美国国家安全政策大转变

If failure deserves never to be rewarded, the Central Intelligence Agency’s paymasters clearly did not read the memo. It makes little difference what event the CIA has missed, its budget and scope only appear to grow.

如果说失败就绝不能得到奖赏，那么美国中央情报局(CIA)的老板显然不明白这一点。不论CIA搞砸了什么事情，它的预算和活动范围依然在扩大。

“The CIA gets what it wants,” President Barack Obama told Leon Panetta, the agency’s then director, who had just read out a list of requests. Obama’s reaction was “uncharacteristically and bracingly decisive”, writes Panetta. Unfortunately, he cannot specify what goodies Obama so readily agreed to. Just as the CIA gets the drone strikes it wants, so it can delete passages from memoirs of former employees – even ones as august as Panetta.

时任CIA局长的利昂•帕内塔(Leon Panetta)刚向美国总统巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)念完一份物品清单，奥巴马就立刻表态：“CIA想要什么就有什么。”帕内塔在书中写道，奥巴马的反应“一反常态，果断得令人振奋”。可惜的是，他却不能详细说明奥巴马一口答应的究竟是什么要求。就像CIA能如愿实施无人机空袭一样，它也能删除前员工回忆录中的某些段落——即使是像帕内塔这样德高望重的人物也不例外。

Almost all the publiCity around Panetta’s Worthy Fights has focused on the handful of paragraphs critical of Obama. “Too often, in my view, the president relies on the logic of a law professor rather than the passion of a leader,” he wrote. That, indeed, is true. But it is hardly news. Panetta’s follow-up interviews have been far stronger. Obama has “lost his way”, says his former Pentagon and CIA chief. From Islamists in Syria to Putin’s encroachments on eastern Europe, the world’s challenges threaten to overwhelm him. There are few more loyal and discreet Washington operators than Panetta. The fact that even he – like Brutus – is wielding the knife says a lot about the emperor’s waning authority.

媒体对帕内塔新书《值得战斗》(Worthy Fights)的关注几乎都聚焦于书中对奥巴马的若干处批评。“在我看来，总统往往依赖法学教授的逻辑行事，而非领导人的激情，”他这样写道。这一点的确所言非虚。但这不算新鲜。接下来的一些访谈内容更为劲爆。先后在奥巴马政府执掌过CIA和五角大楼的帕内塔表示，奥巴马已经“迷失了方向”。从叙利亚的伊斯兰分子到普京在东欧的入侵行径，世界各处的挑战几近把他压垮。在华盛顿政坛上，很少有人比帕内塔更忠诚、更谨言慎行，然而，即使是帕内塔，也像布鲁图（Brutus，刺杀恺撒的主谋——译者注）那样对皇帝挥刀相向，这很能说明奥巴马的权威正在不断下降。

In all other respects, Panetta’s book is a traditional Washington memoir – a ploddingly written account of an illustrious career that does it little justice. Panetta came to Washington in the 1960s and never left. On the way, he was a liberal Republican in the Nixon administration, a Democratic congressman from California, chief of staff and budget director to Bill Clinton, and one of Obama’s key people in the successful hunt for Osama bin Laden.

从其他方面的内容来看，帕内塔的书算是一本中规中矩的白宫回忆录——其单调缓慢的叙述风格与作者本人辉煌的职业生涯不太相称。帕内塔在20世纪60年代来到华盛顿，此后就一直在那里工作。他曾是尼克松政府里的一名自由主义共和党人，加州的民主党国会议员，比尔•克林顿(Bill Clinton)的白宫办公厅主任和预算局局长，也是奥巴马政府成功击毙奥萨马•本•拉登(Osama bin Laden)行动中的关键人物之一。

The last event yields the book’s most interesting passages. Making up for its patchy record, it was the CIA that identified bin Laden’s hide-out in Abbottabad. Panetta was in the situation room when the operation went ahead. Unlike Robert Gates, the then defence secretary (who published Duty , his own coruscating memoirs, earlier this year), and Joe Biden, the vice-president, Panetta was all in favour. He credits Obama with the foresight to suggest a back-up helicopter in case the operation went awry. The spare chopper saved the day.

最后一个事件是全书最有趣的部分。CIA发现了本拉登在阿伯塔巴德(Abbottabad)的藏身之处，这弥补了CIA此前并不完美的纪录。正式展开行动时，帕内塔身处白宫战情室。不像当时的副总统乔•拜登(Joe Biden)和时任国防部长的罗伯特•盖茨(Robert Gates)——盖茨今年早些时候也出版了引人入胜的回忆录《职责》(Duty)——帕内塔完全支持那次抓捕行动。他还赞扬了奥巴马提议出动后备直升机以防行动出岔子的先见之明。那架直升机挽救了整个行动。

Worthy Fights has some telling insights into key Washington figures of the past generation. Bill Clinton is described as “ravenously intelligent”. Lyndon Baines Johnson once telephoned the mother of Panetta’s boss to wish her a happy birthday – a gesture that secured the vote LBJ was seeking. It is impossible to imagine Obama doing such a thing. Washington is a town of towering egos. David Petraeus, who was Panetta’s successor at the CIA, is described as having an office that was “a shrine . . . to him”. And so on. But we must turn to other books for insights into the big shifts in US national security policy of the last few years. Of the current batch, two stand out in very different ways.

《值得战斗》对上一代白宫人物有一些精妙的洞见。在他笔下，比尔•克林顿是“极为聪明”的一个人。林登•贝恩斯•约翰逊(Lyndon Baines Johnson)曾打电话给帕内塔上司的母亲，祝她生日快乐，这一举动让约翰逊赢得了他想要的选票。很难想象奥巴马会做这样的事情。华盛顿多的是心高气傲的人物。对帕内塔在CIA的继任者大卫•彼得雷乌斯(David Petraeus)来说，办公室就是“他的神殿”。除了《值得战斗》一书之外，我们也有必要通过其他书籍来了解美国国家安全政策在过去几年的重大转变。目前有两本书特别引人注目，它们的精彩之处也各不相同。

The first, National Insecurity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear, could lay claim to being the definitive book on how 9/11 affected US foreign policy. As the author of Running the World (2006) – the most authoritative history to date of the National Security Council – David Rothkopf has interviewed all but one of the NSC advisers since the role was established. Rothkopf started his career working for Henry Kissinger. There is pretty much no decision maker, including Panetta (he appears to have divulged his juiciest thoughts to this book, rather than his own) who has not opened up to Rothkopf.

第一本书是《国家不安全：恐惧时代的美国领导地位》(National Insecurity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear)。在9•11事件对美国外交政策的影响方面，这本书堪称权威之作。作者大卫•罗斯科普夫(David Rothkopf)曾就美国国家安全委员会(NSC)的发展历史，出版过最权威的著作《运作世界》(Running the World, 2006)，为此他采访了自国家安全顾问一职设立以来，除一人之外的历任顾问。罗斯科普夫职业生涯的起点是为亨利•基辛格(Henry Kissinger)工作。几乎没有哪位决策者，包括帕内塔（他似乎把自己最有料的思想透露给了这本书，而没有留给自己的回忆录）在内，未曾对罗斯科普夫吐露心迹。

On the day the planes hit the Twin Towers, Rothkopf was having coffee in Georgetown with one former and one future occupant of the role – Anthony Lake, who was Bill Clinton’s first national security adviser, and Susan Rice, who holds the job now. It was an attack that spoke “without translation or dilution to our animal selves”, Rothkopf writes. His aim is to capture what has happened since 9/11 – “a moment when America felt more vulnerable and adrift than at any time in modern memory”.

飞机撞上双子塔那天，罗斯科普夫正在乔治城大学(Georgetown)与安东尼•雷克(Anthony Lake)和苏珊•赖斯(Susan Rice)喝咖啡。前者曾担任比尔•克林顿的首位国家安全顾问，而后者目前担任该职。罗斯科普夫写道，这次袭击事件“直截了当、毫不含糊地展现了人类的动物本性”，那是“现代史上美国人比任何时候都脆弱和迷失的时刻”，而他的目标就是记录9•11之后发生的变化。

Rothkopf sets out what is essentially a game of two halves, to borrow a soccer cliché. In the first, George W Bush’s administration strikes out thoughtlessly – invading Iraq, telling the world it was either for the US or against it, trashing the Geneva Conventions and so on. “It took some time before we could stop, catch our breath and make a critical reappraisal of what we were doing,” Condoleezza Rice tells Rothkopf with some understatement.

用足球术语来说，罗斯科普夫的叙述分成了两个半场。在上半场，乔治•W•布什(George W Bush)政府轻率地出击——入侵伊拉克，向世界宣告要么支持美国要么与美国作对，践踏《日内瓦公约》(Geneva Conventions)，等等。“过了一段时间我们才停了下来，喘了口气，对我们此前所做的事情进行了批判性的回顾，” 康多莉扎•赖斯(Condoleezza Rice)有些轻描淡写地对罗斯科普夫说。

In his first term, Bush essentially lost control of his national security machinery. Both Donald Rumsfeld, the Pentagon chief, and Dick Cheney, the vice-president, ran rings around Rice and excluded Colin Powell, the secretary of state, from key decisions, such as disbanding the Iraqi army. In Bush’s second term, the NSC worked more as it should, principally because Rumsfeld and Cheney had been sidelined. By then it was headed by Stephen Hadley, an impressive operator, who kept the trains running on time.

在第一个任期内，布什基本失去了对国家安全机器的控制。国防部部长唐纳德•拉姆斯菲尔德(Donald Rumsfeld)和副总统迪克•切尼(Dick Cheney)比赖斯强势，并在关键决策上把国务卿科林•鲍威尔(Colin Powell)排挤在外，比如解散伊拉克军队。在布什的第二个任期内，NSC的运作更像它应有的样子，主要原因是拉姆斯菲尔德和切尼已经被边缘化。当时执掌NSC的是斯蒂芬•哈德利(Stephen Hadley)，一位令人印象深刻的政客，他让NSC稳步有序地运作。

Bush spent much of his second term atoning for the mistakes of the first. But it was too late to make up for such costly mistakes. Rothkopf is unflinching in tallying the price of Bush’s errors, even if he credits him for a belated course correction. “Our reaction [to 9/11] was so overheated, so ill considered, of such scale and so broad in its unintended consequences that it became more defining, constraining and damaging than the original event to which it was intended to respond,” says Rothkopf.

在第二个任期的大部分时间里，布什都在弥补他在第一个任期内犯下的错误。然而，要弥补这些代价高昂的错误已经太迟了。罗斯科普夫并不讳言这些错误造成的代价，即使他赞扬了布什迟到的路线修正。“我们（对9•11）的反应太激愤、太欠考虑、行动规模太大、意外后果也太广，以至于它变得比我们本来要应对的事件更具决定性、约束性和破坏性。”

In the second half of the game, Obama dons the captain’s shirt. Again, the team fails to play as it should, although for very different reasons. Under Bush, the US overreacted to 9/11 partly because the NSC failed to perform its role. The White House lacked the co-ordination – and thinking – the NSC was there to provide. Under Obama, the problem is reversed. His priority has been to undo the mistakes of the Bush years. Partly as a result, he runs the most centralised White House in living memory. The NSC has now grown to 370 staff, which is 10 times its size under Kissinger. It spends its time second-guessing other departments rather than thinking big thoughts. “It is not strategy to simply undo the mistakes of the recent past,” writes Rothkopf.

在游戏的下半场，奥巴马穿上了队长球衣。队伍再一次没能找回应有的状态，尽管原因截然不同。布什领导下的美国对9•11事件反应过度，部分原因是NSC没能发挥应有的作用。白宫缺乏协作和思想，而NSC本应提供这些。而在奥巴马的领导下，问题却相反。奥巴马优先做的是修正布什任内犯下的错误。这导致的一个结果是，他治下的白宫成为了人们记忆中最集权的白宫。NSC的人员数量上升到370人，是基辛格时期的10倍。NSC把时间都花在对其他部门进行事后批评，而不是着眼于大局。“仅仅纠正不久前的过错算不上战略，”罗斯科普夫写道。

Bush’s administration was known for blundering into rash decisions. Obama’s will be remembered for agonising over tweets and press releases. Panetta’s memoirs have plenty of examples of junior White House officials rebuking him for talking in public without having first sought their permission. Hillary Clinton’s memoirs, Hard Choices , are far too polite to echo that complaint. As Rothkopf concludes: “They [Obama’s White House staff] supplanted the agencies they were supposed to lead, attempted to do their jobs for them, micromanaged decisions, and as a result did not have time to do the strategic planning and co-ordination work that only they could do.” The result has been strategic drift under Obama following the blunders he inherited.

布什政府以决策盲目轻率著称，奥巴马政府却给人们留下为推特(tweet)消息和新闻稿绞尽脑汁的印象。帕内塔的回忆录中多次提到，一些级别较低的白宫官员指责奥巴马未事先征询他们意见就发表公开讲话。希拉里•克林顿(Hillary Clinton)的回忆录《艰难的抉择》(Hard Choices)过于礼貌，并没有呼应帕内塔的抱怨。罗斯科普夫总结道：“他们（奥巴马的白宫班子）取代了他们本应领导的机构，试图代替后者履行职责，做一些微观管理层面的决策，结果是他们没有时间去做只有他们能做的战略规划和协调工作。”其结果是奥巴马政府在接过前任的烂摊子后，迷失了战略方向。

In Rothkopf’s world, it is the big personalities that matter. A good president delegates authority to capable people. George HW Bush, whose national security adviser was Brent Scowcroft, is considered the model of how things should work. In their very different ways, Bush Jr and Obama show the opposite.

在罗斯科普夫的叙述中，大人物最为重要。一个好总统会把权力授予能人。老布什(George HW. Bush)被视作这方面的标杆，他的国家安全顾问是布伦特•斯考克罗夫特(Brent Scowcroft)。而小布什和奥巴马分别以不同的方式展示了反面教材。

To Michael J Glennon, in National Security and Double Government, the shifting personalities are mere detail. No matter who is elected to run White House and Congress, they are puppets of a permanent apparatus. In less capable hands, Glennon’s thesis might come across as sophomoric. Yet as a scholar who worked on Capitol Hill for years, Glennon is that rare thing: an academic with real world experience. Instead of a rupture between George W Bush and Obama, Glennon sees remarkable continuity. Towards the end of his presidency, Bush was asked what most surprised him about the job. “How little authority I have,” he said. That is also what people say about Obama.

在迈克尔•J•格伦农(Michael J Glennon)所著的《国家安全和双重政府》(National Security and Double Government)中，不断更替的个人并不重要。不管人民选举谁来掌管白宫和国会，他们只是永恒的政府体制下的傀儡而已。格伦农的论题如果是由一个能力不够的人来书写，会给人一种肤浅的感觉。但作为一个在国会山工作多年的学者，格伦农拥有学者身上罕有的实践经验。格伦农并没有将小布什和奥巴马割裂开来，相反，他看到了二者之间不同寻常的连续性。在小布什任期将尽的时候，有人问这份工作的哪个地方让他最惊讶。布什回答：“我拥有的权力竟然如此之少。”这也是人们谈及奥巴马时会说的话。

Glennon draws an analogy from Walter Bagehot’s portrait of the English system, which was divided between its “dignified institutions” – the monarchy, the Lords, the aristocracy and the pomp – and its “efficient institutions” – the Commons, the City, the bourgeois and the real power. No daylight should be allowed upon the former lest its magic be destroyed.

格伦农借用了沃尔特•白芝浩(Walter Bagehot)关于英国政制的论述。白芝浩认为，英国政制可以分成“尊严的部分”和“效率的部分”，前者包括皇室、上议院、贵族和奢华的表相，后者则包括下议院、伦敦金融城、资产阶级和实权。为了保证前者的魔力不至于消失，前者应该始终隔绝于人们的视线之外。

In today’s Washington, the dignified constitution comprises the three Madisonian branches of government – the presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court. The efficient parts are labelled “Trumanite” after President Harry S Truman, who set up the NSC, the National Security Agency and the other key planks of Dwight Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex”. It might better be called the Data-Intelligence complex. For Glennon’s thesis to work, America’s double government must meet two criteria, he says. First, the Madisonian institutions must appear to have control over the national security agencies. Second, they must not actually have that control.

在当今的华盛顿，尊严体制包含3个麦迪逊主义的政府分支——总统、国会和最高法院。而效率体制则被贴上“杜鲁门主义”的标签，哈里•S•杜鲁门总统(Harry S Truman)设立了NSC、国家安全局(US National Security Agency)，以及德怀特•艾森豪威尔(Dwight Eisenhower)所称的“军事-工业复合体”的其他关键组成部分。这个复合体更恰当的名称应该是“数据-情报复合体”。格伦农称，自己的理论如果要站得住脚的话，美国的双重政府就必须满足两个标准。首先，麦迪逊主义的体制必须看上去控制了国家安全机构。第二，它们事实上必须没有控制这些机构。

Glennon identifies 46 federal departments and agencies that generate classified information and 2,000 private companies working for them at 10,000 locations across the US. In theory, the president tells them what to do, Congress gives them the authority and the courts evaluate the legality of their actions. In practice, the agencies write the orders the president issues, draft the laws Congress passes, and appoint the judges to the secret courts that oversee them.

格伦农谈到了负责情报工作的46个联邦部门和机构，以及分布在全美10000个地方为这些机构效力的2000家私营企业。理论上，总统向这些机构下达指令，国会授予它们权力，法院评估它们的行动是否合法。实际上，是这些机构起草总统要发布的指令，草拟国会要通过的法律，并指定监督这些机构的秘密法庭的法官。

After Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 about the NSA’s rampant surveillance activities, officials insisted that there was a “robust legal regime” overseeing it. The numbers tell a different story. Between 1979, when the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was established, and 2013, it received 35,333 surveillance requests from the NSA. All but 12 were given the green light. The judges are appointed at the sole discretion of the Supreme Court’s chief justice. The court’s decisions are secret. No appeals are allowed. Obama ordered an “independent” review of it after the Snowden leaks. Very little has changed.

在2013年爱德华•斯诺登(Edward Snowden)曝光美国国家安全局大肆进行监视活动后，官员们坚称有一个“健全的法律体制”在监督国安局的活动。然而数据却说明情况并非如此。外国情报监视法院(Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court)自1979年设立到2013年期间，总共从国安局那里收到了35333次监视请求。其中只有12次请求未能获准。该法院的法官任命由最高法院的大法官全权决定。法院的裁决是秘密的。不允许进行上诉。在斯诺登事件后，奥巴马曾下令对该法院进行“独立”审查。但几乎什么都没有改变。

Great play is also made of Capitol Hill’s oversight. In practice the intelligence agencies brief only eight lawmakers and usually only after the fact. They are not allowed to bring aides or take notes. “We are like mushrooms,” said Norman Mineta, a former US lawmaker. “They keep us in the dark and feed us a lot of manure.”

国会山的监督也大有文章。事实上，各情报机构只向8位立法者介绍情况，而且通常是在事后。这些立法者不允许带助手或者做笔记。“我们就像蘑菇一样，”前立法者诺曼•米内塔(Norman Mineta)说，“他们让我们呆在暗处，给我们灌输大量肥料。”

Few people will read Glennon’s work. It is too academic for popular taste. More will read Rothkopf’s. Still more should do so. As an account of post 9/11 policy making, it is unlikely to be surpassed. By far the largest market will be for Panetta’s memoir because of the publicity around it. However, those who buy the latter should remember that most of the interesting stuff has been left out. Like the man said, the CIA gets what it wants.

阅读格伦农作品的人不会太多。他的书学术味太浓，不符合大众口味。更多人会阅读罗斯科普夫的著作，这本书也的确值得更多人阅读。作为一本讲述9•11后政策制定的书，罗斯科普夫的著作不太可能被超越。但最畅销的将会是帕内塔的回忆录，因为这本书的宣传力度很大。然而，那些购买了帕内塔的书的读者应该记住，书中遗漏了大部分有趣的内容。正如总统所说的，CIA想要什么就有什么。