largely on the basis of hierarchies of military and industrial power.
In economic policy there is also a case for a pragmatic modus vivendi in the place of unachievable grand designs. A global economy governed by a single set of rules, liberal or otherwise, is not possible, and would be undesirable if it were. There has never been a single economic model adopted by all countries, at all levels of development and in all circumstances. During the Cold War, anti-statist America, social democratic Sweden, dirigiste France, economic nationalist Japan, protectionist Latin American countries practicing import substitution and feudal petromonarchies in the Middle East managed to be geopolitical allies. In the generation since Cold War I ended, the so-called Washington Consensus in favor of liberal capitalism was always ignored by successful nations in East Asia. The Washington Consensus will not be replaced by a Beijing Consensus, but by economic pluralism. If countries including the United States find that their national economic interests are better served by bilateralism and "minilateralism," then there is no reason to lament the abandonment of the project of a single set of rules and regulations for the global economy, a utopian goal that never had any appeal beyond narrow circles of technocrats, lobbyists and academics.
As for values, there is no need for Americans to become moral or cultural relativists. But while individuals and private groups can proselytize for what they hold to be universal values—whether in the form of postmodern secular liberalism or evangelical Protestantism—it is not in the national interest for the U.S. government to treat all states that do not share them as illegitimate regimes.
In short, where genuine American interests and useful alliances are at stake, the United States should defend them vigorously against China, Russia or any other country. But it is folly to continue to equate America's national interest with the creation and defense of a global Pax Americana, which America's rivals reject, and which America's allies are unlikely to exert themselves to defend. Only by balancing its resources and commitments can the United States help to lead the world back from the new cold war to a new cold peace.
Michael Lind is a contributing editor of the National Interest and author of The American Way of Strategy.
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