华盛顿 对新的中国恐慌

新的中国恐慌

法里德·扎卡里亚
https://fareedzakaria.com/columns/2019/12/6/the-new-china-scare

1947 年 2 月，美国总统哈里·杜鲁门 (Harry Truman) 与他最高级的外交政策顾问乔治·马歇尔 (George Marshall) 和迪安·艾奇逊 (Dean Acheson) 以及几位国会领导人挤在一起。 主题是政府援助希腊政府打击共产主义叛乱的计划。 马歇尔和艾奇逊阐述了他们对该计划的看法。 参议院外交关系委员会主席阿瑟·范登堡(Arthur Vandenberg)仔细聆听，然后提出了他的支持，但提出了警告。 据报道，他对总统说：“要得到你想要的东西，唯一的方法就是发表演讲，把这个国家吓跑。”

在接下来的几个月里，杜鲁门就是这样做的。 他把希腊内战变成了对美国对抗国际共产主义能力的考验。 艾奇逊在回忆录中反思了杜鲁门有关随时随地援助民主的豪言壮语，承认政府提出的论点“比事实更清晰”。

今天，美国关于中国的辩论中也出现了类似的情况。 包括两党、军方和媒体在内的新共识认为，中国现在在经济和战略上对美国构成重大威胁，美国对华政策已经失败，华盛顿需要新的政策。 ，采取更严厉的策略来遏制它。 这种共识已经将公众的立场转向几乎本能的敌意：根据民意调查，现在 60% 的美国人对中华人民共和国持负面看法，这是皮尤研究中心 2005 年开始提出这一问题以来的最高纪录。

使他们的案件“比事实更清楚”。 来自中国的挑战的性质与新危言耸听所描述的不同，而且要复杂得多。 在未来几十年最重要的外交政策问题上，美国正在为自己付出代价高昂的失败做好准备。

THE NEW CHINA SCARE

Fareed Zakaria
https://fareedzakaria.com/columns/2019/12/6/the-new-china-scare

In February 1947, U.S. President Harry Truman huddled with his most senior foreign policy advisers, George Marshall and Dean Acheson, and a handful of congressional leaders. The topic was the administration’s plan to aid the Greek government in its fight against a communist insurgency. Marshall and Acheson presented their case for the plan. Arthur Vandenberg, chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, listened closely and then offered his support with a caveat. “The only way you are going to get what you want,” he reportedly told the president, “is to make a speech and scare the hell out of the country.”

Over the next few months, Truman did just that. He turned the civil war in Greece into a test of the United States’ ability to confront international communism. Reflecting on Truman’s expansive rhetoric about aiding democracies anywhere, anytime, Acheson confessed in his memoirs that the administration had made an argument “clearer than truth.” 

Something similar is happening today in the American debate about China. A new consensus, encompassing both parties, the military establishment, and key elements of the media, holds that China is now a vital threat to the United States both economically and strategically, that U.S. policy toward China has failed, and that Washington needs a new, much tougher strategy to contain it. This consensus has shifted the public’s stance toward an almost instinctive hostility: according to polling, 60 percent of Americans now have an unfavorable view of the People’s Republic, a record high since the Pew Research Center began asking the question in 2005. But Washington elites have made their case “clearer than truth.” The nature of the challenge from China is different from and far more complex than what the new alarmism portrays. On the single most important foreign policy issue of the next several decades, the United States is setting itself up for an expensive failure.