Jeffrey Sachs 外交結束戰爭

外交的緊迫性

https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/w8jwrwhcnmf9bf2dmwfy57l85r47af

2024 年 3 月 21 日

現在是進行談判的時候了，這將使我們更接近和平，遠離一場看不到盡頭的致命和破壞性戰爭。

美國和俄羅斯之間的外交徹底崩潰，美國和中國之間也幾近徹底崩潰。 為了自身利益而過度依賴美國的歐洲隻是遵循華盛頓的路線。 外交的缺席會造成局勢升級，從而導致核戰爭。 全球和平的首要任務是重建美國與俄羅斯和中國的外交關係。

喬·拜登總統不斷對俄羅斯和中國同行進行人身侮辱就體現了這種狀況。 拜登沒有關注政策，而是關注與總統弗拉基米爾·普京的個人關係。 最近，他稱普京總統為“一個瘋狂的SOB”。 2022 年 3 月，他表示“看在上帝的份上，這個人不能繼續掌權。” 去年秋天與中國國家主席習近平會麵後，拜登稱他為“獨裁者”。

這種複雜的超級大國關係的粗暴個性化不利於和平與問題的解決。 此外，這種言辭的粗魯和缺乏嚴肅的外交，打開了令人震驚的不負責任言辭的閘門。 拉脫維亞總統最近在推特上發布了“Russia delenda est”（“俄羅斯必須被摧毀”），解釋了老卡托呼籲羅馬在第三次布匿戰爭之前摧毀迦太基的古老格言。

在某種程度上，這些完全幼稚的言論都讓人想起約翰·F·肯尼迪總統的警告，他從古巴導彈危機中吸取了最重要的教訓，即需要避免羞辱擁有核武器的對手：“最重要的是，在捍衛我們自己的國家的同時， 為了切身利益，核大國必須避免那些導致對手選擇羞辱性撤退或核戰爭的對抗。 在核時代采取這種做法隻能證明我們的政策破產，或者表明我們對世界抱有集體死亡的願望。”

但還有一個更深層次的問題。 目前美國所有的外交政策都是基於斷言對方的動機，而不是與他們進行實際談判。 美國的說法是，不值得信任對方進行談判，因此不值得嚐試。

今天的談判被指責為毫無意義、不合時宜，而且是軟弱的表現。 我們一再被告知，英國的內維爾·張伯倫在 1938 年試圖與希特勒談判，但希特勒欺騙了他，今天的談判也會發生同樣的情況。 為了強調這一點，美國的每一個對手都被貼上新希特勒的標簽——薩達姆·侯賽因、巴沙爾·阿薩德、弗拉基米爾·普京、習近平等人——因此任何談判都將是徒勞的。

問題在於，這種對曆史和當今衝突的輕視正在將我們引向核戰爭的邊緣。 世界比以往任何時候都更接近核世界末日——根據世界末日時鍾，距離午夜還有 90 秒——因為核超級大國沒有進行談判。 根據對《聯合國憲章》的遵守程度來比較，美國實際上已成為所有聯合國成員國中最不外交的國家。

外交至關重要，因為大多數衝突都是博弈論學家所說的“戰略困境”。 戰略困境是指和平（或者更一般地說，合作）對雙方都有利，但雙方都有動機在和平協議上作弊以利用敵人。 例如，在古巴導彈危機期間，和平對美國和蘇聯來說都比核戰爭更好，但雙方都擔心，如果同意和平結果，對方會作弊 — — 例如通過核優先 — — 罷工。

在這種情況下，實現和平的關鍵是遵守機製。 或者正如羅納德·裏根總統在與蘇聯總統米哈伊爾·戈爾巴喬夫談判時所說的那樣，重複一句古老的俄羅斯格言：“信任但要核實”。

建立信任的機製有很多。 從根本上講，雙方可以提醒對方，他們正處於一場“重複博弈”中，這意味著兩國之間經常出現戰略困境。 如果今天一方作弊，就會扼殺未來合作的機會。 但還有許多額外的執行機製：正式條約、第三方擔保、係統監控、分階段協議等。

肯尼迪堅信，他於 1962 年 10 月與蘇聯領導人尼基塔·赫魯曉夫談判達成的結束古巴導彈危機的協議將會得到遵守 — — 事實也確實如此。 後來他相信他在 1963 年 7 月與赫魯曉夫談判達成的《部分禁止核試驗條約》也將繼續有效 — — 事實也確實如此。 正如肯尼迪在談到此類協議時指出的那樣，它們取決於談判達成一項符合雙方共同利益的協議：“為此目的達成的協議

符合蘇聯和我們的利益——甚至可以信賴最敵對的國家接受並遵守這些條約義務，而且隻有那些符合其自身利益的條約義務。”

博弈論學家研究戰略困境已有 70 多年的曆史，最著名的是囚徒困境。 他們一再發現，在戰略困境中實現合作的關鍵途徑是通過對話，甚至是非約束性對話。 人與人之間的互動極大地提高了互利合作的可能性。

1938 年張伯倫在慕尼黑與希特勒談判是否錯誤？ 不。他在細節上是錯誤的，達成了希特勒並不打算遵守的不明智的協議，然後天真地宣稱“我們時代的和平”。 但即便如此，張伯倫與希特勒的談判最終還是導致了希特勒的失敗。 通過向世界公然揭露希特勒的背信棄義，失敗的慕尼黑協議為堅定的溫斯頓·丘吉爾在英國掌權鋪平了道路，並在英國和全世界獲得了深刻的平反和公眾支持，最終為英美兩國奠定了基礎。 - 蘇聯聯盟擊敗希特勒。

無論如何，對 1938 年的反複類比是完全簡單化的，在某些方麵甚至是落後的。 烏克蘭戰爭需要俄羅斯、烏克蘭和美國等各方進行真正的談判，以解決北約東擴和衝突各方共同安全等問題。 這些問題構成了真正的戰略困境，這意味著美國、俄羅斯和烏克蘭等各方都可以通過結束戰爭並達成雙方都滿意的結果來取得進展。

此外，破壞協議、拒絕外交的正是美國及其盟友。 美國違背了向蘇聯總統戈爾巴喬夫和俄羅斯總統葉利欽作出的北約不會東移一寸的莊嚴承諾。 美國通過支持基輔暴力政變來推翻烏克蘭總統亞努科維奇而作弊。 美國、德國、法國和英國雙重拒絕支持明斯克II協議。 美國於2002年單方麵退出《反彈道導彈條約》，並於2019年單方麵退出《中導條約》。2021年12月15日普京提出俄美安全保證條約草案時，美國拒絕談判。

事實上，自2022年初以來，拜登和普京之間就沒有進行過直接外交。而當俄羅斯和烏克蘭在2022年3月直接進行談判時，英國和美國介入阻止了一項基於烏克蘭中立的協議。 普京上個月在接受塔克·卡爾森采訪時重申了俄羅斯對談判的開放態度，最近又再次這樣做了。

戰爭仍在繼續，造成數十萬人死亡，造成數千億美元的損失。 我們正在接近核深淵。 是時候談談了。

肯尼迪在就職演說中的不朽名言和智慧是：“讓我們永遠不要出於恐懼而進行談判。 但讓我們永遠不要害怕談判。”

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/ukraine-war-diplomacy

https://www.other-news.info/the-urgency-of-diplomacy/

The Urgency of Diplomacy

https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/w8jwrwhcnmf9bf2dmwfy57l85r47af

March 21, 2024

Now is the time for talks that will bring us closer to peace and away from a deadly and destructive war with no end in sight.

There has been a complete collapse of diplomacy between the US and Russia, and a near-total collapse between the US and China. Europe, which has made itself far too dependent on the US for its own good, simply follows the Washington line. The absence of diplomacy creates a dynamic of escalation that can lead to nuclear war. The highest priority for global peace is to re-establish US diplomacy with Russia and China.

The state of affairs is encapsulated by President Joe Biden’s incessant personal insults of his Russian and Chinese counterparts. Instead of focusing on policy, Biden focuses on the personal vis-à-vis President Vladimir Putin. Recently, he referred to President Putin as “a crazy SOB.” In March 2022, he stated that “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” Just after meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping last fall, Biden called him a “dictator.”

This crude personalization of complex superpower relations is inimical to peace and problem solving. Moreover, the crudity of this rhetoric and absence of serious diplomacy has opened the floodgates of shocking rhetorical irresponsibility. The President of Latvia recently tweeted “Russia delenda est” (“Russia must be destroyed”), paraphrasing the ancient refrain of Cato the Elder in calling for the destruction of Carthage by Rome prior to the Third Punic War.

At one level, these utterly puerile statements all recall the admonition of President John F. Kennedy, who drew the most important lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis as the need to avoid humiliating a nuclear-armed adversary: “Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy—or of a collective death-wish for the world.”

But there is an even deeper problem at hand. All of US foreign policy is currently based on asserting the motives of the counterparts rather than actually negotiating with them. The US refrain is that the other side can’t be trusted to negotiate, so that it’s not worth trying.

Negotiations today are denounced as pointless, untimely, and a show of weakness. We are repeatedly told that Britain’s Neville Chamberlain tried to negotiate with Hitler in 1938, but that Hitler tricked him, and that the very same would happen with negotiations today. To underscore the point, every US adversary is branded as a new Hitler -- Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and others – so any negotiation would be in vain.

The problem is that this trivialization of history and of today’s conflicts is leading us to the brink of nuclear war. The world is closer to nuclear Armageddon than ever before – 90 seconds to midnight according to the Doomsday Clock – because the nuclear superpowers aren’t negotiating. And the US has actually become the least diplomatic of all UN member states, comparing the states according to adherence to the UN Charter.

Diplomacy is vital because most conflicts are what game theorists call “strategic dilemmas.” A strategic dilemma is a situation in which peace (or, more generally, cooperation) is better for both adversaries but in which each side has the incentive to cheat on a peace agreement in order to take advantage of the foe. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, peace was better for both the US and the Soviet Union than nuclear war, but each side feared that if it agreed to a peaceful outcome, the other side would cheat – for example through a nuclear first-strike.

The keys to peace in such cases are mechanisms for compliance. Or as President Ronald Reagan said of negotiating with the Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, repeating an old Russian maxim, “Trust but verify.”

There are many mechanisms for building trust. At a basic level, the two sides can remind each other that they are in a “repeated game,” meaning that strategic dilemmas are regularly arising between them. If one side cheats today, that kills the chance for cooperation in the future. But there are many additional mechanisms for enforcement: formal treaties, third-party guarantees, systematic monitoring, phased agreements, and the like.

JFK was confident that the agreement to end the Cuban Missile Crisis that he negotiated with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in October 1962 would stick – and it did. He was later confident that the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that he negotiated with Khrushchev in July 1963 would also stick – and it did. As JFK noted about such agreements, they depend on negotiating an agreement that is in the mutual interest of both parties: “Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours — and even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest.”

Game theorists have studied strategic dilemmas for more than 70 years now, most famously the Prisoner’s Dilemma. They have repeatedly found that a key path to cooperation in a strategic dilemma is through dialogue, even non-binding dialogue. The human interaction dramatically raises the likelihood of mutually beneficial cooperation.

Was Chamberlain wrong to negotiate with Hitler in Munich in 1938? No. He was wrong on the specifics, reaching an ill-advised agreement that Hitler did not intend to honor and then naively proclaiming “peace for our time.” Yet even so, Chamberlain’s negotiation with Hitler ultimately contributed to Hitler’s defeat. By plainly exposing Hitler’s perfidy to the world, the failed Munich agreement paved the way for a resolute Winston Churchill to take power in Britain, with deep vindication and with deep wellsprings of public support in Britain and worldwide, and then ultimately for the UK-US-Soviet alliance to defeat Hitler.

The repeated analogy to 1938 is in any event utterly simplistic, and in some ways even backward. The war in Ukraine requires real negotiation among the parties – Russia, Ukraine, and the US – to address issues such as NATO enlargement and mutual security of all parties to the conflict. These issues pose true strategic dilemmas, meaning that all parties – the US, Russia, and Ukraine -- can come out ahead by ending the war and reaching a mutually satisfactory outcome.

Moreover, it has been the US and its allies that have broken agreements and refused diplomacy. The US violated its solemn pledges to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and to Russian President Boris Yeltsin that NATO would not move one inch eastward. The US cheated by supporting the violent coup in Kiev that toppled Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych. The US, Germany, France, and the UK, duplicitously refused to back the Minsk II agreement. The US unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 and from the Intermediate Force Agreement in 2019. The US refused to negotiate when Putin proposed a draft Russia-US Treaty on Security Guarantees on December 15, 2021.

There has in fact been no direct diplomacy between Biden and Putin since the beginning of 2022. And when Russia and Ukraine negotiated directly in March 2022, the UK and US stepped in to block an agreement based on Ukrainian neutrality. Putin reiterated Russia’s openness to negotiations in his interview with Tucker Carlson last month and did so again more recently.

The war rages on, with hundreds of thousands dead and with hundreds of billions of dollars of destruction. We are coming closer to the nuclear abyss. It’s time to talk.

In the immortal words and wisdom of JFK in hisInaugural Address, “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/ukraine-war-diplomacy
https://www.other-news.info/the-urgency-of-diplomacy/