打击ISIS 美国不应“胜勇追穷寇”

Can the US “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or Isis, as President Barack Obama promised on Wednesday, without being drawn into another open-ended conflict?

美国能像总统巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)上周三承诺的那样，在不用陷入又一场无休止冲突的情况下，“不断削弱直至最终消灭”伊拉克和黎凡特伊斯兰国(ISIS)吗？

Not if America intends, as Joe Biden, the vice-president, put it last week, to follow Isis “to the gates of hell”. That open-ended commitment takes pressure off states in the region to solve their own problems, and acting upon it would be a strategic mistake. Americans are anyway unlikely to accept the cost in blood and treasure. That should primarily be borne by the regional states whose broken politics brought Isis into being, and which have the most to lose. Yet these states cannot realistically be expected to defeat Isis militarily without US support. Whether the US can avoid entanglement in a long war depends on how it defines its role in defeating Isis.

答案是否定的——如果美国打算像其副总统乔•拜登(Joe Biden)上周所说的那样，把ISIS一路清剿“到地狱之门”。那种无止境的承诺缓解了中东国家解决它们自身问题的压力，依此采取行动将是战略上的错误。无论如何，美国人都不太可能接受生命和财力损失的代价。这些代价主要应该由中东国家承担，正是后者的政治失败催生了ISIS，它们面临的潜在损失也最大。然而，从现实角度来说，如果没有美国的支持，也别指望这些国家在军事上击败ISIS。美国能否避免卷入一场长期战争，取决于它如何定义自己在击败ISIS中的角色。

When western forces fought in Afghanistan in 2001 and in Iraq in 2003, they quickly defeated the armies fielded by those states. But then the west took primary responsibility for defeating the insurgencies that had taken root inside the borders of those states. The follow-on mission, which I experienced as an infantry officer in southern Afghanistan, became indistinguishable from local politics. Given the need to tackle all the problems that stoked insurgency – poor governance, corruption, land rights, ethnic prejudice – it could not have been anything less. The hard military objective of defeating an enemy evolved into an open-ended commitment to stabilise politics and civil society.

当西方国家2001年出兵阿富汗、2003年出兵伊拉克的时候，它们迅速击溃了这两个国家的军队。但随后西方承担了击败叛乱的主要责任，而叛乱发端于那些国家的境内。后续任务（我作为步兵部队军官，在阿富汗南部执行任务时对此有亲身经历）变得与地方政治没什么两样。考虑到有必要应对当初引发叛乱的所有问题（糟糕治理、腐败、土地权、族裔偏见），这是必然的。击败敌人的硬性军事目标，演变为稳定政治和公民社会的无止境承诺。

It is reasonable for the US to lead the initial phase of military action, to prevent Isis from exercising overt control of the territory it seeks by hitting their forces when they appear in the open, and striking their leadership, both from the air. However, if the mission is to remain within clear bounds, it cannot take responsibility for the permanent defeat of Isis, which must lie with local actors and regional states. Their security is what is primarily at stake, and the long-term stabilisation needed to defeat an insurgency requires them to fix their politics.

美国在军事行动初期打头阵是合理的：从空中打击ISIS领导人以及出现在空旷地区的武装分子，阻止ISIS控制其想要染指的地盘。然而，要使任务被限定在明确界限以内，美国就不能承担永久击败ISIS的责任，那种责任必须由当地势力和地区国家承担。这件事主要关系到它们的安全，平息叛乱所需的长期稳定要求他们解决国内政治问题。

Even a limited western mission will meet difficulties. In many areas there are no local forces suitable to receive western backing. In these places Isis might be forced to work covertly but the group would continue to operate. This is most obviously a problem in Syria, outside the sliver of Kurdish-controlled territory in the country’s north. But it is also a difficulty in non-Kurdish Iraq, where the much-foretold uprising of Sunni tribes against their co-religionists in Isis is merely an aspiration not a matter of hard fact – not least because Sunni there were badly abused during the rule of Nouri al-Maliki, the former prime minister. The primary problem here is Baghdad’s own politics, which western military action cannot fix.

西方背负的有限任务也将面临困难。在许多地区，当地没有适合接受西方支持的势力。在这些地区，ISIS可能被迫转入地下活动，但它不会停止活动。这个问题在叙利亚表现得最为明显——除了该国北部库尔德人控制的长条形地区外。但在伊拉克的非库尔德人地区也是一个问题——许多人预言的逊尼派奋起反抗同为逊尼派的ISIS只是一种愿望，并非事实，尤其是因为逊尼派在前总理努里•马利基(Nouri al-Maliki)统治期间吃尽苦头。这里的主要问题在于巴格达的政治，西方军事行动不可能解决这个问题。

Even where local forces can overwhelm Isis, there will be little the west can do to shape the politics on the ground, especially if it moves in undemocratic directions. That is a real possibility, given that a common enemy does not equate to a common political goal.

即便当地势力可以击溃ISIS，西方在塑造当地政治方面也将无能为力，尤其是如果当地政治向非民主的方向发展的话。鉴于共同的敌人并不等同于共同的政治目标，这是一种非常真实的可能性。

Some argue for a bigger western role. They might say that Libya is a lesson in what happens when the west does not seek to reshape local politics after a common enemy has been defeated. There, the west backed rebel factions, which then fragmented. The result was chaos.

一些人主张西方扮演更重要的角色。他们或许会说，利比亚就是一个教训：在共同的敌人被击败后，西方没有寻求重塑当地政治。西方曾在那里支持叛军派系，后来这些叛军分崩离析了。结果是利比亚陷入混乱。

But the parallels are inexact. Despite factional differences, the Kurds still form a coherent political entity in their autonomous region of northern Iraq (and to a lesser extent in Syria) which can govern retaken ground. Baghdad might be able to govern western Iraq if it can reach accommodation with Sunni tribes.

但这种比较并不准确。尽管存在派系上的分歧，但库尔德人仍能够在伊拉克北部自治区和叙利亚（程度不及前者）建立一个组织完善、可以治理收复地盘的政治实体。巴格达如果能够与逊尼派部族达成和解，或许也能治理伊拉克西部。

In non-Kurdish Syria, however, things are more difficult. There, the regime of Bashar al-Assad is the only coherent political force. The Free Syrian Army’s “moderate rebels” are a shambles, and many of their weapons have ended up in the hands of hardline Islamists.

然而，在没有库尔德人的叙利亚地区，情况更为困难。在那里，巴沙尔•阿萨德(Bashar al-Assad)政权是唯一组织完善的政治力量。叙利亚自由军(Free Syrian Army)的“温和派叛军”已经瓦解，他们的许多武器最终落到死硬的伊斯兰主义者手中。

Backing them is comparable to the failed strategy in Libya.

支持他们和在利比亚的失败战略没什么两样。

Finally, there is a moral limit to what western publics will support. Remember Tacitus who, describing Roman counter-insurgency efforts in Britain, said: “They made a wasteland and called it peace.” “Exterminate Isis” slips off the tongue now, but it will scar the eyes later, when we see what reprisals against civilians in Isis-supporting areas looks like. Should the local forces engage in atrocities, western public support for them will evaporate.

最后，西方公众支持的势力要有道德底线。别忘了塔西佗(Tacitus)这样描述罗马在英国镇压叛乱的努力：“他们制造了荒漠，却将此称为和平。”现在人们已经把“消灭ISIS”说顺了口，但当我们在支持ISIS的地区看到平民受到的报复时，又会有上当的感觉。如果当地势力参与暴行，西方公众对他们的支持将会消失。

The lessons of the past decade suggest that a clearly bounded extension of US military action means taking responsibility at most for the initial phase, not the permanent defeat of Isis, in which the west should only play a supporting role. The alternative is to commit to a long fight, removing the pressure on regional states to act. Anyone advocating that would have to believe that western publics are prepared to bear the cost. They are not.

过去10年的教训表明，美国扩大军事行动要有明显界限，这意味着至多在最初阶段承担责任，而不是永久性地击败ISIS——西方只应在后续阶段扮演支持角色。另一个选择是致力于打一场长期战争，消除中东国家采取行动的压力。提倡这么做的人必须认为，西方公众准备承担为此付出的代价。他们没有这个意愿。

The writer is a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and author of ‘War From the Ground Up’

本文作者是美国哈佛大学肯尼迪政府学院(Harvard Kennedy School of Government)的研究员，著有《从地面战争开始》(War From the Ground Up)一书