German defence 德国防御

Eine deutsche Atombombe? 来自德国的原子弹

Mar 2nd 2017 | BERLIN

@(TheEconomist)[英语, 翻译, 经济学人]

IT BEGAN in November, soon after the election of Donald Trump as America’s president. The publisher of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a conservative newspaper, opined in an editorial that it was time to contemplate “the altogether unthinkable for a German brain, the question of a nuclear deterrence capability, which could make up for doubts about American guarantees”. Roderich Kiesewetter, a foreign-policy expert in the Christian Democratic Union, the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel, chimed in that there should be no “thought taboos”. He and other politicians then went silent, apparently after a signal that the chancellor did not need this distraction in an election year. But in Germany’s think-tanks the debate kept raging.

事情发生在十一月，就在 Donald Trump当选美国总统后不久。保守派报纸—法兰克福汇报，在社论中称：现在的德国是时候考虑“不可想象”的问题了。德国“核威慑能力”的存在，能够弥补美国核承诺的不足。 和德国总理 Angela Merkel 同为基督民主联盟一员的Roderich Kiesewetter发言“德国不应该有任何思想禁忌”。随后他和其他政客陷入沉默，很显然德国总理在选举年里不希望受到这样的干扰。但在德国智库内部，这一讨论愈演愈烈。

Since 1945 West Germany and then the reunited country have relied on the American nuclear shield to deter aggression from Russia. A prominent thesis, outlined in 1984 by Josef Joffe, a journalist, holds that European integration was only possible because this external American power had “pacified” the age-old Franco-German conflicts. So West Germany, on its best behaviour after the war, signed the non-proliferation treaty in the 1960s; it reaffirmed the pledge in the treaty that led to reunification in 1990.

自1945年起，西德甚至是合并后的德国都在依赖美国的核护盾震慑俄国的入侵。1984年，记者 Josef Joffe 提出”欧洲统一只有在美国外力平息由来已久的德法纷争后才能实现”的著名论断。西德在战后为了最大化利益考虑，在1960年代签署了“核不扩散条约”，并且在1990年重申这一承诺，促成了东西德的统一。

Suddenly, however, there is an American president who, though he said last week that he would “strongly support NATO”, has also called the alliance “obsolete” and suggested that his support might be conditional on allies meeting their commitments to spend more on defence. By the ghastly logic of mutual assured destruction (MAD), deterrence must be unconditional to be credible. Countries in eastern and central Europe are beginning to fret about their vulnerability to nuclear blackmail by Russia under Vladimir Putin.

突然之间出现的这任美国总统认为美欧联盟“陈旧不堪”并且表明美国对各盟国的支持取决于盟国峰会时各国对防御工程投入的承诺。尽管他本人在上周还说过会强力支持北约。根据“互相保证毁灭”这一骇人的逻辑，核威胁必须真实有效才能产生作用。欧洲东部和中部的国家已经开始焦虑在 Vladimir Putin领导下的俄国会对“核力量脆弱”的他们带来怎么样的核威胁。

Germany’s most obvious response would be to approach France and Britain, NATO’s other two nuclear powers, for a shared deterrent. But their arsenals are small. France, moreover, has so far been unwilling to cede any sovereignty over its nuclear arms and has always been sceptical about shared deterrence. Britain, as its prime minister, Theresa May, has already hinted, might make its nuclear shield a subject of negotiation during the upcoming Brexit talks.

德国的最直接的反应是联合共享北约的其他两个核威慑力量-英国和法国。但实际上这两个国家的军火库很小。此外，法国已经表现出对割让核武器权利的不情愿，而且对共享核威慑感到怀疑。英国则像其首相Theresa May曾经暗示的那样，会把核威慑当做筹码来应对即将到来的英国脱欧谈判。

To Maximilian Terhalle, a German professor currently teaching in Britain, this means that Germany, Poland or the Baltic countries could never fully rely on France or Britain retaliating against Russia for a strike against them. He concludes that Germany must think about getting its own nukes, perhaps in collaboration with neighbours. Even the leader of Poland’ s governing party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, a habitual Germanophobe, called in February for a European nuclear deterrent, presumably financed largely by Germany.

在留英教书的德国教授Maximilian Terhalle看来，这意味着德国、波兰以及其他波罗的海国家在受到俄罗斯攻击后，永远不能完全依靠法国或者是英国去为其反击。他断定无论是否和邻国共同开发，德国必须拥有自己的核武器。通常被认为仇视德国的波兰执政党领袖 Jaroslaw Kaczynski在二月份拜访并寻求欧盟核武器威慑。这一举动被推测是由德国出资推动的。

The different dangers posed by Mr Putin and Mr Trump have raised the question of “how to deter whom with what”, even though German nukes are not the best answer, says Karl-Heinz Kamp of the Federal Academy for Security Policy, a government think-tank. Mr Terhalle, for his part, thinks that even a debate about a German nuclear weapon could help—if it convinced Mr Trump to stop undermining the existing international order.

来自政府智库“联邦安全策略委员会”的Karl-Heinz Kamp认为：Putin和Trump带来的两种不同的危险引出了“怎样-用什么-去威胁谁?”的问题。德国持有核武器不是该问题最好的答案。Terhalle则认为，如果这场关于德国核武的讨论能够制止Trump继续破坏国际秩序，那也算不无价值。