第一大战爆发100周年 世界不该这么快遗忘警示

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 2014 – 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2014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”。