Charles Dickens observed of revolutionary France that it was the best of tim

游客2023-12-22  8

问题     Charles Dickens observed of revolutionary France that it was the best of times and the worst of times, the spring of hope and the winter of despair. More recently, the US National Intelligence Council borrowed from A Tale of Two Cities for the title page in a report about how the world may look in 2030.
    You can see why the authors alighted on Dickens’s observation. The tumultuous upheavals in the international system can stir optimism and pessimism in equal measure. The great prosperity that globalization has brought to the east and south sits alongside the risks and insecurities that accompany the passing of an old order.
    The first instinct is to celebrate the way globalization lifts hundreds of millions of people out of poverty; the second to fret whether the rebalancing of global power will usher in a new era of might is right in international relations. Even Europeans, who have come to look at the world through normative lenses, are beginning to think that soft power may sometimes need a hard centre.
    The cold war had its drawbacks—not least the threat of nuclear incineration. The big worries now flow from uncertainty. The uncertainty makes it tempting to turn for advice to the looking glass of history. After all, history, in Alexis de Tocqueville’s metaphor, is a picture gallery stocked with a handful of originals and many more copies.

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答案     查尔斯-狄更斯在评述大革命时期的法国时这样写道:这是最好的时代,这是最坏的时代,这是希望之春,这是失望之冬。最近,美国国家情报委员会借用《双城记》中的这句话,印在一份其展望2030年世界的报告的扉页上。
    你能明白为什么(报告的)作者会(在不经意间)采用狄更斯的说法。国际体系中发生的各种动荡既可以激发人们的乐观情绪,也可以同样引发人们的悲观情绪。全球化一边给东方和南方带来巨大的繁荣,一边伴随旧秩序的渐渐消亡也带来了风险和不安全感。
    人们的第一个直觉是赞美全球化使数亿人摆脱贫困;第二个直觉是担忧全球力量的再平衡是否/会不会在国际关系中带来一个新的强权时代。即使对于已经会通过正常眼光来看待整个世界的欧洲人来说,他们也开始相信软实力有时可能也需要有一个强硬的核心。
    冷战固然有它的问题——更不用说威胁要用核武器毁灭一切。现在,最大的担心来自于不确定性。目前的不确定性不由得让人们想从历史的镜子中寻求帮助。毕竟,历史——借用托克维尔德(Alexis de Tocqueville)的隐喻——是一个画廊,里面原作很少,复制品很多。

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