America and the world
Big think that gets you a headline
Jan 17th 2008
From The Economist print edition
AS A successful American journalist, diplomat and now president of the Brookings Institution in Washington, Strobe Talbott has been all over the place. Some people may think this book is all over the place too.
AP
Now, look here Its first half is a brisk history of civilisation: a mad gallop through the birth of Judaism, the coming of Christianity and Islam, the ups and downs of Greece and Rome, the imperial dynasties of China, the triumphs and depredations of Genghis Khan, the founding of America, the French revolution, Napoleon, the Ottomans and so forth. This part of the book also provides a speed-dating history of political ideas: for a fleeting couple of pages each, the reader meets thinkers from Dante to Darwin and Machiavelli to Marx, with no previous acquaintanceship assumed.
Mercifully, the gallop slows to a canter as modern times approach. Mr Talbott proceeds at a statelier pace through the two world wars, the cold war and the establishment of the League of Nations and then the United Nations. Eventually (at the point at which the author strides onto history's stage as Bill Clinton's deputy secretary of state), the canter becomes a walk. The story from the Clinton administration to the present fills almost half the pages.
A book that ranges so wide can be hard to digest, but there is method in Mr Talbott's meandering. He is fascinated by what he believes to be a continuous tension between the world's need and appetite for collective governance on the one hand and, on the other, the desire of tribes and nations to think of themselves as independent and sovereign. His dash through history ancient and modern is an attempt to show that the “great experiment” in global governance of his title has its origins in religion, philosophy and the strivings of leaders over thousands of years. Empires, he argues, have not all been about rape and pillage. Alexander and Napoleon had bigger ideas about the fellowship of man—or at least of those men who bowed to the imperial will.
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Mr Talbott has also had the good luck to be able to track the same tension in the present day, as America after the cold war has oscillated between a multilateral and unilateral foreign policy under Presidents Clinton and Bush. This part of his story is the better read. He is frankly partisan, a multilateralist who sees the unilateralism of Mr Bush's presidency as a sorry interruption in history's inexorable progress towards a more consensual world in which going it alone can no longer answer pressing problems such as nuclear proliferation and climate change.
Fortunately, you do not have to buy the author's wider musings or share his admiration of Mr Clinton, Al Gore and Kofi Annan to enjoy this ambitious journey through history and politics. And it is not, in the end, so peculiar to dart back and forth between great ideas, the broad sweep of history and the day-to-day practicalities of politics. Wittingly or unwittingly, that is what political leaders do all the time.
In one amusing passage, for example, Mr Talbott describes a chat between President Clinton, Mr Gore and some of their speechwriters. Mr Gore is waxing eloquent about the differences between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson on whether the principles of democracy were limited to America. Jefferson, says Mr Gore, was right: “Rousseau said the body politic is a moral being possessed of a will. He was thinking on the national level. We need to take it to the international one.” There are a lot of contradictions in all this great stuff, grumble the speechwriters as the group breaks up. “You guys can do it,” says the president with a grin: “We need some big think that gets us a headline.”
译文:
制胜之道,在于远见
美国与世界
制胜之道,在于远见
2008年1月17日
摘自《经济学人》印刷版
作为一名成功的美国记者，外交官，现又担任布鲁金斯研究院的院长，斯特罗布"塔尔博特(Strobe Talbott)已是远近闻名了。有人可能会认为他所写这本书也将会如此。
本书前半部讲述的是活泼明快的文明史：急速跳过了犹太教的诞生，基督教和伊斯兰教的来临，希腊和罗马的盛衰浮沉，中国的皇室王朝，成吉思汗的耀武扬威和疯狂掠夺，美国的建立，法国大革命，拿破仑和奥斯曼帝国等等。书中在这部分还提供了政治学说简史：短短的数页却为读者展现了一些先前不为人知的故事，读者可读到思想家但丁，达尔文，马基雅弗利和马克思。
令人大受欢迎的是，当现代临近之时，快步放缓，转向慢跑。塔尔博特先生以庄重的步伐经历了两次世界大战，冷战，以及国际联盟和联合国的建立。最终（作为比尔·克林顿的副国务卿，作者也逐渐登上了历史的舞台）慢跑转为步行。从就职克林顿政府到当前，塔尔博特先生的人生历程几乎占据全书的一半。
一本书如果涉及的范围很广，人们就很难读透。但在塔尔博特先生的漫谈中，人们却另有良法。一方面，他深信在世界的需要和集体治理的愿望之间存在着持续的紧张局势，另一方面，部落和国家自认为是独立和主权国的要求，塔尔博特先生对此是兴趣浓厚。对古老历史与当前现实的探索是以表明：书中全球管理的"伟大的实验"皆源于宗教，哲学和领导人数千年来的努力。在塔尔博特先生看来，帝国并非都会涉及到屠杀和掠夺。在对人类，或那些至少是屈服帝国意志的人们的共处方面，亚历山大和拿破仑有着极为深远的思考。
在克林顿和布什政府制定的多边和单边外交政策上，冷战后的美国已是摇摆不定，左右为难。因此，在捕捉当今相同的紧张局势上，塔尔博特先生也就挺走好运了。他的故事在这部分也最为好读。作为一位坦诚的党派人士和多边主义者，塔尔博特先生看到，布什总统的单边主义已甚为遗憾地阻碍了通往共性世界的历史必然进程。在这个共性世界中，美国已不能够再独自去解决那些棘手的问题了，如核扩散和气候变化等问题。
透过历史和政治去享受这一雄心之旅，你不必花钱去购买作者的广阔冥想或分享作者对克林顿，戈尔和安南的敬佩，这应该是很幸运的。伟大的思想，广远的历史和日常政治的实用性在书末来回穿梭也并不罕见。许多政治领导人都始终在有意识或无意识地做着。
例如，在文中就有这样一段有趣的片段。塔尔博特先生记述了克林顿总统，戈尔先生和一些演说撰稿人之间的交谈。亚历山大"汉密尔顿和托马斯"杰弗逊对民主原则是否限制美国存有分歧，戈尔先生对此在高谈阔论着。戈尔先生说：“杰弗逊是正确的。‘卢梭说过，国家是支配意志的道德’。但他是站在国家的高度考虑的。我们应该站在国际的角度去思考问题”。演说撰稿人打断众人，满腹牢骚道：“伟大言论皆存有矛盾”。"诸位可做到这点，"布什总统露齿笑道："我们需要引世侧目的远见" 。