第一大战爆发100周年 世界不该这么快遗忘警示

A century has passed since the guns of August 1914 ended the era of European predominance with a deafening bang. Could such a catastrophe recur in our time?

1914年8月，欧洲占主导地位的时代在震耳欲聋的枪炮声中结束。如今100年时间过去了，此类灾难还会在我们的时代重演吗？

The sequence of events since the Malaysian jet MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine is remarkably similar to the one that followed the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914. Now, as then, the crisis begins with an act of state-sponsored terrorism. Now, as then, Russia sides with the troublemakers. Even the request by the Dutch government for access to the site where so many of their nationals perished is reminiscent of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia. Now, as then, ownership of a seemingly unimportant region of eastern Europe is disputed.

自马航MH17航班在乌克兰东部上空被击落以来发生的一系列事件，与1914年6月奥地利大公弗朗茨•斐迪南(Franz Ferdinand)被刺杀之后的事件极为相似。现在和当时一样，危机始于一场政府支持的恐怖主义行动。现在和当时一样，俄罗斯与麻烦制造者站在一边。甚至荷兰政府提出的进入坠机现场的要求（许多荷兰公民在此次事件中丧生），也令人想起当年奥地利对塞尔维亚发出的最后通牒。现在和当时一样，东欧一个貌似不起眼地区的所有权引发了争议。

In 1914 it was Bosnia-Herzegovina, formerly an Ottoman province, annexed by Austria-Hungary in 1908, but claimed by the proponents of a united South Slav state. Today we have not only the annexation of Crimea by Russia but also the potential secession from Ukraine of Donetsk and Lugansk, where pro-Russian separatists have proclaimed independent “people’s republics”.

1914年，引发争议的地区是波斯尼亚和黑塞哥维那。该地区曾经是奥斯曼帝国的一个省，后来在1908年被奥匈帝国吞并，但统一南斯拉夫国家的支持者却对该地区宣称主权。现在，不仅俄罗斯吞并了克里米亚，而且顿涅茨克和卢甘斯克还有可能脱离乌克兰独立。在顿涅茨克和卢甘斯克，亲俄罗斯的分裂势力已经宣布成立独立的“人民共和国”。

And now, as then, the crisis is escalating. Even before the downing of MH17, Washington had tightened sanctions against Russia. This week both the US and the EU have taken the next step, imposing sanctions on whole sectors of the Russian economy, rather than just individuals and specific firms. The tighter the economic squeeze, the more President Vladimir Putin is cornered. In effect, the west is now confronting him with a choice between capitulation – ending his support for the separatists – or escalation – making sure that they are not crushed by the forces of the Kiev government. For a man like Mr Putin, the first option does not exist.

现在和当时一样，危机逐步恶化。甚至在马航MH17航班被击落之前，华盛顿就加大了对俄罗斯的制裁。上周，美国和欧盟全都采取进一步措施，对俄罗斯经济中的整个部门施加制裁，而不是仅仅针对个人和特定公司。经济制裁越严厉，俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔•普京(Vladimir Putin)就越有可能走投无路。实际上，西方现在正让普京面临选择，是屈从压力结束对分裂势力的支持，还是要确保他们不会被乌克兰政府军队击垮，从而加剧危机恶化。对于普京这样的人来说，第一个选项是不存在的。

The July crisis of 2017 therefore looks ominous. At the very least, the hope has now been dashed that a post-Soviet Russia could peacefully be integrated into a western world order based on free markets and democracy. At worst, what began as a little local difficulty in eastern Ukraine could be about to explode into a much larger struggle for mastery in Europe.

因此2017年7月的危机看起来是一个不祥之兆。最起码，苏联解体之后的俄罗斯和平融入建立在自由市场和民主基础之上的西方世界秩序的希望已经落空。而最坏的情况是，最初乌克兰东部一场小小的地方冲突，可能演变为一场规模大得多的争夺欧洲主导权的争斗。

So how to explain the relative equanimity of financial markets in the face of this gathering storm? Blame the historians. To those who subscribe to the view that the first world war had its origins in distinctive pathologies of early 20th-century Europe such as imperialism, militarism, nationalism and secret diplomacy, today’s crisis is nothing to worry about. For modern Europeans have renounced imperialism, have all but disarmed themselves, feel embarrassed by nationalism and conduct their diplomacy via Twitter rather than secret telegrams.

那么如何解释金融市场在风暴来临之际的相对平静呢？这要怪历史学家。有些人认为，一战的根源是20世纪初欧洲独有的诸多弊病，如帝国主义、军国主义、民族主义和秘密外交，对这些人来说，如今的危机没什么可担心的。因为现代欧洲人已经放弃了帝国主义，差不多解除了武装，对民族主义感到尴尬，并且通过Twitter而不是秘密电报来开展外交。

Even more complacent are those who insist on laying all the blame for 1914 on Germany. Today’s Germans prefer winning world cups to losing world wars. In almost every respect, Angela Merkel, their chancellor, is the historical antithesis of Kaiser Wilhelm II: female, democratically elected, supremely cautious and almost comically circumspect when asked what makes her feel proud to be German. (“Our well-sealed windows,” she once told Bild newspaper.)

那些将1914年战争全都归咎于德国的人甚至更加满不在乎。如今的德国更喜欢赢得世界杯，而不是输掉世界战争。从几乎所有方面来说，德国总理安格拉•默克尔(Angela Merkel)就是德皇威廉二世(Kaiser Wilhelm II)的历史对立面：默克尔是女性、经由民主选举上台、极为谨慎，在被问及什么让她对身为德国人感到自豪的时候，她谨慎得近乎好笑——她曾经向《图片报》(Bild)表示：“是我们密封良好的窗户。”

Yet the narratives woven by historians over the past 100 years must be treated with caution. Whether they blame “isms” or Germans, the majority of academic explanations of the first world war suffer from a fundamental flaw. The deep-seated causes they posit seem largely to have been missed by contemporaries, for whom – with very few exceptions – the war came as a complete surprise.

然而我们必须谨慎对待历史学家对过去100年编织的故事。无论他们是怪罪于“主义”还是德国，对于一战的多数学术解释存在根本性的缺陷。他们假想的深层次原因似乎基本没有被他们同时代的人注意到，对后者来说（只有极少数人例外），一战完全是个意外。

As the year 1914 began, The New York Times looked forward to a “growing rapprochement between Germany, France and England” over the Balkans. “The British horizon in the direction of Germany seems to be clearing,” the Times also reported. In Germany “all signs” pointed to “numerous conflicts between the government . . . and the Social-Democratic party during the coming year”. Plans were afoot for an international conference in New York to celebrate “100 years of peace among English-speaking peoples”.

在进入1914年之际，《纽约时报》(The New York Times)预计“德国、法国和英国（围绕巴尔干地区）的争执会日趋缓和”。《泰晤士报》(The Times)还报道称，“从英国向德国方向看，视野似乎正变得清晰”。在德国，“所有迹象”都表明“政府……与社民党(Social-Democratic party)来年将冲突不断”。人们正计划在纽约举行国际大会，庆祝“讲英语国家的人民实现100年的和平”。

Among the best informed people in 1914 were the bankers of the City of London, who certainly stood to lose a lot of money in the event of a world war.

1914年消息最为灵通的人包括伦敦金融城(City of London)的银行家们——一旦爆发战争，这些人必然会损失许多钱。

Yet the correspondence of the Rothschilds, then the most powerful financial dynasty, reveals an almost total failure to anticipate the scale of the conflagration.

然而，从当时最为强大的金融王国——罗斯柴尔德(Rothschild)家族的信件来看，他们几乎完全未能预见到那次战火的规模。

As the Economist reported, it was only on July 31 – by which time fighting had begun – that the financial world saw “the meaning of war . . . in a flash”.

正如《经济学人》(The Economist)报道的那样，直到7月31日（那时战争已经爆发），金融世界才“瞬间……认识到战争的意义”。

It has become a commonplace idea that today’s frothy financial markets are oblivious to the stream of bad news from eastern Europe, not to mention the Middle East. But that does not mean the news is not really bad at all. New York and London were equally blasé about the origins of the first world war. It was not until three weeks after the Sarajevo assassination that the London Times even mentioned the possibility that a European political crisis might lead to financial instability. Nine days later the stock exchange closed its doors, overwhelmed by panic selling as investors suddenly woke up to the reality of world war. Let no one reassure you that this crisis has somehow been “priced in”. No one priced in the guns of August 1914.

如今肤浅的金融市场毫不关心来自东欧（更别提中东）的一系列坏消息，这一点人们已经见怪不怪。但这并不意味着这些消息真的一点儿也不糟糕。纽约和伦敦同样不关心一战的起源。直至萨拉热窝刺杀事件发生3个星期之后，《泰晤士报》才提到欧洲政治危机导致金融动荡的可能性。9天后股市由于不堪恐慌性抛售的重负而关门，因为投资者突然意识到世界大战爆发的现实。别相信任何人向你保证的市场已在某种程度上将此次危机的影响“考虑在内”。当年没有人把1914年8月的枪炮“考虑在内”。

This should give not only historians pause. If great historical events can sometimes have causes that are too small for contemporaries to notice, might not a comparable crisis be in the making today? What exactly makes our July crisis different? Is it because we now have the UN and other international institutions? Hardly: with Russia a permanent member of the UN Security Council, that institution has been gridlocked over Ukraine. Is it because we now have the EU? Certainly, that eliminates the risk that any west European state might overtly take Russia’s side, as France and Britain did in 1914, but it has not stopped EU members with significant energy imports from Russia fighting tooth and nail against tougher sanctions.

这不仅仅应该让历史学家停下来思考。如果重大历史事件的根源有时候过于微小，从而让同时代的人注意不到，那么如今一场类似的危机不是也有可能在酝酿之中吗？到底有什么能让我们7月的危机不同以往？就凭我们现在有联合国(UN)和其他国际组织？很难这样说：由于俄罗斯是联合国安理会(UN Security Council)常任理事国，联合国在乌克兰问题上陷入瘫痪。就凭我们现在有了欧盟？当然，这消除了西欧国家公然站在俄罗斯一边（就像法国和英国在1914年做的那样）的风险，但它没有阻止从俄罗斯大量进口能源的欧盟成员国极力反对实施更严厉的制裁。

What about the role of globalisation in diffusing international conflict? Sorry, you could have made the same argument 100 years ago (indeed, Norman Angell did, in his book The Great Illusion). Very high levels of economic interdependence do not always inoculate countries against going to war with each other.

全球化在缓解国际冲突中发挥的作用呢？很遗憾，100年前你就可以提出这种观点了（事实上，诺曼•安杰尔(Norman Angell)就曾在自己的著作《大幻觉》(The Great Illusion)中阐述过这样的观点）。但是，经济的高度依存也无法永远阻止国家之间的战争。

Often I am told that it is the existence of nuclear weapons that has reduced the probability of a world war in our time. But even if that were true it surely does not apply here. In making their calculations about sanctions, European leaders did not give a moment’s thought to Russia’s vast superiority in missiles and warheads.

也常常有人告诉我，在我们这个时代，是核武器的存在降低了世界战争的可能性。但是，即使这个观点是正确的，也无法适用于当前情况。在为制裁深思熟虑的时候，欧洲的领导人丝毫没有想过俄罗斯在导弹和弹头方面拥有的巨大优势。

A better answer relates to the balance of conventional forces – and the balance of the will to use them. Since the end of the cold war, by any meaningful measure, Europeans have disarmed themselves and are incapable of fighting wars unassisted by the US. More importantly, European peoples have lost their stomach for fighting.

一个更好的答案与常规力量的平衡、以及使用这些力量的意愿的平衡相关。自冷战结束以来，从任何有意义的标准来讲，欧洲人都可以说自我解除了武装，以至于没有美国的帮助就无法作战。更重要的是，欧洲人失去了战斗的欲望。

A century ago the overwhelming majority of Britons supported the government’s argument that the German violation of Belgian neutrality was a legitimate casus belli – including my grandfather, who rushed to enlist.

一个世纪以前，英国政府认为德国侵犯比利时的中立性是一个合理的开战理由，支持政府的英国人占压倒性多数。其中也包括我的祖父，他当时立刻应征入伍。

And today? Even after the downing of MH17, just one in 10 British voters would favour deploying western troops to defend Ukraine against Russia. The fundamental asymmetry in the Ukrainian crisis is that the Kremlin is able and willing to use military force; Europeans – and Americans, for that matter – want to go no further than economic sanctions.

今天又怎样呢？即使在MH17航班被击落后，也仅有十分之一的英国选民支持在乌克兰部署西方的军队，以抵御俄罗斯。乌克兰危机中根本性的不对等就是，克里姆林宫有能力而且也愿意使用武力；而在这件事上，欧洲人和美国人都不愿意在经济制裁以外更进一步。

And yet there is another and still better way of explaining the difference between 1914 and 2017 – and that is to recognise that what happened 100 years ago was itself a very improbable disaster, which required a whole succession of diplomatic and military miscalculations to happen. One way of making this point is to use computer simulations to re-run the 1914 crisis, something which is now possible thanks to the sophisticated strategy game Making History: The Great War.

要解释1914年和2017年情况的不同，还有一种更好的办法，那就是认识到100年前发生的事件原本是一个不大可能发生的灾难，是一连串外交和军事误判的结果。要说明这个观点，一种方法是使用计算机模拟技术，重演1914年的危机。归功于精良的战略游戏《创造历史：一战》(Making History: The Great War)，我们已经可能做到这一点。

Like Muzzy Lane’s earlier War of the World game, which allowed players to replay the events of the second world war, this game makes it clear that decision makers are not in the grip of vast, impersonal forces but have meaningful strategic choices. It is perfectly possible to re-run the July 1914 crisis multiple times and not end up with a world war.

Muzzy Lane开发的前作《创造历史2：世界大战》(Making History II: The War of the World )让玩家可以重新玩一遍第二次世界大战的事件。类似于前作，《创造历史：一战》中的决策者并不受强大的、非人力因素的支配，而是可以选择采取各种意义深远的战略。玩家完全有可能把1914年7月的危机重演许多次，并且不让游戏以世界大战告终。

The real lesson of history is that a relatively small crisis over a chunk of third-rate eastern European real estate will produce a global conflict only if decision makers make a series of blunders.

历史给我们留下的真正教训是，只要决策者犯下一系列错误，即使是围绕一大片东欧三流房地产发生的相对较小的危机，也能演变成全球冲突。

As it happens, I think it is a blunder to use sanctions to give President Putin no choice but folding or fighting. But – assuming there are no more MH17s – the price for that blunder will be paid mainly by the people of Ukraine. The blunders of a century ago led to the deaths of more than 10m people, mostly young men, drawn from all over the world.

事实上，我认为用制裁将俄罗斯总统普京逼得除了屈服或者战斗以外别无选择，就是一个错误。然而，如果我们假定不会有更多类似马航MH17航班这样的事件，这个错误的代价就主要是由乌克兰人来承担的。而一个世纪以前犯下的那些错误导致超过1000万人丧生，其中绝大多数是由世界各地征召而来的年轻人。

As we commemorate the outbreak of the first world war, let no one swallow the old but tenacious lie that their “sacrifice” was a necessary and noble one. On the contrary, the war is best understood as the greatest error of modern history. That is a harsh truth that many historians still find unpalatable. But then, as AJP Taylor once observed, most people who study history only “learn from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones”.

当我们纪念第一次世界大战爆发100周年的时候，不要让任何人听信陈旧但却一直持续的谎言，即他们的“牺牲”是必要而且高尚的。相反，这场战争最好应该被理解为现代历史上最严重的错误。这是一个残酷的事实，许多历史学家依然觉得难以接受。然而，正如A•J•P•泰勒(AJP Taylor)曾经做出的论断，大多数研究历史的人只是“从过去的错误中学到如何犯下新的错误”。