STRATEGY & ECONOMICS TODAY & TOMORROW

7 Stability and Change in a Bipolar World, 1943–1980

第七章 两极世界的稳定与变革（1943～1980）

从军事上看，美国和苏联从20世纪60年代至80年代始终是一流强国，然而世界生产能力对比的变化比以前任何时期都快。撇开所有的小国不算，只从经济指数上看，多极世界已经再次变为现实。

At the news of the U. S. entry into the war, Winston Churchill openly rejoiced —and with good reason. As he later explained it, “Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force. ”1 Yet such confidence must have seemed wildly misplaced to more cautious minds on the Allied side during 1942 and until the first half of 1943. For six months after Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces had run rampant in the Pacific and Southeast Asia, overwhelming the European colonial empires, encircling China from the south, and threatening India, Australia, and Hawaii. In the Russo-German war, the Wehrmacht resumed its brutal offensives once the winter of 1941–1942 had passed and battled its way toward the Caucasus; at almost the same time, the far smaller German force under Rommel in North Africa had pushed to within fifty-five miles of Alexandria. The U-boat assault upon Allied convoys was proving deadlier than ever, with the highest losses of merchantmen occurring in the spring of 1943; yet the Anglo- American “counterblockade” of the German economy by means of strategic bombing was failing to achieve its purpose and was leading to severe casualties among the aircrews. If the fate of the Axis Powers was sealed after December 1941, there was little indication that they knew it.

温斯顿·丘吉尔得知美国参战的消息后，毫不掩饰地表示欣慰（他有充足的理由这样做）。这是因为正如他后来所说的：“希特勒注定完了。墨索里尼注定完了。至于日本人，他们将被碾为齑粉。剩下要做的仅是正确使用占压倒优势的力量而已。”然而，在1942～1943年上半年，在同盟国方面更为谨慎的人们来看，如此坚定的信念似乎是无稽之谈。珍珠港事件以后的6个月内，日本军队横扫太平洋和东南亚，征服了欧洲列强在那里的殖民地，从南面包围了中国，并威胁着印度、澳大利亚和夏威夷。在苏德战场上，1941～1942年冬季一过，德军便重新发起残酷无情的攻势，向高加索挺进。几乎与此同时，在北非兵力少得多的德军在隆美尔的指挥下，推进到距亚历山大港不到55英里的地方。德军潜艇对同盟国护航舰队的袭击比任何时候都凶猛，使同盟国商船在1943年春季蒙受了极为惨重的损失；而英美通过战略轰炸对德国经济进行的“反封锁”，却没有收到预期效果，并使空勤人员遭受了巨大伤亡。如果说1941年12月后轴心国注定要失败的话，却没有任何迹象表明那时它们自己也认识到了这一点。