【英语中国】中国必须正视朝鲜核试威胁

You cannot blame America for everything. It just might be, as the BBC often seems to believe, that had George W. Bush and Tony Blair not invaded Iraq all would be different. Repressive regimes everywhere would have recast themselves into cuddly, peace-loving democracies. North Korea’s Kim Jong-il would have hammered missiles into ploughshares to feed his destitute people. Somehow I doubt it.Tyranny pre-dated Mr Bush and will outlast him. So, too, will the quest by dangerous leaders to secure unconventional weapons. North Korea’s self-styled Dear Leader was accumulating fissile material and deceiving Bill Clinton, then US president, long before Mr Bush’s speechwriters gave him that fateful phrase about an axis of evil.

That said, Washington cannot complain when everything bad that happens around the world is seen through the prism of what the US might have done to avert it. If you are the world’s sole superpower, brickbats come with the territory: the more so when you declare you will never brook any challenge. Most of the world is in an anti-American frame of mind these days; it still expects America to keep it safe.

The grievous foreign policy mistakes made by this administration, notably but not exclusively in Iraq, have made that task harder. In a hubristic quest for hegemony, the White House has surrendered moral leadership. It has also exposed the limits of its power. America alone has the capacity for decisive intervention almost anywhere in the world. But the chaos in Iraq and the defiance of North Korea and Iran have offered a salutary lesson that it cannot act alone.

This is by way of necessary preamble to North Korea’s claim to have become the world’s ninth nuclear state by testing an atomic device. It is still not clear that the detonation was successful. Some western diplomats speculate that, like the failure of a long-range rocket launch earlier this year, the nuclear test showed that the regime’s technology is far from cutting edge. Much the same is said of Iran’s assumed efforts to build a bomb.

I am not sure we should take much comfort. Atomic bombs are atomic bombs. Those exploded at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were hopelessly crude compared with those in the present US arsenal. They were nonetheless devastating in their impact.

Confirmation that North Korea has crossed the nuclear threshold would expose the rest of the world to an array of dangers. Narrowly, they lie in the sheer unpredictability of a regime locked in a cold war time warp; more broadly in the destabilising effect throughout the region and beyond.

One obviously troubling question is how long before Japan, South Korea and Taiwan decide they cannot rely on the US nuclear umbrella for their own security? Japan, for all the latest thaw in its relations with Beijing, already feels threatened by China’s rise. Conventional wisdom has it that Tokyo would need between two and six weeks – yes, weeks – to build its own nuclear device.

Washington can do little more to coerce North Korea. Sanctions may well have encouraged Mr Kim in his nuclear quest. The financial squeeze imposed last year by the US Treasury strangled the, albeit, slim prospect of a deal that would have swapped security guarantees for the closure of the nuclear programme.

It is still important that the United Nations Security Council agrees to tougher, multilateral sanctions. If the international non-proliferation regime is to stand any chance of surviving, transgressors must be punished. But that is not to say wider sanctions will have much effect on North Korea.

China has the capacity to bring down Mr Kim. It is often said it should cut off supplies of food and fuel. To the contrary, instead of closing its border, it would be better to open it – allowing starving North Koreans to flee into China in their millions. The regime would implode, as happened in East Germany after Hungary opened its borders in 1989.

For all its irritation this week – it called the test “brazen” and said it will back a measured punitive response – Beijing shows no sign of contemplating such a course. Almost as much as the US, China has been humiliated by Pyongyang. But Beijing’s judgment seems to be that a unified Korea would be a still bigger threat. A powerful case can be made otherwise. In any event, China’s reflexes belong to a bygone era, a fact that will become dangerously obvious if Japan seeks its own deterrent.

China needs to rethink the way it looks at the world, and at its own role, if it is to connect its strategic priorities with its new-found economic power. As has been said before in this column, Beijing’s foreign policy is stranded in a curious no man’s land. It is loath to give up the principles of non-alignment and non-interference that have served as its lodestars for the past several decades; but it wants recognition of its status as a resurgent great power.

At some point it will have to choose and to recognise that its economic power has reshaped its strategic interests. Locked away, China could afford to play the role of champion of the developing world. As a great power, it has a much bigger stake, economic and strategic, in building a stable international order. That stability would be fatally undermined by nuclear proliferation.

Asking China to make such a change would require an equally radical shift from the US. To persuade China to be a responsible player in the international system demands that the US actually commit itself to that system. Mr Bush speaks often now of the “international community”. But his administration, as John Bolton, its ambassador to the UN, freely admits, still dines à la carte from the multilateralist menu. Why should it expect China to do any different?

I suspect that we are a long way from the grand bargain between the US and China that the above implies. There are too many people in Washington who believe that conflict with a rising China is inevitable; and too many in Beijing who are inclined to agree with them. But the truth is that both have a huge interest in creating a new global order.

Forty-three years ago, as the then five nuclear powers signed the first test ban treaty, John F. Kennedy predicted that, within a decade, up to 25 states might have the bomb. That he was proved wrong owed much to the international co-operation that instead produced the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. That treaty is now being tested to destruction. Unless it is rescued soon, the next decade could well see the realisation of Kennedy’s dire prediction.

不能把一切都归咎于美国。也许真如英国广播公司(BBC)往往认为的那样，如果布什(George W. Bush)和布莱尔(Tony Blair)没有入侵伊拉克，一切都会不同。各地的专制政权都会把自己重塑可爱、和平的民主国家。朝鲜的金正日(Kim Jong-il)也会把导弹打造成犁锄，来养活其贫困的国民。我对此表示怀疑。

专制政权在布什之前就存在，在他之后还会存在。危险领袖对非常规武器的追求也将如此。早在布什的演讲撰稿人发明“邪恶轴心”这个词以前，朝鲜“亲爱的领袖”就在积累裂变材料，并欺骗当时的美国总统克林顿(Bill Clinton)。

不过，华盛顿不能抱怨的是，每当世界上发生任何不好的事情，人们都会说美国本来可以做什么来避免事情发生。如果你是这个世界上唯一的超级大国，批评就会不期而至；而在你宣称决不会容忍任何挑战的时候，批评就会更猛烈。全球多数国家近年一方面产生反美情绪，另一方面仍然指望美国保证其安全。

美国政府在外交政策方面的严重失误（在伊拉克问题上尤为突出，但并不仅限于此），让这项任务变得更为艰巨。在自大地追求霸权的过程中，美国政府放弃了道德制高点。它也暴露出了自己实力的局限。美国有能力在全球几乎任何地方进行有力干涉。但伊拉克的混乱局势及朝鲜和伊朗的公然挑战给美国上了有益的一课：它不能单干。

以上是必要的背景介绍。现在，朝鲜宣称成为全球第九个核武器拥有国。迄今尚不清楚朝鲜的核爆炸是否成功。一些西方外交家推测，和今年早些时候远程火箭发射失败一样，此次核试验表明，朝鲜的科技还远未达到先进水平。人们对伊朗涉嫌制造核弹的努力也持基本相同看法。

我不认为我们应该为此感到宽慰。原子弹就是原子弹。与现在美国军火库中的原子弹相比，在广岛和长崎爆炸的那两颗要粗糙得多。尽管如此，其效果仍具毁灭性。

确认朝鲜已经跨过核门槛，将使世界其它地区暴露在一系列危险之中。从狭义上说，这些危险在于这个锁定在冷战思维中的政权的纯粹不可预测性；更广义地说，危险在于对整个亚太及其它地区造成的不稳定效果。

其中一个明显令人忧虑的问题是，再过多长时间，日本、韩国乃至台湾会认为它们无法依赖美国的核保护伞来保障自己的安全？日本已感到中国的崛起对其构成了威胁，尽管最近两国关系开始解冻。外界通常认为，日本仅需2至6周就能自行造出核弹。

美国也几乎没有其它手段可以用来压制朝鲜。对朝制裁也许恰恰推动了金正日的核计划。美国财政部去年对朝鲜实施的金融制裁，扼杀了朝鲜用结束核计划换取安全保障的可能性，尽管这种可能性本来就很微小。

联合国安理会(UN Security Council)同意对朝实施更严厉的多边制裁，这一点仍相当重要。若想让国际核不扩散条约有机会存在下去，那么违反条约的国家必须受到惩罚。但这并不是说，更广泛的制裁会对朝鲜产生明显效果。

中国有能力让金正日垮台。外界常常表示，中国应切断对朝鲜的食品和能源供应。相反，更好的办法不是关闭边界，而是要开放边界——允许数以百万计的饥饿朝鲜人逃往中国。那么这个政权就会从内部崩塌，就如1989年匈牙利开放边界后东德发生的情况一样。

尽管中国政府十分恼火——称朝鲜“悍然”实施核试验，并表示将支持适当的惩罚措施——但它没有显示出打算按这一方针行事的迹象。朝鲜对中国的羞辱，几乎和对美国一样多。但中国似乎认为，朝鲜半岛的统一将成为更大的威胁。对此可以提出有力的反证。无论如何，中国的本能反应属于一个过去的时代，如果日本寻求其自身的威慑，这种反应的不合时宜将危险地显现出来。

中国如果打算将战略重点配合其新兴的经济实力，就需要重新考虑如何看待世界和自身的角色。正如本专栏以前所指出的，中国的外交政策陷入了无所适从的境地。它一方面不愿放弃过去数十年作为其指导方针的不结盟、不干涉内政原则，另一方面又希望外界认同其“复兴强国”地位。

在某个时刻，中国必须作出抉择，认识到经济实力已改变了其战略利益。闭锁的中国，可以充当发展中国家的领头羊。但作为一个强国，构建稳定的国际秩序就对它关系重大，在经济和战略层面都是如此。核扩散将对这种稳定性造成致命破坏。

要求中国作出这样的改变，需要美国也作出同样明显的转变。要说服中国成为国际体系中一个负责任的国家，需要美国真正投身于这个体系。布什现在经常谈到“国际社会”这个词。但正如美国驻联合国大使约翰•博尔顿(John Bolton)坦率承认的那样，布什政府仍在照着多边主义“菜单”选择点餐。那么它凭什么指望中国的做法会有所不同呢？

我推测，美中之间要像上文暗示的那样达成“大交易”，还有很长的路要走。华盛顿有太多的人相信，与日益崛起的中国发生冲突是不可避免的；而北京也有太多的人倾向于同意他们的观点。但事实是，双方的重大利益都要求构建国际新秩序。

43年前，在当时的5个核大国签订第一个禁止核试验条约时，约翰•肯尼迪(John F. Kennedy)曾预言，在10年之内，拥有核弹的国家可能达到25个。事实证明他错了，这主要是由于国际社会通力合作，签订了核不扩散条约。该条约如今正遭受毁灭的考验。除非立即对它展开救援行动，否则未来十年内，肯尼迪可怕的预言就可能成为现实。

译者/何黎

专题：朝鲜核爆的震荡