如何正视普京的危险？
弗拉基米尔•普京(Vladimir Putin)领导的俄罗斯有多危险?雷克斯•蒂勒森(Rex Tillerson)在被解雇的几小时前还在思索这个问题。这位前美国国务卿当时告诉记者：“我们已经看到他们的核心人物变得更加好斗。这让我非常、非常担忧……我们还没有完全理解这背后的目标是什么。”
The question of Russia’s real intentions is all the more urgent because, to nobody’s surprise, Mr Putin has just been declared the victor in the presidential election, and is set for another six years in the Kremlin. Normally, a president entering his fourth term in office is a known quantity. But the Russian leader seems to be becoming more reckless and confrontational with the passage of time.
俄罗斯的真正意图是什么?这个问题正变得愈发迫切，因为普京——不出所料地——刚被宣布为此次总统大选的胜利者，他将再执掌克里姆林宫六年。通常来说，一位进入第四个任期的总统已为人们所熟知。但这位俄罗斯领导人随着时间的推移似乎变得更加冒进和爱挑衅。
Russia’s deployment of a deadly nerve agent on the streets of the UK is a new and dangerous departure. The US government has just accused Russia of scoping out possible attacks on America’s critical infrastructure. In a recent speech, Mr Putin boasted of a new generation of “invincible” Russian nuclear weapons that could devastate America, and used videos to illustrate his threats. And he closed his re-election campaign with a flag-waving rally in Crimea, the territory that Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.
俄罗斯在英国街头动用致命神经毒剂是一个危险的新开端。美国政府最近指责俄罗斯研究对美国关键基础设施发动潜在攻击的机会。在最近一次讲话中，普京夸耀新一代俄罗斯核武器“无敌”，可以摧毁美国，并用视频演示来佐证他的威胁。他在克里米亚——2014年俄罗斯从乌克兰手中夺取了这片领土——举办了一场狂热爱国主义集会结束了自己的连任造势。
But while Mr Putin is reckless, he is not irrational. The record suggests that he can be deterred. Just three years ago, there was a widespread fear in the west that the annexation of Crimea would be followed by further seizures of territory in Ukraine. Russian state television seemed to be preparing the ground for this by suggesting that large parts of Ukraine were historically Russian territory. Some analysts worried that Mr Putin’s tanks would roll all the way into Kiev, the Ukrainian capital.
不过，普京虽然胆大妄为，却并非丧失理性。过往作为表明他是可以被震慑住的。就在三年前，西方普遍担心俄罗斯吞并克里米亚之后将进一步侵占乌克兰领土。当时俄罗斯国家电视台似乎已在为此铺垫，称历史上乌克兰大部分地区都是俄罗斯领土。一些分析人士担心普京的坦克将一路开进乌克兰首都基辅。
But although Russia-backed violence has continued in eastern Ukraine, there have been no further seizures of territory. The most likely explanation is that the Kremlin was deterred by the unexpected strength of the sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and the EU — as well as the threat that the west will step up military assistance to Ukraine.
尽管俄罗斯仍在乌克兰东部支持暴力活动，但没有进一步侵占其国土。最合理的解释是，美国和欧盟制裁俄罗斯的力度之大超出了意料，并且西方扬言要加强对乌克兰的军事援助，把克里姆林宫给吓住了。
More recently, there have been widespread reports that scores of Russians may have been killed in US-backed air strikes in Syria. But rather than react strongly, the Russian government has refused to discuss the alleged incident. There are some confrontations that Russia is not eager to rush into.
最近有大量报道称，可能有数十名俄罗斯人在美国支持的对叙利亚空袭中遇害。但俄罗斯政府没有作出强烈反应，反而拒绝讨论这起所谓的事故。可见俄罗斯并不想仓促展开某些对抗。
Mr Putin seems willing to take big risks when he believes that the west is not paying attention. But when the Russian leader meets clear resistance, he backs off.
当普京认为西方不太注意时，他似乎愿意冒着巨大风险。但当这位俄罗斯领导人遇到明显阻力时，他就退缩了。
The real danger for both Russia and the west is therefore not that Mr Putin is seeking outright conflict with the west, but that he miscalculates and creates confrontations that he cannot control. Mr Putin’s fans at home and abroad have fallen for the idea that he is a brilliant strategist who annexed Crimea, intervened in Syria and meddled in the US elections without paying a price.
因此对于俄罗斯和西方来说，真正的危险不是普京寻求与西方发生直接冲突，而是他可能错误估计形势，制造了他无法控制的对抗。普京的海内外粉丝真心相信他是一位出色的战略家，他兼并了克里米亚、干预叙利亚并插手了美国大选，还不付任何代价。
But a cooler look at the record shows that the Russian leader’s interventions frequently backfire. The conflict in Ukraine led to Russian-backed separatists shooting down the civilian airliner MH17 in 2014, killing 298 people and provoking greatly intensified sanctions on Russia. Moscow’s intervention in the US elections may have tipped the vote towards President Donald Trump, which would be an extraordinary coup for Mr Putin. But the subsequent backlash has led to the Mueller inquiry, which in turn may lead to further sanctions on Russia.
但如果冷眼查看其过往记录就能发现，这位俄罗斯领导人的干预经常适得其反。乌克兰冲突导致俄罗斯支持的分裂分子在2014年击落民航客机MH17航班，造成298人死亡，使俄罗斯遭受到更加严厉的制裁。莫斯科对美国大选的干预可能让投票结果对唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)有利，这对普京来说是一大非凡成就。但随后引起的强烈反弹导致了米勒(Mueller)调查，这进而可能又导致对俄罗斯的进一步制裁。
When Mitt Romney described Russia as the foremost threat to America in 2012, he was widely derided. But now a whole new generation of opinion-formers in the US is being raised with a deep suspicion and resentment towards Russia, of a kind that had previously been fading into history.
2012年，当米特•罗姆尼(Mitt Romney)将俄罗斯称为美国最大的威胁时，他遭到了普遍嘲笑。但是美国全新一代意见领袖是在对俄罗斯的深切怀疑和憎恶这种此前已逐渐消失在历史中的情绪里成长起来的。
Meanwhile Russian casualties in the war in Syria appear to be mounting, and Mr Putin’s promises of an early conclusion to the conflict have not been met.
与此同时，俄罗斯方面在叙利亚战争中的伤亡人数似乎在不断攀升，而普京早日结束这场冲突的承诺仍未兑现。
Even relatively trivial violations of international rules by the Kremlin have backfired. A state-sponsored doping programme for Russian athletes was discovered and led to a ban on official Russian participation in the Winter Olympic Games. Now the attempted murder of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the UK has provoked an unexpected display of western unity — just when cracks were widening between Britain, the EU and the US.
克里姆林宫就算只是稍微违反国际规则也可能引起强烈抵制。俄罗斯在国家层面上支持运动员使用兴奋剂的计划被揭露，导致俄罗斯被禁止参加冬奥会(Winter Olympic Games)。而前双面间谍谢尔盖•斯克里帕尔(Sergei Skripal)和他女儿在英国遭谋杀的事件则意外引发了西方的团结景象——眼下正值英国、欧盟和美国之间裂缝不断加大之时。
The cumulative result of all these mis-steps is that Russia is much poorer and more isolated than it should be. Its economy is under sanctions and the years of rapid growth before 2008 are a receding memory. The staging of the football World Cup in the summer is no more likely to revive Russia’s image than did the Sochi Winter Olympics of 2014.
在所有这些失策的累积作用下，俄罗斯的贫穷和孤立都远远超出了其应有程度。它的经济遭到连番制裁，2008年之前的快速增长成了消逝的回忆。即将在夏季举办的足球世界杯(World Cup)至多像2014年索契冬奥会那样略微重振俄罗斯形象。
Despite all this, Mr Putin still has his fans in the west, on both the far-left and the far-right. These fringe parties are gathering strength in Europe and may seek to promote more Putin-friendly policies. But the weakness of the Russian economy means that even politicians who are sympathetic to Mr Putin’s style of tough-guy nationalism are unlikely, ultimately, to break with the EU or the western alliance. A Russian government that specialises in assassinations and nuclear threats does not have all that much to offer its foreign admirers.
尽管如此，普京在西方仍有不少拥趸，极左和极右都有。在欧洲，这些边缘党派正在扩大势力，且可能寻求推动对普京更友好的政策。但俄罗斯经济的衰弱意味着，即便是对普京民族主义硬汉风格心存赞赏的政客，也终究不太可能与欧盟或西方联盟决裂。一个擅长暗杀和核威胁的俄罗斯政府并没有多少东西可提供给其外国崇拜者。
