華盛頓 對新的中國恐慌

新的中國恐慌

法裏德·紮卡裏亞
https://fareedzakaria.com/columns/2019/12/6/the-new-china-scare

1947 年 2 月，美國總統哈裏·杜魯門 (Harry Truman) 與他最高級的外交政策顧問喬治·馬歇爾 (George Marshall) 和迪安·艾奇遜 (Dean Acheson) 以及幾位國會領導人擠在一起。 主題是政府援助希臘政府打擊共產主義叛亂的計劃。 馬歇爾和艾奇遜闡述了他們對該計劃的看法。 參議院外交關係委員會主席阿瑟·範登堡(Arthur Vandenberg)仔細聆聽，然後提出了他的支持，但提出了警告。 據報道，他對總統說：“要得到你想要的東西，唯一的方法就是發表演講，把這個國家嚇跑。”

在接下來的幾個月裏，杜魯門就是這樣做的。 他把希臘內戰變成了對美國對抗國際共產主義能力的考驗。 艾奇遜在回憶錄中反思了杜魯門有關隨時隨地援助民主的豪言壯語，承認政府提出的論點“比事實更清晰”。

今天，美國關於中國的辯論中也出現了類似的情況。 包括兩黨、軍方和媒體在內的新共識認為，中國現在在經濟和戰略上對美國構成重大威脅，美國對華政策已經失敗，華盛頓需要新的政策。 ，采取更嚴厲的策略來遏製它。 這種共識已經將公眾的立場轉向幾乎本能的敵意：根據民意調查，現在 60% 的美國人對中華人民共和國持負麵看法，這是皮尤研究中心 2005 年開始提出這一問題以來的最高紀錄。

使他們的案件“比事實更清楚”。 來自中國的挑戰的性質與新危言聳聽所描述的不同，而且要複雜得多。 在未來幾十年最重要的外交政策問題上，美國正在為自己付出代價高昂的失敗做好準備。

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.