今年早些时候，德国总理弗里德里希·梅尔茨访问白宫与唐纳德·特朗普举行了一场意义重大的会谈。在会谈期间，他邀请了一位居住在华盛顿的德国学者参加了一场私人晚宴。这位学者在学术界并不广为人知。
When the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, visited the White House earlier this year for a high-stakes meeting with Donald Trump, he invited a Washington-based German researcher little known outside expert circles to a private dinner.
莉安娜·菲克斯（Liana Fix）因在《外交事务》（Foreign Affairs）杂志上发表的一篇直言不讳的文章而引起了梅尔茨的注意。她在文章中警告称，如果德国成为“欧洲的下一个霸权国家”，其军事力量可能会令周边国家感到恐惧，并再次导致欧洲的分裂。这种担忧似乎有些牵强——毕竟自柏林墙倒塌以来已经过去了三十年；在那段时间里，爱好和平的德国逐渐削弱了自己的军事实力，一直以“文明国家”自居，并倡导军事克制的原则。
Liana Fix had caught his eye with a forthright essay in the journal Foreign Affairs warning of the perils of Germany becoming “Europe’s next hegemon”, whose military dominance may come to scare its neighbours and divide Europe once again. That concern might seem far-fetched after three decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall, during which a peace-loving reunited Germany let its armed forces wither and rust, prided itself on being a “civil power” and preached a gospel of military restraint.
然而，德国军备突然增加、人们对美国通过北约继续维护欧洲安全的意愿产生怀疑，以及极右翼政党“德国选择党”（AfD）在民意调查中领先的情况，重新引发了柏林周边国家（尤其是波兰和法国）的担忧。
Yet the combination of a sudden surge in German rearmament, growing doubts over the United States’ willingness to remain the guarantor of European security through Nato, and the rise of the far-right nationalist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, currently leading in opinion polls, has reignited old anxieties among Berlin’s neighbours, especially Poland and France.
莉安娜·菲克斯是一位历史学家，同时也是外交关系委员会（Council on Foreign Relations）的高级研究员。她将自己的观点写成了一本名为《德国的重新武装：战争的回归与幻想的终结》（Germany Rearmed: The Return of War and the End of Illusions）的著作。她在书中批判了许多错误的观念：不仅包括“经济相互依赖会使俄罗斯成为欧洲的友好伙伴”这一谬论（这一观点在俄罗斯全面入侵乌克兰后彻底破灭），还包括她所称的“西方世界的幻想”——这一幻想自1945年以来一直是德国身份认同和外交政策的核心。
Fix, a historian and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has built her argument into a timely and incisive book, Germany Rearmed: The Return of War and the End of Illusions. Among the fallen myths she skewers are not just the delusion that economic interdependence would make Russia a benign partner for Europe, which collapsed with Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but also the end of what she calls “the illusion of the west”, which had been central to Germany’s identity and foreign policy since 1945.
菲克斯在接受采访时对我说：“德国并不想脱离西方，但西方似乎正在抛弃德国，尤其是以美国为首的西方秩序。”
“It is not that Germany wants to leave the west, but the west seems to be abandoning Germany, in particular the US-led western order,” Fix told me in an interview.
为防止出现霸权主义倾向，她敦促柏林通过推动欧洲一体化来夯实其未来军事实力：具体举措包括通过发行联合国防债券为欧洲防务提供资金、推动欧洲各国军工产业一体化，以及进一步深化德国联邦国防军与欧洲武装力量的融合。
To guard against any hegemonic temptation, she urges Berlin to anchor its future military power in closer European unification by helping to finance European defence through joint defence bonds, embracing a Europeanisation of the continent’s national arms industries, and deepening the integration of the Bundeswehr into European armed forces.
目前尚无迹象表明，默茨正在采纳她的建议。默茨于今年4月发布了首份国防战略，承诺到2039年将德国打造为欧洲常规军事力量最强的国家。
There is little sign so far that Merz, whose first defence strategy, released in April, vowed to make Germany Europe’s strongest conventional army by 2039, is heeding her advice.
由于面临民众支持率低迷、经济停滞以及生活成本上涨等多重困境，这位保守派总理已排除发行欧元债券以资助欧洲防务的可能性。其政府还取消了两项与法国开展的大型军工合作项目——新一代战斗机和坦克的研发项目。上个月向议会报备的价值1233亿欧元的军备采购计划显示，绝大多数采购订单都流向了本国及美国军工企业，欧洲其他伙伴国家仅分得极少份额。
Struggling with unpopularity, economic stagnation and a rising cost of living, the conservative chancellor has ruled out issuing eurobonds to fund European defence. His government scrapped two big arms cooperation projects with France – a next-generation fighter aircraft and a tank. Planned arms purchases worth €123.3bn notified to parliament last month are overwhelmingly from national and US industries, with only scraps for European partners.
诚然，与法国不同，德国所有武装力量均隶属于北约；德国还邀请各盟国共同参与其“欧洲天空盾牌”防空反导计划。作为对乌援助力度最大的国家，德国不仅提供了大量资金与军事物资，还正与英国合作研发高精度打击武器。此外，德国还在立陶宛部署了一个旅，这是自1945年以来德国首次在境外进行永久性军事部署，旨在协助保护欧洲东部边境安全。
To be sure, all Berlin’s armed forces are committed to Nato, unlike France’s, and it has invited allies to join its European Sky Shield air and missile defence programme. Germany is the biggest donor of financial and military assistance to Ukraine. It is working with the UK on deep precision strike weapons. And it has stationed a brigade in Lithuania to help protect Europe’s eastern flank in the first permanent deployment outside its territory since 1945.
事实上，军工领域的民族主义倾向绝非德国独有。法国与英国同样极力保护本国军工产业。欧盟防务专员安德里乌斯·库比柳斯则指出，受欧盟条约中的安全例外条款庇护，高达80%的欧洲防务采购均通过直接发包给本国主要军工承包商的方式完成，并未经过公开竞标程序。
Defence industrial nationalism is by no means confined to Germany. France and the UK are equally protective of their national arms makers. The EU’s defence commissioner, Andrius Kubilius, laments that up to 80% of European defence purchases are made by direct awards with national prime contractors without a competitive tender, exploiting a security exemption in the EU treaty.
德国重整军备恰逢汽车、化工和机械等核心制造业陷入严重衰退，这成为了“购买国货”的额外理由。然而，曾经处于东西方对抗前线的柏林，如今已有了中欧盟友作为缓冲地带，理应有兴趣帮助他们投资于自身的国防。从实际角度来看，帮助朋友和邻国在无人机和导弹抵达德国之前将其拦截，远比等到它们飞临柏林和法兰克福上空再将其击落要明智得多。
The fact that German rearmament coincides with a severe slump in core manufacturing industries such as cars, chemicals and machinery is an extra reason to “buy national”. But Berlin, once on the frontline of east-west confrontation, is now cushioned by a buffer zone of central European allies and should have an interest in helping them invest in their own defence. For practical reasons, it’s better to help equip friends and neighbours to intercept drones and missiles before they reach Germany rather than waiting to shoot them all down over Berlin and Frankfurt.
菲克斯（Fix）的观点是正确的：鉴于德国黑暗的历史及其在欧洲中部的分量，德国必须比其他国家付出更多努力，以消除邻国的顾虑，并将自身的重整军备融入共同的欧洲工业、政治和军事结构之中。正如蒂莫西·加顿·阿什（Timothy Garton Ash）在《卫报》中所言，这正是赫尔穆特·科尔（Helmut Kohl）一代人前通过将德国统一锚定在共同的欧洲货币体系中所实现的成就。
Fix is right to argue that because of its dark history and its weight in the middle of Europe, Germany must do more than others to reassure its neighbours and to embed its rearmament in common European industrial, political and military structures. As Timothy Garton Ash has argued in the Guardian, that is what Helmut Kohl achieved a generation ago by anchoring German reunification in a common European currency.
否则，关于德国力量及其政治用途的问题迟早会卷土重来，尤其是如果反对援助乌克兰并主张退出欧盟的亲俄政党德国选择党（AfD）在德国选举中继续扩大势力的话。
Otherwise, the question of German power and its political uses is bound to return sooner or later, especially if the Russia-friendly AfD, which opposes assistance for Ukraine and advocates withdrawal from the EU, continues to gain ground in German elections.
“德国问题并没有消失，”菲克斯对我说道，“它消失的含义是，一个军国主义的德国不会在中央集权政府下死灰复燃。但德国问题也可能仅仅是一个关于主导权和平衡的问题。而不幸的是，我们必须重新审视这种思考。”
“The German question is not dead,” Fix told me. “It’s dead in the sense that a militaristic Germany will not re-emerge under a centralised government. But the German question can also just be a question of dominance and of balance. And this is the thinking we unfortunately have to revive.”
保罗·泰勒（Paul Taylor）是欧洲政策中心的高级访问研究员。
Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre