美国与沙特同盟为何出现裂痕
In February 1945 President Franklin Roosevelt, on his way home from the Yalta summit with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, met King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia aboard the USS Quincy, anchored in the Great Bitter Lake midway up the Suez Canal. Having settled the dispositions of postwar Europe, Roosevelt laid a foundation stone of the postwar Middle East. The US, in essence, would guarantee the security and integrity of Ibn Saud’s Arabian kingdom — united by the sword in 52 battles over 30 years — while the Saudis would guarantee the free flow of oil at reasonable prices.
1945年2月，美国总统富兰克林•罗斯福(Franklin Roosevelt)与温斯顿•丘吉尔(Winston Churchill)和约瑟夫•斯大林(Joseph Stalin)在雅尔塔举行峰会后的回国途中，在停泊在苏伊士运河大苦湖的美国海军“昆西号”(USS Quincy)战舰上会晤了沙特阿拉伯国王阿卜杜勒•阿齐兹•伊本•沙特(Abdul Aziz ibn Saud)。已经解决战后欧洲安排问题的罗斯福，为战后的中东格局奠定了一块基石。大体来说，美国将保证伊本•沙特统治的这个阿拉伯王国（用了30年、历经52场战争才用武力统一）的安全和完整，而沙特将保证以合理价格输出石油。
As US President Barack Obama arrives on a valedictory visit to Saudi Arabia this week, that 70-year-old bargain looks frayed by fractious relations with a ruling House of Saud that is coming under unpredictable new management. The shale-based energy revolution meanwhile shows the potential to liberate the US from dependence on Saudi and Gulf oil. Mr Obama’s main foreign policy achievement, the nuclear deal struck last year between international powers and Iran, is abhorrent to Saudi Arabia, whose virulently sectarian Wahhabi interpretation of Sunni Islam abominates the Shia Islam of Iran and its Arab network of co-religionists from Baghdad to Beirut.
在美国总统巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)对沙特阿拉伯展开卸任前的最后一次访问之际，美国与如今由不可预测的新掌门人执掌的沙特王室的紧张关系，让这一持续70年的协议出现裂痕。与此同时，基于页岩的能源革命显示出美国有能力摆脱对沙特和海湾国家石油的依赖。奥巴马的主要外交政策成就是国际大国与伊朗去年达成的核协议，而这为沙特阿拉伯所憎恨，该国瓦哈比(Wahhabi)教派对逊尼派伊斯兰教作出排他的宗派解释，对伊朗的什叶派伊斯兰以及遍布阿拉伯世界（从伊拉克到黎巴嫩）的什叶派网络充满憎恨。
Even when the Iran deal was only at an interim and fragile stage in 2013, the Saudis were so affronted they rejected a seat for which they had vigorously lobbied on the UN Security Council. But differences between Washington and Riyadh had been steadily accumulating — starting with the fact that it was mainly Saudi terrorists, on orders of the Saudi Osama bin Laden, who struck America on 9/11.
甚至在2013年伊朗核协议仅仅处于脆弱的临时阶段时，沙特阿拉伯就感觉深受冒犯，拒绝了该国此前大力争取的联合国安理会(UN Security Council)非常任理事国席位。但美国与沙特的分歧早就在逐步积累，这始于下列事实：2001年9月11日袭击美国的恐怖分子主要是沙特人，他们的头目奥萨马•本•拉登(Osama bin Laden)也是沙特人。
The Saudis could never reconcile themselves to the US-led invasion of Iraq, not because it toppled Saddam Hussein but because it led to Shia majority rule in an Arab country. When Hosni Mubarak was toppled by Egypt’s popular revolt in 2011, Riyadh accused Mr Obama of betraying a US ally. Saudi perceptions of US complacency in the face of Iran’s advances in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen are a grievance far outweighing western perceptions of Isis jihadism as the main threat in and from the Middle East. After the Iraqi city of Mosul fell to a lightning Isis offensive in 2014, even the late Prince Saud al-Faisal, the respected Saudi foreign minister, remonstrated with John Kerry, US secretary of state, that “Daesh [Isis] is our [Sunni] response to your support for the Da’wa” — the Tehran-aligned Shia Islamist ruling party of Iraq.
沙特阿拉伯永远不能忍受以美国为首的多国部队对伊拉克的入侵，不是因为这场入侵推翻了萨达姆•侯赛因(Saddam Hussein)，而是因为它导致占人口大多数的什叶派统治了一个阿拉伯国家。2011年，当埃及的民众抗议推翻胡斯尼•穆巴拉克(Hosni Mubarak)政权时，沙特阿拉伯谴责奥巴马背叛了美国的一个盟友。沙特阿拉伯认为美国在面对伊朗在伊拉克、叙利亚、黎巴嫩和也门的步步紧逼时无动于衷，由此产生的怨恨远远超过西方将“伊拉克和黎凡特伊斯兰国”(ISIS)的圣战主义视为中东内部以及来自中东的主要威胁。在2014年ISIS的闪电攻势导致伊拉克城市摩苏尔沦陷后，就连备受尊敬的沙特外长、已故的沙特•费萨尔亲王(Prince Saud Al-Faisal)也对美国国务卿约翰•克里(John Kerry)抱怨说：“ISIS是我们（逊尼派）对你们支持Da’wa（与德黑兰一鼻孔出气的伊拉克什叶派伊斯兰主义执政党）的回应”。
Mr Obama’s never-enthusiastic sentiments about the US-Saudi alliance, meanwhile, have become clearer after The Atlantic magazine published his candid thoughts last month. Obviously he sees Wahhabism as an ideology that fuels Islamist extremism worldwide and as a barrier blocking the Arab rendezvous with modernity.
与此同时，奥巴马从未对美国沙特同盟表现出热情，在《大西洋》杂志(The Atlantic)上月发表他的坦率看法后，这一点变得更为清楚了。显然，他把瓦哈比主义视为一种助燃全球伊斯兰极端主义的意识形态，以及一个阻碍阿拉伯世界现代化的障碍。
Alongside the international rapprochement with Iran, Mr Obama has long argued for a regional thaw and self-regulating balance of power between the Saudi and Iranian rivals. “The competition between the Saudis and the Iranians — which has helped to feed proxy wars and chaos in Syria and Iraq and Yemen — requires us to say to our friends as well as to the Iranians that they need to find an effective way to share the neighbourhood and institute some sort of cold peace,” he told The Atlantic.
在国际社会与伊朗关系和解的同时，奥巴马长期主张地区关系走向缓和，在沙特阿拉伯和伊朗的对手之间实现自我调整的实力平衡。他告诉《大西洋》杂志：“沙特阿拉伯与伊朗的竞争（这帮助造成了叙利亚、伊拉克和也门的代理人战争和混乱）要求我们对我们的朋友以及伊朗人说，他们需要找到一种有效方式共享这个地区，建立起某种冷和平。”
But any such regional détente remains anathema to Saudi Arabia, in which real power is now wielded by Mohammed bin Salman, deputy crown prince and 30-year-old son of the ageing King Salman — the first time the reins have passed from the sons of Ibn Saud to the third generation.
但任何地区关系的缓和都是沙特阿拉伯所憎恨的，如今沙特的实权由该国副王储、年迈的沙特国王萨勒曼(King Salman)的30岁儿子穆罕默德•本•萨勒曼(Mohammed bin Salman，见上图)掌握，这是大权首次由伊本•沙特的儿子们传到第三代。
The fiasco at last weekend’s oil summit in Qatar, when on Mohammed bin Salman’s instructions the Saudis tore up a production freeze deal they had largely devised because an Iran emerging from sanctions refused to be part of it, demonstrated beyond doubt that the kingdom’s visceral animosity towards its Shia rival trumps economic self-interest.
在上周末的卡塔尔石油峰会上，遵照穆罕默德•本•萨勒曼的命令，沙特阿拉伯撕毁了本已基本定稿的产量冻结协议，就因为刚刚解除制裁的伊朗拒绝参与。这一尴尬结局清楚地表明，沙特阿拉伯对什叶派对手的刻骨仇恨高于经济利益。
However fulsome and emollient Mr Obama manages to be on this visit, and however much he summons up the bonds uniting the US and the Wahhabi kingdom, all the way back to Roosevelt and Ibn Saud, the Saudis are simply waiting for him to leave office — albeit as anxious as anyone about the bewildering contest to replace him.
不管奥巴马在访问期间表现出多么恭维和圆滑，不管他在多大程度上重提美国与这个瓦哈比王国之间源远流长、可一路追溯到罗斯福与伊本•沙特的传统纽带，沙特方面只是在等着他下台。当然，他们对于这场令人困惑的美国总统大选与所有人一样焦虑。
“I don’t think there can be any confusion about who is our partner in the region and who is not,” said Rob Malley, the president’s adviser on the Gulf. “It’s clear who our allies and who our partners are.” Not to the Saudis, it isn’t, and perhaps not so much to the Americans either.
“我认为，我们不可能混淆谁是我们在这个地区的合作伙伴，谁不是，”奥巴马的海湾事务顾问罗布•马利(Rob Malley)表示，“很清楚，谁是我们的盟友，谁是我们的合作伙伴。”对沙特阿拉伯来说，这一点并不清楚，或许对美国也没那么清楚。
