他们是否在坟墓里难以安息？随着唐纳德·特朗普顽固地纵容弗拉基米尔·普京对乌克兰的侵略，你可能会想象，美国历史上所有最受尊崇的战略家们看到这一幕必定会感到惊愕。但别那么肯定。
Are they turning in their graves? As Donald Trump doggedly indulges Vladimir Putin’s aggression against Ukraine, you might imagine that all of the most venerable strategists in American history would surely be dismayed by this spectacle. But do not be so certain.
至少有一位已故的美国外交界泰斗，曾对早些时候对乌克兰的入侵表现出同样的纵容态度。这位前国务卿兼国家安全顾问也倾向于将俄罗斯扩张主义归咎于普京以外的所有人；事实上，他甚至将乌克兰的苦难归咎于他自己国家的领导人。
At least one grand old man of US diplomacy, now deceased, showed an equal willingness to indulge an earlier invasion of Ukraine. This former secretary of state and national security adviser also preferred to blame everyone except Putin for Russian expansionism; in fact, he even blamed Ukraine’s agony on the leaders of his own country.
在他看来，乌克兰“在司法管辖上属于俄罗斯”，不应被允许决定自己的同盟关系。他认为，普京酷似费奥多尔·陀思妥耶夫斯基小说中的人物。正确的做法是美国应该寻求同他建立“特殊关系”。而这位巨擘是谁？亨利·基辛格。
Ukraine, in his view, was “jurisdictionally Russian” and should not be allowed to decide its own alliances. Putin, he believed, resembled a character from a Fyodor Dostoevsky novel. The right course was for America to seek a “special relationship” with him. And who was this titan? Henry Kissinger.
近十年前，当我在英国外交部工作时，我陪同时任外交大臣的鲍里斯·约翰逊前往纽约拜访了基辛格。那是2017年3月，普京对乌克兰的战争已经打了三年，他曾在2014年夺取克里米亚并入侵顿巴斯。到这次会面时，普京的猛烈攻事已经夺去了1万名乌克兰人的生命，并迫使160万流离失所。
Almost a decade ago, when I was working at the Foreign Office, I accompanied Boris Johnson, then foreign secretary, to see Kissinger in New York. This was March 2017, and Putin had been waging war against Ukraine for three years, having grabbed Crimea and invaded the Donbass in 2014. By the time of this meeting, Putin’s onslaught had already killed 10,000 Ukrainians and driven 1.6 million from their homes.
然而，在那个春天的早晨，我听着当时93岁的基辛格巧妙地淡化了普京对这场悲剧所负的责任。
Yet, on that spring morning, I listened as Kissinger, then 93, artfully minimised Putin’s responsibility for this tragedy.
“普京是一个陀思妥耶夫斯基式的文学人物，他试图维护他那由自己诠释的祖国尊严，”基辛格用那熟悉的沙哑男中音解释道，“我持有少数派观点，我更担心的是一个解体的俄罗斯，而不是一个获胜的俄罗斯。”
“Putin is a Dostoevsky character who is trying to preserve his version of the dignity of his country,” explained Kissinger in that familiar gravelly baritone. “I have the minority view that I’m more worried about a disintegrating Russia than a victorious Russia.”
他接着说道：“你必须将乌克兰视为对环境的一种反应。他（普京）的战斗方式很像俄罗斯人，那就是残暴。我怪罪奥巴马的那些手下，他们与他没有任何接触，并以居高临下的态度对待他。”当特朗普将乌克兰的悲剧归咎于弗拉基米尔·泽连斯基、乔·拜登或欧洲——或者除普京之外的任何人时——他正追随着基辛格自2017年以来的思想足迹。
He went on: “You have to regard Ukraine as a reaction to circumstances. He [Putin] fought like a Russian, which is brutal. I blame the Obama people who had no contact with him and treated him with condescension.”When Trump blames Ukraine’s tragedy on Volodymyr Zelensky or Joe Biden or Europe – or anyone except Putin – he is following in the intellectual footsteps of Kissinger from 2017.
在曼哈顿的那天，我记得基辛格曾自豪地说过，他“与普京会面过很多次”。他回忆起了一次关于柏林墙倒塌以及1989年在米哈伊尔·戈尔巴乔夫领导下苏联在欧洲权力崩溃的具体对话。
On that day in Manhattan, I remember Kissinger’s pride in saying that he had “met Putin many times”. He recalled one particular conversation about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Soviet power in Europe under Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989.
“我问普京：‘为什么戈尔巴乔夫不考虑从东欧进行有协商的撤军，而是白白把它送给了我们？’他认为这是一句非常深刻的话。他后来经常提及这一点，”基辛格带着清晰可闻的满足感说道。
“I asked Putin: ‘Why did Gorbachev not consider a negotiated withdrawal from Eastern Europe instead of giving it to us for nothing?’ He considered this a remark of great profundity. He mentioned this often later,” said Kissinger with audible satisfaction.
普京确实经常提及这一点——这也难怪。基辛格竟然将那些刚刚赢得自由的主权欧洲国家——波兰、匈牙利以及当时的捷克斯洛伐克等国——仅仅视为一个大国可以将其拱手让给另一个大国的谈判筹码，并且如果未能索要代价就会错过一个契机，这一事实表明，他的思维与普京完全不谋而合。
Putin did indeed mention this often – and no wonder. The fact that Kissinger considered the sovereign European countries which had just won their freedom – states like Poland, Hungary and what was then Czechoslovakia – as mere subjects for bargaining which one Great Power might hand to another, and miss a trick if it failed to demand a price, showed that his thinking was in complete harmony with Putin’s.
我后来读到，基辛格在20世纪90年代与普京的第一次对话中就曾给出过这样的见解，当时普京担任圣彼得堡副市长。普京在2000年他成为总统时出版的访谈录《第一人称》中提到了这一点。“我把我的想法告诉了他，”普京说，“我现在向你重复一遍：基辛格是对的。”他当然认为基辛格是对的。小国可以由大国讨价还价来决定命运的观点——而戈尔巴乔夫本该坚持就半个欧洲的命运进行谈判——这一定会让他听起来悦耳动听。
I read later that Kissinger had offered this wisdom during his very first conversation with Putin, in the 1990s, when the latter was deputy mayor of St Petersburg. Putin refers to it in First Person, a book of interviews published when he became president in 2000. “I told him what I thought,” says Putin, “and I will repeat it to you right now: Kissinger was right.”You bet he thought that Kissinger was right. The idea that small countries can be haggled over by bigger ones – and Gorbachev should have insisted on bargaining about the fate of half of Europe – would have been music to his ears.
因此，普京认为基辛格值得拉拢和恭维，也就不足为奇了。毕竟，说不定哪天这位美国政治家就会为俄罗斯的侵略行径提出一套精致的辩护，比如说，向英国外交大臣提出。
So it is hardly surprising that Putin thought Kissinger was worth cultivating and flattering. One day, after all, the American statesman might offer a sophisticated apologia for Russian aggression to, well, the British Foreign Secretary, for example.
在2017年那个早晨，基辛格谈兴正浓，将乌克兰的悲剧归咎于北约东扩，将其扩大到了那些摆脱苏联控制的欧洲国家。
On that morning in 2017, Kissinger warmed to his theme and blamed Ukraine’s tragedy on Nato’s enlargement to include the European states that had broken free of the Soviet Union.
“一旦我们进入了俄罗斯领土——或者在管辖权上属于俄罗斯的领土——这就制造了一个问题，”基辛格说，“我曾赞成北约向卫星国扩张，但乌克兰对俄罗斯来说不是另一个国家。”他补充说，乌克兰应该“有自由同（西方）建立政治和经济联系，但不能建立军事同盟”。
“Once we went into Russian territory – or territory that was jurisdictionally Russian – then it created a problem,” said Kissinger. “I was in favour of Nato expansion in satellite states, but Ukraine is not another country to Russia.”Ukraine, he added, should be “free to have its political and economic association [with the West] but not a military alliance”.
至于俄罗斯领导人的意图，基辛格说：“普京想要与美国建立特殊关系。”他觉得尽管两个月前特朗普完成了第一次总统就职典礼，但这不太可能实现。“美国有那么多抱有敌意的势力，”基辛格以告诫的语气说，“如果这件事发生了，我倒也不介意。”
As for the intentions of Russia’s leader, Kissinger said: “Putin wants a special relationship with the United States.”He felt this was unlikely despite Trump’s first inauguration as president two months earlier. “There are so many forces in America that are so hostile,” said Kissinger in tones of admonition. “I would not mind if it happened.
就这样，会晤结束了，我离开时心想，基辛格的话完全合乎德国人当时已经称之为“普京理解者”（Putin-Versteher）的公认旋律中的每一个音符。
So the meeting ended, and I went away thinking that Kissinger had sounded every note in the approved melody of what the Germans were already calling Putin-Versteher, or “Putin-understanders”.
俄罗斯领导人是一个被误解的人物，他只想与美国交朋友。普京入侵乌克兰是北约或奥巴马或任何人的错，唯独不是那个真正下令发动攻势之人的错。
The Russian leader was a misunderstood figure who only wanted to be friends with the United States. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was the fault of Nato or Obama or anyone except the man who had actually ordered the onslaught.
而唯一明智的解决方案是让普京和一位美国总统达成协议，然后给像乌克兰这样尴尬的欧洲国家下达“撤离令”。毕竟，乌克兰“在管辖权上属于俄罗斯”。
And the only sensible solution was for Putin and an American president to reach an agreement and then give an awkward European country like Ukraine its marching orders. After all, Ukraine was “jurisdictionally Russian” anyway.
如今，这些已成为特朗普对普京政策的基本基石。但就在九年多前，基辛格凭借其全部权威就已如此描述。
Today, those have become the essential foundations of Trump’s policy towards Putin. But they were described by Kissinger with all his authority just over nine years ago.
2022年2月俄罗斯对乌克兰发动第二次全面入侵时，基辛格仍健在。公平地说，他谴责了这场侵略，到2023年去世时，享年100岁，他已改变观点，表示乌克兰毕竟应该被允许加入北约。
Kissinger was still alive in February 2022 when Russia’s second and full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. In fairness, he condemned this aggression and, by the time of his death in 2023, aged 100, he had changed his view and said that Ukraine should be allowed into Nato after all.
然而回溯2017年，基辛格无意中为今天的特朗普提供了智力上的基本原理，使其得以与普京联手，协助并教唆肢解乌克兰。
Back in 2017, however, Kissinger was unwittingly providing the intellectual rationale for Trump, today, to join hands with Putin to aid and abet the dismemberment of Ukraine.