3月，在雅典的一场晚宴上，时任美国驻希腊大使金伯利·吉尔福伊尔发表了一番将傲慢与威胁优雅结合在一起的言论。据《纽约时报》和《华盛顿邮报》报道，吉尔福伊尔提及罗马尼亚执政联盟的麻烦，并在一众希腊政客面前，为该联盟即将瓦解揽下功劳：“我们想对任何国家这么做都行，”她说，“我们在这儿也能这么做。”
At a dinner in Athens in March, Kimberly Guilfoyle, then the U.S. ambassador to Greece, made a statement that elegantly combined arrogance with menace. According to and the, Guilfoyle referred to the troubles of Romania’s governing coalition and, with Greek politicians in the room, took credit for its impending collapse: “We can do that to any country we want,” she said. “We can do that here.”
吉尔福伊尔随后因另一原因身败名裂：《纽约时报》还获得了她发给一位共和党捐赠者的信息截图，要求对方往她的美国运通账户存入10万美元。她和她的律师否认一切，包括晚宴上的谈话内容，但截图证据确凿，即便是特朗普政府也难以容忍。她辞职了。
Guilfoyle was subsequently disgraced for a different reason: The also obtained screenshots of messages she had sent to a Republican donor, asking him to deposit $100,000 in her American Express account. She and her lawyer denied everything, including the dinner conversation, but the screenshots were too much even for the Trump administration. She resigned.
如果美国人更多是因她显而易见的贪婪而愤怒，欧洲人则因她的政治狂言而震惊。吉尔福伊尔似乎确实认为，她能影响民主选举产生的欧洲各国政府的联盟政治，这些国家全都是美国的盟友和北约成员。更关键的是，她并非唯一一个试图这么做的特朗普政府官员。
If Americans were more exercised by her apparent greed, Europeans were appalled by her political boasts. Guilfoyle did seem to think she could influence the coalition politics of democratically elected European governments, all of them U.S. allies and members of NATO. More to the point, she isn’t the only Trump-administration official who has tried to do exactly that.
美国人曾将民主作为一种政治制度在欧洲推广，并在这种共识下，接受所有中间偏左和中间偏右的民选政客为合法。现任政府及其周边的商业精英正在推行另一套政策。在某些情况下，他们推动自认为与“让美国再次伟大”运动在意识形态上一致的政党的利益，其中包括一些公开亲俄的政党。其他一些欧洲政界人物似乎获得了华盛顿的青睐（或正试图获得），因为他们能推动政府核心圈子中某些人看好的商业利益。
Americans once promoted democracy in Europe as a political system, and under that general understanding accepted all elected politicians of the center-left and center-right as legitimate. This administration and its adjacent business elite are now pursuing a different policy. In some cases, they promote the interests of parties that they believe to be ideologically aligned with the MAGA movement, including some that are openly pro-Russian. Other European political figures seem to have gained Washington’s blessing (or are trying to gain it) because they can promote commercial interests favored by someone close to the administration.
据报道，至少在三起案例中，美国人试图劝说民选的欧洲领导人抛弃现有的联盟伙伴，转而组建更合白宫心意的新联盟。
In at least three cases, Americans have reportedly tried to persuade elected European leaders to dump their current coalition partners in favor of new ones more to the White House’s liking.
最清楚的案例在波兰。我嫁给了波兰外交部长拉德克·西科尔斯基，他的政党是现任执政联盟中最大的成员。但我并非透露什么特殊信息；波兰媒体，包括极右翼媒体，已广泛报道，特朗普总统曾强烈暗示联盟中另外两个党之一的领导人应当倒戈。
The clearest case is in Poland. I am married to Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, whose political party is the largest member of the current ruling coalition. But I am not revealing any special information; Polish media, including far-right media, have widely reported that President Trump strongly hinted to the leader of one of the coalition’s two other parties that he should switch sides.
这位政客是国防部长瓦迪斯瓦夫·科西尼亚克-卡梅什，他是小型农业政党波兰人民党的领袖。今年春天，他前往华盛顿特区，出席一名美军士兵的荣誉勋章颁发仪式，该士兵曾在阿富汗救下一名波兰士兵的性命。就在该活动结束后——该活动由与“让美国再次伟大”（MAGA）运动有联系的波兰活动人士组织——科西尼亚克-卡梅什被总统拉到一边，据报道特朗普告诉他，如果他退出政府联盟，在华盛顿会受到更高的评价：他应当与波兰民族主义和极右翼政党做交易。
The politician in question is Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, the leader of the small, agrarian Polish People’s Party. He was in Washington, D.C., in the spring to attend a Medal of Honor ceremony for an American soldier who had saved the life of a Polish soldier in Afghanistan. Just after the event, which was organized by Polish activists with MAGA contacts, Kosiniak-Kamysz was taken aside by the president, who reportedly told him that he would be much better regarded in Washington if he left the government coalition: He should do a deal with Polish-nationalist and far-right parties instead.
他没有遵从特朗普的建议。（曾向白宫请求就该事件置评，但截至发稿尚未收到回复。）这并非特朗普政府首次在波兰问题上表露倾向。去年波兰总统大选竞选期间，极右翼候选人卡罗尔·纳夫罗茨基访问华盛顿，特朗普为其背书。纳夫罗茨基获胜后，特朗普反复宣称该胜利归功于自己，正如他和随行人员为拉丁美洲的选举胜利邀功一样。
He didn’t follow Trump’s advice. ( requested comment about the incident from the White House but has not yet received a response.) This was not the first time the Trump administration had made its sympathies in Poland clear. During the Polish presidential-election campaign last year, the far-right candidate Karol Nawrocki visited Washington, where Trump endorsed his bid. After Nawrocki won, Trump repeatedly took credit for the victory, just as he and his entourage have taken credit for electoral victories in Latin America.
尽管如此，这个最新的故事感觉截然不同。一位美国总统要求一位盟国政客更换联盟？自苏联领导人决定由哪些波兰共产党人执政以来，波兰从未发生过类似之事。
Nevertheless, this latest story feels different. An American president asking a politician in an allied foreign country to change coalitions? Nothing like it has happened in Poland since the days when Soviet leaders decided which Polish Communists should rule.
吉尔福伊尔没有特朗普那样的权力，但作为他的大使，她似乎对罗马尼亚政治的内部细节异常熟悉，尽管她被派驻在雅典。3月底，她出席了布加勒斯特一场商业会议的小组讨论，谈到了“垂直天然气走廊”——一个连接希腊、罗马尼亚、乌克兰以及东南欧其他国家的管道系统。尽管她此前并无天然气基础设施方面的背景，但在美国驻希腊大使馆任职期间，她成了这一项目的热心支持者。
Guilfoyle doesn’t have Trump’s power, but as his ambassador, she seemed unusually versed in the internal details of Romanian politics, even though she was posted to Athens. At the end of March, she appeared on a panel at a business conference in Bucharest and spoke about the “vertical gas corridor,” a pipeline system linking Greece, Romania, Ukraine, and other countries in southeastern Europe. Although she had no previous background in gas infrastructure, she became an enthusiast during her stay at the U.S. embassy in Greece.
事实上，为在管道系统中拥有利益的希腊公司Aktor集团游说的说客克里斯托斯·马拉法措斯经常与吉尔福伊尔同行，据称频繁到“一些外国官员误以为他是她的幕僚长”。Aktor的首席执行官也出席了布加勒斯特的活动，就在吉尔福伊尔之后发言。
Indeed, Christos Marafatsos, a lobbyist for Aktor Group, a Greek company with interests in the pipeline system, frequently traveled with Guilfoyle, so much so, according to the , that “some foreign officials mistook him for her chief of staff.”The CEO of Aktor was also at the Bucharest event, speaking just after Guilfoyle.
在她的活动期间，吉尔福伊尔不仅主张建设该基础设施，还主张购买美国的液化天然气；Aktor在这两件事上都有利益。时任罗马尼亚总理伊利耶·博洛让是该管道项目的支持者，他最近证实了这一点。但他无意让罗马尼亚受制于一份天然气采购合同，既因为价格不具竞争力，也因为罗马尼亚正准备出口自己的天然气。
And during her event, Guilfoyle advocated for not just the construction of the infrastructure, but also the purchase of American liquefied natural gas; Aktor has an interest in both matters. Ilie Bolojan, the Romanian prime minister at the time, was a supporter of the pipeline project, he recently confirmed. But he was not interested in locking Romania into a gas-purchase contract, both because the price was not competitive and because Romania is gearing up to export its own gas.
其他人则不然。在同一次行程中，吉尔福伊尔还被看到（并被拍摄到）在布加勒斯特一家昂贵的餐厅与博洛让的执政联盟伙伴之一、罗马尼亚社会民主党领袖索林·格林代亚努以及其他几位罗马尼亚政客共进晚餐。在场者中有一位前能源部长，他对购买美国液化天然气感兴趣，据报道曾致信总理和总统，呼吁的正是此事。
Others were. On the same trip, Guilfoyle was also seen (and filmed) having dinner at an expensive restaurant in Bucharest with one of Bolojan’s coalition partners, Sorin Grindeanu, the leader of the Romanian Social Democratic Party, and several other Romanian politicians. One of those present, a former energy minister, interested in buying American LNG and reportedly wrote to the prime minister and the president, calling for exactly that.
在接下来的几个月里，格林迪亚努的社会民主党将退出执政联盟，然后与罗马尼亚极右翼政党联手支持对博洛扬的自由中间派政府的不信任投票，迫使他辞职。格林迪亚努坚决否认吉尔福伊尔或任何其他美国人影响了他的决定。罗马尼亚极右翼领导人乔治·西蒙是一位亲俄政治家，他曾试图与特朗普的“让美国再次伟大”运动的影响者建立联系，他形容自己是吉尔福伊尔的“好朋友”，但也否认她影响了这一决定。尽管如此，一些罗马尼亚人认为她确实影响了这一决定，这并不难理解。
Over the next couple of months, Grindeanu’s Social Democrats would leave the ruling coalition and then join the Romanian far-right party in supporting a vote of no confidence in Bolojan’s liberal-centrist government, forcing him to resign. Grindeanu has denied emphatically that Guilfoyle or any other American influenced his decision. The leader of the Romanian far right, George Simion, a pro-Russian politician who has sought to build relations with MAGA influencers close to Trump, described himself as a “good friend” of Guilfoyle but also denied that she had affected the decision. Still, it’s not hard to see why some Romanians think she did.
罗马尼亚政府垮台的一个显著特点是，它是由两个政党策划的，一个表面上是中左翼，另一个是极右翼。通过合作，他们打破了所谓的“防火墙”，即长期以来将同情法西斯主义的政党和领导人排除在主流政治之外的决心。德国也存在同样的防火墙，保守的基督教民主联盟与中左翼的社会民主党作为初级伙伴共同执政。
One notable feature of the Romanian government’s collapse was its orchestration by two political parties, one ostensibly on the center-left, the other of the far right. By working together, they broke a so-called firewall, a long-standing determination to exclude political parties and leaders sympathetic to fascism from mainstream politics. The same firewall exists in Germany, where the conservative Christian Democratic Union runs the government with the center-left Social Democrats as a junior partner.
一些德国政界人士认为，特朗普政府希望基民盟打破防火墙，转而与极右翼的德国选择党（AfD）结成联盟。德国选择党公开亲俄，其一些政界人士与新纳粹有牵连。对于许多基督教民主党人来说，作为一个在战后时期成立、以对抗极端主义为宗旨的保守党派，与德国选择党结盟几乎是与其价值观背道而驰的。
Some German politicians believe that the Trump administration wants the CDU to break the firewall and form a coalition with the far-right AfD (Alternative for Germany) instead. AfD is openly pro-Russian, and some of its politicians have had neo-Nazi affiliations. For many Christian Democrats, members of a conservative party founded in the postwar era as a bulwark against extremism, joining with AfD is an almost unimaginable break with their values.
特朗普没有直接接触基民盟领导人，而是利用他的“真实社交”账号为选择党站台，公开为该党在近期地方选举中的胜利叫好：“他们正在崛起，”他写道，“而且不会再忍气吞声了！”埃隆·马斯克是本届政府的亲密盟友，也是共和党最重要的金主，他在最近一次联邦议院选举前以线上方式出席了一场选择党活动。由于马斯克的X算法赋予其账号发布的帖子极大的权重，这相当于为选择党做了一次大规模免费宣传。
Rather than approaching CDU leaders directly, Trump has used his Truth Social account to promote AfD, publicly cheering the party’s victory in recent regional elections: “THEY ARE ON THE RISE,” he wrote, “and not going to take it anymore!”Elon Musk, the administration’s close ally and the Republican Party’s most significant donor, virtually attended an AfD event before the most recent Bundestag election. Because Musk’s X algorithm gives enormous weight to posts from his account, this amounted to a large, free promotion for AfD.
几位德国政界人士提到了另一起事件，我此前曾对此做过报道。今年早些时候，一群来自不同党派的议员来到华盛顿，在五角大楼和国务院安排了会面。据基民盟一位资深成员说，他们被告知只有选择党和基民盟的代表才能进入这些大楼；属于执政联盟成员的社会民主党议员不被允许进入。其他人也一样。基民盟成员干脆拒绝前往。该党领导层将这一姿态理解为向他们传递的一个信息：。
Several German politicians mentioned another incident, on which I have previously reported. Earlier this year, a group of legislators from various political parties came to Washington and arranged meetings at the Pentagon and State Department. According to a senior member of the CDU, they were told that only representatives from AfD and the CDU could enter the buildings; members of the Social Democratic Party, who are part of the government coalition, were not allowed. Neither were others. The CDU members declined to go at all. The party leadership understood the gesture as a message to them: .
这一姿态表明了特朗普政府对德国民主制度大概率的真实蔑视。但它也暴露了美国外交政策中的一个深刻矛盾。一方面，美国官员鼓励欧洲人建立自己的军事力量。去年夏天，美国国防部副部长埃尔布里奇·科尔比在北约总部发表讲话时说，未来美国的盟友应当“对欧洲的常规防御承担主要责任”。德国、波兰和罗马尼亚都是认真对待这一要求的国家。
This gesture demonstrated what is probably the Trump administration’s authentic contempt for German democracy. But it also revealed a deep contradiction in U.S. foreign policy. On the one hand, American officials encourage Europeans to build up their own military forces. Speaking at NATO headquarters last summer, Elbridge Colby, an undersecretary of defense, said that in the future, American allies should be “taking primary responsibility for Europe's conventional defense.”Germany, Poland, and Romania are all countries that have taken this request seriously.
但另一方面，同一个政府却在直接助推那些反对国防开支、亲近俄罗斯、或不承诺保卫欧洲、不尊重欧洲边界的政党和领导人的声势。德国选择党（AfD）联合主席魏德尔反对向乌克兰提供军事援助，也主张反对与其他欧洲国家开展国防合作。该党另一位联合主席克鲁帕拉呼吁驱逐驻德美军。罗马尼亚极右翼领导人西米翁过去曾主张恢复罗马尼亚1940年前的边界，其中包括现属乌克兰的领土。
But on the other hand, the same administration is directly promoting the fortunes of political parties and leaders who oppose defense spending, who favor Russia, or who do not promise to defend Europe or respect European borders. Alice Weidel, AfD’s co-leader, opposes offering military aid to Ukraine and also argues against defense cooperation with other European countries. The party’s co-chair Tino Chrupalla has called for the expulsion of American troops from Germany. George Simion, the leader of the Romanian far right, has in the past advocated for the restoration of Romania’s pre-1940 borders, including territory now in Ukraine.
波兰极右翼近来开始重复那种在华盛顿和莫斯科都很流行的反欧洲、反乌克兰叙事，削弱了对统一欧洲防务的支持。
The Polish far right has lately begun repeating anti-European and anti-Ukrainian narratives of a kind that are now popular in both Washington and Moscow, undermining support for a unified European defense.
实际上，该政府在推动欧洲重整军备和欧洲防务合作的同时，又在推动那些反对重整军备或防务合作的政客。在整个民主欧洲，公众和政客都感到困惑。曾经，欧洲人普遍认为美国推崇的是民主——这一政治制度，而非特定政党——并坚决反对俄罗斯及其他威权政权。如今看来，特朗普政府官员似乎颠倒了剧本。其中一些人，如吉尔福伊尔，似乎对商业交易的兴趣大于安全。
In effect, the administration is promoting European rearmament and European defense cooperation while simultaneously promoting politicians who oppose rearmament or defense cooperation. Across democratic Europe, the public and the politicians are confused. Once, Europeans generally believed that America promoted democracy—the political system, not particular parties—and staunchly opposed Russia and other authoritarian regimes. Now, it seems, Trump-administration officials have flipped the script. Some of them, like Guilfoyle, seem more interested in commercial deals than in security.
另一些人似乎在追求危险的目标。美国是想让欧洲人建立庞大军队——然后打碎欧洲机构，把这些军队交给民族主义者？这种政策在20世纪曾被尝试过，结果惨败收场。
Others seem to be pursuing dangerous goals. Does America want Europeans to build large armies—and then to break up European institutions and hand those armies over to nationalists? That policy was tried in the 20th century. It failed quite dramatically.