The Coming of a Bipolar World and the Crisis of the “Middle Powers”: Part One, 1885–1918
第五章 “中等强国”的危机（1885～1918）
1900年以后的50年，一些“中等”国家多次陷入危机，整个体制的变动也绝非一帆风顺。对所有“一战”参战国来说，这都是一场使人精疲力竭的战争。仅有的例外是日本和美国，前者进一步加强了在太平洋地区的地位，后者到1918年已成为无可争辩的世界头号强国。
In the winter of 1884–1885, the Great Powers of the world, joined by a few smaller states, met in Berlin in an attempt to reach an agreement over trade, navigation, and boundaries in West Africa and the Congo and the principles of effective occupation in Africa more generally. 1 In so many ways, the Berlin West Africa Conference can be seen, symbolically, as the zenith of Old Europe’s period of predominance in global affairs. Japan was not a member of the conference; although modernizing swiftly, it was still regarded by the West as a quaint, backward state. The United States, by contrast, was at the Berlin Conference, since the issues of trade and navigation discussed there were seen by Washington as relevant to American interests abroad;2 but in most other respects the United States remained off the international scene, and it was not until 1892 that the European Great Powers upgraded the rank of their diplomatic representatives to Washington from minister to ambassador—the mark of a first-division nation. Russia, too, was at the conference; but while its interests in Asia were considerable, in Africa it possessed little of note. It was, in fact, in the second list of states to be invited to the conference,3 and played no role other than generally giving support for France against Britain. The center of affairs was therefore the triangular relationship between London, Paris, and Berlin, with Bismarck in the all-important middle position. The fate of the planet still appeared to rest where it had seemed to rest for the preceding century or more: in the chancelleries of Europe. To be sure, if the conference had been deciding the future of the Ottoman Empire instead of the Congo basin, then countries such as Austria-Hungary and Russia would have played a larger role. But that still would not gainsay what was reckoned at the time to be an incontrovertible truth: that Europe was the center of the world. It was in this same period that the Russian general Dragimirov would declare that “Far Eastern affairs are decided in Europe. ”4
1884～1885年冬，在有几个小国参加的情况下，世界各大国在柏林举行会议，以图就西非和刚果的边界、贸易、航海以及在非洲实行有效占领的原则更广泛地达成协议。这次柏林西非会议在许多方面可被看作是旧欧洲在全球事务中居统治地位的巅峰时期的象征。日本不是这次会议的成员，虽然它正在迅速实现近代化，但仍被西方视为一个古怪而落后的国家。相比之下，美国则出现在这次会议上，这是由于会上讨论的贸易和航海问题被华盛顿认为与其国外利益有关；但在其他许多方面，美国仍在国际舞台之外，直到1892年，欧洲诸大国才把其驻华盛顿外交代表的级别从公使升至大使——这是一流国家的标志。俄国也出席了这次会议，它在亚洲利益颇多，但在非洲的利益却微不足道。事实上，俄国在被邀请与会的二流国家的名单中，除了通常支持法国反对英国外，没有发挥任何作用。因此，事务的中心是伦敦、巴黎和柏林之间的三角关系，俾斯麦处在最重要的位置上。地球的命运看来仍取决于欧洲总理（首相）们的办事处。可以肯定，如果这次会议决定的是奥斯曼帝国而不是刚果盆地的前途的话，奥匈帝国和俄国等国将发挥更大的作用。但这不会否认那时人们心中的一条颠扑不破的真理：欧洲是世界的中心。就在同一个时期，俄国将军德拉吉米罗夫宣称“远东事务是在欧洲决定的”。
Within another three decades—a short time indeed in the course of the Great Power system—that same continent of Europe would be tearing itself apart and several of its members would be close to collapse. Three decades further, and the end would be complete; much of the continent would be economically devastated, parts of it would be in ruins, and its very future would be in the hands of decisionmakers in Washington and Moscow.
30年——这在大国体系的进程中的确很短——以后，这块欧洲大陆将被撕开，而且其中的几个成员将濒临崩溃。再过30年，这种崩溃就完成了，欧洲许多地区将是一片废墟，而且其真正的前途将掌握在华盛顿和莫斯科的决策者们手中。
While it is obvious that no one in 1885 could accurately forecast the ruin and desolation which prevailed in Europe sixty years later, it was the case that many acute observers in the late nineteenth century sensed the direction in which the dynamics of world power were driving. Intellectuals and journalists in particular, but also day-to-day politicians, talked and wrote in terms of a vulgar Darwinistic world of struggle, of success and failure, of growth and decline. What was more, the future world order was already seen to have a certain shape, at least by 1895 or 1900. 5
虽然在1885年时没有任何人能够准确地预测出60年之后废墟和荒凉将遍及欧洲，但当时的事实是，19世纪晚期许多敏锐的观察家已经感觉到推动世界强国的那种动力的发展方向。不单知识分子和新闻记者，而且日常的政治家们都用通俗的主张来发表言论和作品，讨论世界斗争和成败兴衰。更有甚者，至少到1895年或1900年时，人们已能看出未来的世界秩序将具有的某种形式了。
The most noticeable feature of these prognostications was the revival of de Tocqueville’s idea that the United States and Russia would be the two great World Powers of the future. Not surprisingly, this view had lost ground at the time of Russia’s Crimean disaster and its mediocre showing in the 1877 war against Turkey, and during the American Civil War and then in the introspective decades of reconstruction and westward expansion. By the late nineteenth century, however, the industrial and agricultural expansion of the United States and the military expansion of Russia in Asia were causing various European observers to worry about a twentieth-century world order which would, as the saying went, be dominated by the Russian knout and American moneybags. 6 Perhaps because neomercantilist commercial ideas were again prevailing over those of a peaceful, Cobdenite, freetrading global system, there was a much greater tendency than earlier to argue that changing economic power would lead to political and territorial changes as well. Even the usually cautious British prime minister Lord Salisbury admitted in 1898 that the world was divided into the “living” and “dying” powers. 7 The recent Chinese defeat in their 1894–1895 war with Japan, the humiliation of Spain by the United States in their brief 1898 conflict, and the French retreat before Britain over the Fashoda incident on the Upper Nile (1898–1899) were all interpreted as evidence that the “survival of the fittest” dictated the fates of nations as well as animal species. The Great Power struggles were no longer merely over European issues—as they had been in 1830 or even 1860—but over markets and territories that ranged across the globe.
所有的这些预言中，最引人注目的要算是德·托克维尔观点的再度流行：美国和俄国将在未来成为两个世界强国。不必惊奇，当俄国在克里米亚遭难，在1877年对土耳其的战争中表现平平时，在美国内战期间以及在进行重建和向西扩张的反省的几十年中，这种观点已经失去了基础。但是，到了19世纪后期，美国工农业的发展和俄国在亚洲的军事扩张，使许多欧洲的观察家们担心，20世纪的世界秩序像过去所说的那样，将被俄国人的皮鞭和美国人的钱袋所统治。也许是因为新重商主义的贸易思想再度压倒了主张和平的、科布登[1]式的和全球自由贸易体系的思想，因此，现在有一种比早些时候强烈得多的倾向，即坚持正在发生变化的经济实力将导致政治在领土上的改变。甚至连一向很慎重的英国首相索尔兹伯里勋爵也在1898年承认，世界被分成了“生机勃勃”和“奄奄一息”两类大国。中国在1894～1895年同日本的战争中失败、西班牙在1898年的短暂冲突中受到美国羞辱的事实，以及法国在尼罗河上游发生的法绍达事件中在英国面前的退却，都可解释为“适者生存”论决定国家和物种命运的证据。大国之间的斗争不再像1830年甚至1860年时那样局限于欧洲问题了，而且还牵涉到遍及全球的市场和领土问题。
But if the United States and Russia seemed destined by size and population to be among the future Great Powers, who would accompany them? The “theory of the Three World Empires”—that is, the popular belief that only the three (or, in some accounts, four) largest and most powerful nation-states would remain independent —exercised many an imperial statesman. 8 “It seems to me,” the British minister for the colonies, Joseph Chamberlain, informed an 1897 audience, “that the tendency of the time is to throw all power into the hands of the greater empires, and the minor kingdoms—those which are nonprogressive—seem to fall into a secondary and subordinate place. … ”9 It was vital for Germany, Admiral Tirpitz urged Kaiser Wilhelm, to build a big navy, so that it would be one of the “four World Powers: Russia, England, America and Germany. ”10 France, too, must be up there, warned a Monsieur Darcy, for “those who do not advance, go backwards and who goes back goes under. ”11 For the long-established powers, Britain, France, and Austria- Hungary, the issue was whether they could maintain themselves in the face of these new challenges to the international status quo. For the new powers, Germany, Italy, and Japan, the problem was whether they could break through to what Berlin termed a “world-political freedom” before it was too late.
但是，如果美国和俄国由于其面积和人口看来注定将成为未来的大国的话，谁将与之做伴？“三个世界帝国的理论”——人们普遍认为，只有三个（有的记载说四个）最大和最强的国家或国家集团将保持独立——调动了许多帝国的政治家。英国殖民事务大臣约瑟夫·张伯伦1897年曾对一群听众说：“我认为当今的趋势，就是要把所有的权力操之于更大的帝国手中，那些小的王国——非进步的王国——看来要沦于次要和从属的地位……”海军上将蒂尔皮茨敦促威廉皇帝说，建立一支强大的海军对于德国来说是至关重要的，那样它将成为“俄国、英国、美国和德国四个世界大国”之一。有位达西先生警告说，法国也必须在世界大国之中，因为“那些不前进的国家就会倒退，而倒退的国家就会灭亡”。对于历史悠久的大国——英国、法国和奥匈帝国——来说，问题是它们在面临对国际现状的新挑战时是否能够维持自己的地位。对于新出现的大国德国、意大利和日本来说，问题则是它们能否在不至太晚的时候突破约束，达到柏林所谓的“在世界政治中的自由状态”。
It need hardly be said that not every member of the human race was obsessed with such ideas as the nineteenth century came to a close. Many were much more concerned about domestic, social issues. Many clung to the liberal, laissez-faire ideals of peaceful cooperation. 12 Nonetheless there existed in governing elites, military circles, and imperialist organizations a prevailing view of the world order which stressed struggle, change, competition, the use of force, and the organization of national resources to enhance state power. The less-developed regions of the globe were being swiftly carved up, but that was only the beginning of the story; with few more territories to annex, the geopolitician Sir Halford Mackinder argued, efficiency and internal development would have to replace expansionism as the main aim of modern states. There would be a far closer correlation than hitherto “between the larger geographical and the larger historical generalizations,”13 that is, size and numbers would be more accurately reflected in the international balances, provided that those resources were properly exploited. A country with hundreds of millions of peasants would count for little. On the other hand, even a modern state would be eclipsed also if it did not rest upon a large enough industrial, productive foundation. “The successful powers will be those who have the greatest industrial base,” warned the British imperialist Leo Amery. “Those people who have the industrial power and the power of invention and science will be able to defeat all others. ”14
在19世纪快要结束时，很难说没有一个种族未迷上这种思想。许多民族更关心国内的社会问题，许多国家坚持自由的、在和平时期进行合作的放任主义思想。但在领导人物、军界和帝国的组织中，则存在着一种占上风的有关世界秩序的观点，这种观点强调斗争、变更、竞争、使用武力和组织全国资源以增强国力。全球的不发达地区正在迅速被瓜分，但这仅仅是这段历史的开始。地缘政治学家哈尔福德·麦金德争辩说，由于可吞并的领土所剩无几，提高效率和国内的发展势必取代扩张而作为现代国家的主要目标。在“更广的地理概念和更大的历史概念之间”，将出现一种比迄今为止所存在的关系更为紧密的相互关系，这就是说，假如资源使用得当的话，其大小和数量将更准确地反映在国际均势上。拥有数亿农民的国家将是无足轻重的。另一方面，如果不以大规模的足够的工业生产为基础的话，即使是现代国家也会黯然失色。英国的帝国主义分子利奥·艾默里警告说，“取得成功的国家将是那些拥有最大工业基础的国家”，“那些拥有工业实力以及创新和科学力量的民族，将能够击败其他所有民族”。
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Much of the history of international affairs during the following half-century turned out to be a fulfillment of such forecasts. Dramatic changes occurred in the power balances, both inside Europe and without. Old empires collapsed, and new ones arose. The multipolar world of 1885 was replaced by a bipolar world as early as 1943. The international struggle intensified, and broke into wars totally different from the limited clashes of nineteenth-century Europe. Industrial productivity, with science and technology, became an ever more vital component of national strength. Alterations in the international shares of manufacturing production were reflected in the changing international shares of military power and diplomatic influence. Individuals still counted—who, in the century of Lenin, Hitler, and Stalin, could say they did not?—but they counted in power politics only because they were able to control and reorganize the productive forces of a great state. And, as Nazi Germany’s own fate revealed, the test of world power by war was ruthlessly uncaring to any nation which lacked the industrial-technical strength, and thus the military weaponry, to achieve its leader’s ambitions.
接下来的半个世纪里，国际事务发展的许多事实证明了上述预言。在欧洲内外，力量的对比发生了引人注目的变化。老帝国垮台了，新帝国出现了。1885年的多极世界在1943年时被两极世界所取代。国际斗争加剧，并爆发了完全不同于19世纪欧洲的有限冲突的战争。与科学技术相联系的工业生产力，成为国家力量中比以往任何时候都更重要的组成部分。在世界军事力量中所占比重和外交影响的变化，反映了在世界制造业生产中所占份额的变动。个别人物依然是重要的——在列宁、希特勒和斯大林生活的世纪，谁可以说他们不重要呢？但他们之所以重要，是因为他们能够控制和重新组织一个大国的生产力。而且，像纳粹德国自己的命运所表明的那样，战争对世界大国的考验，对于缺乏工业技术力量因而也缺乏军事武器来实现其领导人野心的国家是无情的。
If the broad outlines of these six decades of Great Power struggles were already being suggested in the 1890s, the success or failure of individual countries was still to be determined. Obviously, much depended upon whether a country could keep up or increase its manufacturing output. But much also depended, as always, upon the immutable facts of geography. Was a country near the center of international crises, or at the periphery? Was it safe from invasion? Did it have to face two or three ways simultaneously? National cohesion, patriotism, and the controls exercised by the state over its inhabitants were also important; whether a society withstood the strains of war would very much depend upon its internal makeup. It might also depend upon alliance politics and decisionmaking. Was one fighting as part of a large alliance bloc, or in isolation? Did one enter the war at the beginning, or halfway through? Did other powers, formerly neutral, enter the war on the opposite side?
即使说大国之间60年斗争的大致轮廓已经在19世纪90年代被描绘出来，个别国家的成败也仍待决定。很明显，这在许多方面取决于一个国家是否能够保持或增加其工业的产量。但在许多方面也始终取决于不可改变的地理环境。一个国家是接近处于国际性危机的中心还是在其边缘？它能不受侵犯吗？它是否不得不同时面临两个或三个方面的入侵？民族的凝聚力、爱国主义和国家对其居民的控制也很重要，一个社会是否经受得住战争的严峻考验，在很大程度上就取决于其内部组成。它可能还依赖于结盟政治和决策。一个国家是作为一个大的联盟集团的一员作战，还是单独作战？这个国家是一开始参战的，还是半途参战的？以前保持中立的其他大国站到敌人一边参战了吗？
Such questions suggest that any proper analysis of “the coming of a bipolar world, and the crisis of the ‘middle powers’ ” needs to consider three separate but interacting levels of causality: first, the changes in the military-industrial productive base, as certain states became materially more (or less) powerful; second, the geopolitical, strategical, and sociocultural factors which influenced the responses of each individual state to these broader shifts in the world balances; and third, the diplomatic and political changes which also affected chances of success or failure in the great coalition wars of the early twentieth century.
这类问题表明，任何一种对“两极世界的出现和‘中等国家’的危机”的适当分析，都需考虑孤立的但又有相互影响的因果关系的三个方面：第一是军工生产基地的变化，这致使某些国家在物质上变得更（或不那么）强大了；第二是影响个别国家对世界均势中这些更大的转变做出反应的地缘政治、战略和社会文化的因素；第三，影响在20世纪大联盟战争中成败机会的外交和政治上的变化。