【英语国际】奥巴马当选刷新美国形象

The world looks anew at its sole superpower. For the past several years America's most formidable adversary has not been al-Qaeda, North Korea or Iran. The strategic threat to US power has come from rising anti-Americanism. The election of Barack Obama has disarmed it.Mr Obama's victory this week was no less astonishing for the fact that it was widely predicted by the opinion polls. Everywhere, we have heard the sound of doors slamming on the past; on the bitter legacies of slavery and segregation; on a Republican ascendancy born of the struggle over civil rights and Vietnam; on the Reagan era of unfettered markets; and on the world's deepening disenchantment with Washington.

There are caveats, of course. It should be obvious to all that expectations of Mr Obama are impossibly high. Even so singular a politician will struggle to make the transition from the soaring poetry of the campaign to the workaday prose of government.

Rhetoric will not fix the US economy; or save the planet from climate change. Eloquence will not get US troops out of Iraq; or the Taliban out of Afghanistan. For all that, the simple fact of Mr Obama's victory has changed the geopolitical game.

The world did not have a vote in the US election. It understood, though, that it had a vital interest in the outcome. John McCain had earned the respect of many leaders around the world. But among most electorates, a victory for the Republican candidate would have been greeted with a collective cry of anguish. Instead, many scores of millions have celebrated America's choice.

Some, in Mr Obama's phrase, were huddled around radios in “the world's forgotten corners”. They see a president-elect of Kenyan ancestry; a politician whose character was formed by childhood years in Indonesia; and a man whose middle name bears testimony to his Muslim forbears.

Europeans see another Mr Obama. Black, certainly, but a product also of America's familiar east coast: intelligent, urbane and, above all, someone who shares their sensibilities about the necessary balance between power and persuasion in world affairs; Europe's kind of president.

There, you might say, lies Mr Obama's genius: abroad as well as at home, he has proved one of those rare politicians who invites others to discover in him their own priorities and preoccupations.

What his overseas admirers share is a sense that in choosing Mr Obama, the US has rediscovered the virtues and values that long underpinned its moral authority. In recent years, the anti-Bushism born of Iraq, Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo has hardened into visceral anti-Americanism. The election confounds the prevailing image (always something of a distortion) of a nation described only by its arrogance and indifference.

Global goodwill, like well-chosen words, will not solve America's or the world's problems. Tehran is not about to give up its nuclear ambitions nor Moscow its expansionism. Mr Obama takes office, though, with the space to win some of the arguments that were mostly lost by his predecessor even before they were joined.

One of the crueller ironies of George W. Bush's second term is that the president has listened to his critics. The failure of the military adventure in Iraq saw Mr Bush embrace many of the diplomatic strategies urged by his allies. That was evident in negotiations with North Korea and the diplomatic engagement with Iran.

But the effectiveness was blunted by the unshakeable legacy of the first term unilateralism. With Dick Cheney, the vice-president, hovering ever present in the wings, few have believed that the administration's motives could be anything but bad, its embrace of engagement anything but tactical. Mr Bush completely lost the benefit of the doubt.

That will change. It will no longer be possible (it should never have been so with Mr Bush) for America's adversaries to draw moral equivalence between the president of the world's most powerful democracy and tyrants, despots and terrorists everywhere: Mr Obama as the Great Satan?

In demonstrating the infinite capacity of the US to reinvent itself by rediscovering idealism, Mr Obama robs friend and foe of their alibis.

A week ago Moscow's latest threat to site its missiles on Poland's borders might have been greeted with a pained shrug: after all, Russia, many in Europe would have said, had been provoked by Mr Bush.

As it was, the sour response of Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, to Mr Obama's victory spoke to his own failure to grasp the significance of the event. Moscow has precious few friends even now. Henceforth it will find it a lot harder to hide its belligerence behind America's unpopularity. The same might be said of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and one or two others.

There is an important lesson here for Washington's allies, too. Mr Bush has been an excuse for inaction.
Many Europeans have spent the past few years carping from the sidelines: the US has been messing things up everywhere, so why should they contribute anything to global security?

That excuse has gone. Before too long, these governments, long too comfortable in their inaction, will have to consider what they have to offer the incoming president in return for America's security guarantees.

Speaking in Chicago's Grant Park, Mr Obama offered his own story as an eloquent answer to the charge that the US has lost the idealism of its founding fathers. He might have added that a world, transfixed by his election victory, gave testimony to the continuing fact of American power. The US has been greatly weakened by Mr Bush's mistakes, but everyone else still looks to Washington to set their foreign policy compass.

That said, the shifting boundaries of geopolitics – the rise of great powers in Asia, the intractable threats from terrorism and nuclear proliferation – leave the US the insufficient, as well as the indispensable, power.

Mr Obama's promise of engagement and collaboration speaks to an intelligence that understands that America needs to gather its friends in order to defeat it enemies; and that the rules of the international system can be enforced on the weakest only if they are observed by the strongest.

The world may be disappointed. One of Mr Obama's most dangerous enemies will be the impatience of our age: the ever present demands that tomorrow's problems be fixed yesterday. Perhaps the new president will lack the decisiveness that is an essential partner to careful deliberation. But this is a moment for optimism. Once in a while, politicians do change the course of history.

世界以新的眼光看待唯一的超级大国。过去几年，美国最可怕的对手不是基地组织、朝鲜或伊朗。对美国强权的战略威胁来自日益高涨的反美情绪。巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)当选美国总统，缓和了针对美国的敌意。奥巴马上周获胜给人们带来的震惊，丝毫没有因为民意调查已普遍预见到结果而有所减弱。在任何地方，我们都能听到人们在摒弃过去的种种：奴隶制和种族隔离的余毒；在民权和越南问题上的努力带给民主党的优越感；信奉自由市场的里根(Reagan)时代；世界对美国政府幻想的日渐破灭。

当然也有告诫。所有人都应当明显看出，奥巴马的期望高得难以实现。即使是如此非凡的政治家，也难以将竞选中的高歌，改写为平凡的政府工作文件。

华丽的言辞不能修正美国经济，也不能将这个星球从气候变化中拯救出来。雄辩不能让美军撤离伊拉克，也不能让塔利班撤出阿富汗。虽然如此，奥巴马获胜的简单事实已然改变了地缘政治游戏。

在美国大选中，世界没有选票。但全球人民知道，美国选举的结果关系到自己的切身利益。约翰•麦凯恩(John McCain)赢得了全球许多领导人的尊敬。但是，如果这位共和党候选人胜出，多数选民将报以痛苦的集体呐喊。相反，成千上亿的人对美国的选择表示了庆贺。

用奥巴马的话来说，“在世界上被人遗忘的角落”，有些人聚集在收音机旁边。他们看到了一位有肯尼亚血统的当选总统，一位在印尼的童年生活塑造了其性格的政治家，一个中间名证明了他有着穆斯林祖先的人。

欧洲人看到的是奥巴马的另一面。当然，他是黑人，但也有着人们所熟悉的美国东海岸的特征：聪明、文雅，最重要的是，对于国际事务中权力与说服力之间的必要平衡，他与他们有着相同的认知。奥巴马是欧洲类型的总统。

你或许会说，那就是奥巴马的天才所在：在国内外，他都证明了自己是那种罕有的政治家中的一员：能让别人从他身上发现他们自己的当务之急。

奥巴马的海外仰慕者共同的感觉是，通过选择奥巴马，美国重新找回了长期支撑其道德权威的美德和价值观。近些年，发源于伊拉克、阿布格莱布和关塔那摩的反布什主义，已演变成本能的反美主义。本次选举淡化了只能以傲慢和冷漠来形容的美国主流形象（这种形象向来存在失真）。

全球善意，与精心选择的辞藻一样，不能解决美国或全球的问题。伊朗不会放弃核野心，俄罗斯也不会停止扩张主义。在国际问题争论中，布什甚至还没有加入就已经几乎一败涂地，但奥巴马的上台获得了赢得部分争论的空间。

乔治•布什(George W. Bush)第二个总统任期的最大讽刺之一是，他听取了批评者的建议。在伊拉克的军事行动失败后，布什采纳了盟国敦促实行的许多外交策略。从与朝鲜的谈判和与伊朗的外交接触中，均可以明显看出来。

但布什在第一个任期实行的单边主义不可动摇的地位，削弱了上述策略的效果。由于副总统迪克•切尼(Dick Cheney)总是在布什身边转来转去，很少有人相信布什政府的动机肯定是好的，其接触意愿决不是一种手段。布什完全无法取信于人。

这种局面将会改变。美国的对手不再可能把这个全球最强大民主国家的总统，在道义上与各地的暴君、独裁者和恐怖主义者相提并论（布什从来不应被这么看待）。将奥巴马比作撒旦？

奥巴马当选，展现了美国重拾理想主义，重树自身形象的无限能力。无论是友是敌，这都让他们心服口服。

本月初，俄罗斯再次威胁在波兰边境部署导弹。人们对此的反应可能是无奈的耸耸肩，毕竟，许多欧洲人会说，是布什激怒了俄罗斯。

事实上，俄罗斯总统德米特里•梅德韦杰夫(Dmitry Medvedev)对奥巴马获胜的尖刻反应，说明他未能抓住其中的重要意义。俄罗斯至今没有什么挚友。以后它将发现，要把自己的好战之心隐藏在美国的不得人心背后，将会困难得多。对委内瑞拉总统乌戈•查韦斯(Hugo Chávez)和另外一两个人也可以这么说。

对美国的盟友也有一个重要教训。布什一直是他们不作为的借口。过去几年，许多欧洲人站在一旁吹毛求疵：美国四处制造麻烦，为什么他们就应该为全球安全做出贡献？

这个借口没了。不久之后，这些长期安于不作为的政府，将不得不考虑如何回报美国为它们提供的安全保障。

针对美国已丧失其国父理想主义的指责，奥巴马在芝加哥格兰特公园发表讲话时，以自身经历作出了雄辩的回答。他或许还可以这么说，对他竞选获胜感到惊异的世人，为美国依然强大这个事实提供了证词。布什的过失大大削弱了美国的力量，但其它所有的人仍将参照华盛顿来制定自己的外交政策方针。

尽管如此，地缘政治边界的变化——亚洲大国的崛起，棘手的恐怖主义和核扩散威胁——使美国成为力量有所不足、但同时也是不可或缺的强国。

接触与合作的承诺，体现了奥巴马的智慧。他知道，美国需要团结朋友才能击败敌人；只有最强的人也遵守国际体系规则，最弱者才会照章行事。

世界或许有些失望。奥巴马最危险的敌人之一，将是我们这个时代的急躁风气：总是要求明天的问题在昨天得到解决。新总统或许欠缺必须与谨慎同时兼具的果断。但这是一个乐观的时刻。有时，政治家的确会改变历史进程。

译者/岱嵩