全文翻译自大西洋杂志8月1日文章
原题：Lindsey Graham Reveals the Dark Calculus of Striking North Korea
作者：Uri Friedman
译者：冬天毛
大西洋杂志（The Atlantic）是美国一本经典杂志，于1857年创刊，是获得美国国家杂志奖（National Magazine Awards，自1966年开始每年颁发）次数最多的月刊。
（维基百科）
正文：
If the U.S. military were to hit the country, it would be on the logic that sparking a real conflict in East Asia is preferable to accepting a theoretical threat to the United States.
要是美军打算进攻朝鲜，那是因为与其让美国受到理论上的威胁，还不如在东亚掀起一场真正的战争。
On a sunny morning show on Tuesday, Lindsey Graham made an exceedingly dark calculation. North Korea’s second test of an intercontinental ballistic missile meant that Kim Jong Un is nearly capable of placing a nuclear warhead on a long-range missile and hitting the United States with it, the Republican senator noted on the Today show. And America can’t allow such a “madman” to get to that point, at whatever cost to non-Americans.
在周二的一场欢快的早间电视节目上，林赛·格雷厄姆（冬天毛注：共和党南卡罗来纳州参议员）进行了一番异常黑暗的剖析。这位共和党参议员在《今日秀》上指出，朝鲜的第二次洲际弹道导弹测试意味着金正恩几乎已经具有了用远程导弹装载核弹头打击美国的能力，而美国不能允许这样一个“疯子”走到那一步——无论非美国人要为此付出多大代价。
Donald Trump agrees, Graham added, and he knows that because he’s heard it straight from the president: Trump has “got to choose between homeland security and regional stability,” Graham argued. “Japan, South Korea, China would all be in the crosshairs of a war if we started one with North Korea. But if [North Korea gets] a missile they can hit California, maybe other parts of America.”
格雷厄姆补充说，唐纳德·特朗普赞成这一点，而他之所以会知道，是因为他是听总统本人亲口这么说的。格雷厄姆认为，特朗普“必须在美国国土安全和亚洲地区稳定间二选一”。“如果我们和朝鲜开战的话，战火将会殃及日本、韩国和中国，但如果（朝鲜）有了导弹，他们就可以打击加州，或者是美国的其他地区。”
“If there’s going to be a war to stop [Kim Jong Un], it will be over there. If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die here. And [Trump’s] told me that to my face,” Graham said. “That may be provocative, but not really. When you’re president of the United States, where does your allegiance lie? To the people of the United States.”
格雷厄姆说：“如果开战阻止（金正恩）的话，战争会在那边收场；如果有成千上万的人要死，他们会死在那边，而不是死在我们这边。（特朗普）是当着我的面这么说的。这话听着可能有些气人，但其实不然。既然你是美国总统，那么你应该忠于谁？当然是忠于美国人民。”
Graham is particularly fond of military solutions to foreign-policy problems; in his Today show appearance, he proposed “destroy[ing] … North Korea itself” to rid the country of nuclear weapons—which, whatever that means, is more aggressive than the Trump administration’s stated goals for any military operations. But Graham has expressed in blunt terms what other U.S. officials gloss over with their vague talk of “military response options” and everything remaining “on the table.”
在外交问题上，格雷厄姆尤其热衷于军事手段，在《今日秀》节目中，他提出要通过“摧毁……朝鲜本身”来剥夺其核武器——不管他说这话是什么意思，这都比特朗普政府公开宣布的军事行动目标要激进得多。但是，其他美国政府官员用“军事回应手段”和“一切仍可协商”这些含混说法掩盖的问题，被格雷厄姆直白地表达了出来。
If the U.S. military were to strike North Korea for the reasons Graham mentioned, it would be the result of a calculation that sparking a real conflict in East Asia is preferable to accepting a theoretical threat to the United States—that it’s worth risking the actual deaths of those living in and near North Korea, including American expats and troops stationed in Japan and South Korea, to avert the potential deaths of Americans at home. When I surveyed experts this spring, they predicted that whatever form U.S. strikes against North Korea take, they could result in thousands or even millions of deaths—as the North Koreans retaliate with conventional, chemical, and perhaps nuclear weapons, and the United States and its allies respond in kind, dragging the region into a spiral of conflict. The vast range of the casualty estimates spoke to just how much unknown risk U.S. military planners would be assuming.
如果美军出于格雷厄姆提到的这些原因而袭击朝鲜的话，那么其出发点就是这样一种算计：与其让美国受到理论上的威胁，还不如在东亚掀起一场真正的战争。或者说，为了排除美国人在自家伤亡的可能性，让那些居住在朝鲜境内或附近的人们冒真正的生命危险，包括驻韩美国和其他美国驻外人员在内，是值得的。我今年春季做调查时专家们曾预测，无论美国采取什么形式袭击朝鲜，都可能导致上万甚至上百万人死亡，因为朝鲜人将会使用传统武器、化学武器，或是核武器进行反击，而美国及其盟友将会以牙还牙，将半岛地区卷入一连串的战争。死亡人数的估值范围之大，恰恰也说明了美国军方在战略策划上所面临的巨大未知风险。
Graham is advocating “preventive strikes,” which differ from “preemptive strikes” in that they would not be a response to imminent attack by North Korea. He’s not suggesting that the U.S. military spring to action should it believe that Kim Jong Un is about to nuke California. He’s suggesting that the U.S. military neutralize the North Korean nuclear threat so Kim never has the ability to nuke California. As my colleague Peter Beinart has written, postwar American policymakers associated preventive war with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and therefore tended to reject the approach on moral grounds. But since the end of the Cold War, preventive military action has become a popular option among U.S. officials, culminating with George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq.
格雷厄姆支持进行“预防性攻击”，这有别于“抢先攻击”，因为预防性攻击并不是针对朝鲜即将实施的进攻做出回应。格雷厄姆的意思不是说，美军一旦确信金正恩即将用核弹攻击加州，就立刻展开行动；他的意思是让美军直接摧毁朝鲜的核威胁设施，从根本上不让金具备用核弹打击加州的能力。就像我的同事彼得·贝纳特曾写到的，二战后，美国外交政策的制定者们将预防性攻击看作是与纳粹德国和日本帝国同类的行为，从而倾向于从道德角度出发，排斥这种手段；然而自从冷战结束以来，美国官员们开始喜欢上了预防性军事行动，而当乔治·W·布什入侵伊拉克时，这种趋势也达到了巅峰。
When members of the Trump administration publicly discuss military options against North Korea, they typically describe them in preventive terms. It’s not surprising that a hawk like Lindsey Graham would characterize the president’s views that way. But you don’t have to take his word for it. H.R. McMaster, the president’s national-security adviser, has staked out a similar position. In April, he said it would be unacceptable for the North Korean government to obtain nuclear weapons that can reach the United States, even if that entails taking military action that would produce “human catastrophe” in South Korea. In July, Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, engaged in the same grim calculus.
当特朗普政府的成员们公开谈论对朝军事行动时，他们所说的通常都是预防性行动，所以像林赛·格雷厄姆这样的鹰派人士会如此描述总统的观点，也没什么好奇怪的。不过，你也不用把他的话当真。总统的国家安全顾问H.R.麦克马斯特曾经做出过类似的表态。四月时他曾表示，决不能放任朝鲜政府获得能用来打击美国的核武器，即便这意味着军事行动并在韩国造成“人间惨剧”。参谋长联席会议主席约瑟夫·邓福德也曾在七月作出过类似的严酷计算。
“Many people have talked about military options [against North Korea] with words like ‘unimaginable,’” he observed. “I would shift that slightly and say it would be horrific. It would be a loss of life unlike any we have experienced in our lifetimes. Anyone who has been alive since World War II has never seen the loss of life that could occur if there’s a conflict on the Korean peninsula.” (Defense Secretary James Mattis has similarly described a potential second Korean war as representing “probably the worst kind of fighting in most people's lifetimes. ... [T]he bottom line is it would be a catastrophic war.”)
邓福德当时评论道：“说到（对朝鲜）采取军事手段时，很多人都用了‘不堪设想’这个说法。要我说，应该把这个说法稍微改一下，就说‘十分可怕’。一旦朝鲜半岛爆发战争，那将是我们有生以来见所未见的生命损失，任何生在二战后的人都见所未见的生命损失。”（国防部长詹姆斯·马蒂斯也曾对可能的第二次朝鲜战争做出过类似的描述，称其“八成是大多数人一辈子见过最可怕的大战……总而言之会是一场灾难性的战争。”）
“It is not unimaginable to have military options to respond to North Korean nuclear capability,” Dunford continued. “What’s unimaginable to me is allowing a capability that would allow a nuclear weapon to land in Denver, Colorado.” Dunford said this even though the scenario he envisions—a nuclear-weapons power being able to strike the mainland United States—is eminently imaginable. The United States has long deployed nuclear forces, missile-defense systems, and other military assets to prevent Russia and China from doing just that.
邓福德又说：“采取军事手段对朝鲜的核能力做出应对，这并不是‘不堪设想’的。对我来说，不堪设想的是允许有人获得这样一种能力，使他们能把核武器发射到科罗拉多州的丹佛市。”虽然邓福德这样说，然而他所展望的这种场景——一个能够打击美国本土的有核国家——已经很是可以设想了。美国长久以来四处部署核军力、导弹防御系统和其他军事资产，就是为了防止俄罗斯和中国这么做。
The Trump administration may simply be talking tough to spook North Korea and its ally, China, into making concessions. “If I were China, I would believe [Trump] too, and do something about pressuring the North Korean government to roll back its nuclear-weapons program,” Graham said on Tuesday. The threat of military force seems more credible if the U.S. government signals it is so unwilling to live with North Korea as a nuclear power that it is willing to invite the greatest human catastrophe in living memory. But what happens if North Korea calls America’s bluff?
特朗普政府或许只是在虚张声势，好吓唬朝鲜和它的盟友中国，逼他们让步。格雷厄姆周二还表示：“如果我是中国，我就也会相信（特朗普），然后采取行动对朝鲜政府施压，让它中止核武器项目。”当美国政府发出信号，表示与其忍受有核朝鲜，宁可引发有生之年最大的人间惨剧时，军事威胁确实会显得更加可信一些，可如果朝鲜看穿了要美国摊牌，到时候又该怎么办？
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