世界需要新的战争规则

The two centuries since the Congress of Vienna have seen the gradual codification by the international community of the “rules of the game” for guiding interstate relations, even between unfriendly countries. Their basic premise has been the formula “don’t do to me what you don’t want me to do to you”. However, technological advances mean that today those rules are being dangerously undermined. The international system is at risk.

维也纳会议(Congress of Vienna)以来的两个世纪里，国际社会逐渐发展出一套“游戏规则”来规范国家之间、甚至包括敌对国家之间的关系。这些规则的基本前提是“己所不欲，勿施于人”。然而，技术进步意味着，如今这些游戏规则正受到严重削弱。国际体系正面临风险。

After the age of Metternich, Talleyrand and Castlereagh, elaborate understandings developed about the transition from formal peace to war. These involved carefully scripted exchanges of diplomats, rules about the treatment of prisoners of war and eventually even a shared definition of war crimes. Implicit in all this was the notion that while war and peace are fundamentally different conditions, both still need rules of conduct.

在梅特涅(Metternich)、塔列朗(Talleyrand)和卡索瑞(Castlereagh)的时代之后，各方对于从正式的和平转向战争的过程发展起高层次的理解。这一过程涉及外交官之间精心措辞的交涉、有关如何对待战俘的规则，最终甚至达成了对战争罪的一致定义。所有这一切都隐含这样一种观念：虽然战争与和平是根本不同的两种状态，但是它们都需要行为规则。

In more recent times, the use of nuclear weapons has made the distinction between the two more dramatic. The destructiveness of these weapons was without precedent but paradoxically that encouraged more cautious behaviour on the part of the states that possessed them. The existence of such weapons also created a new global hierarchy with a few nuclear states at the top and the rest below.

在更近的时代，核武器的使用令两者之间的区别更加明显。核武器具有史无前例的毁灭威力，但矛盾的是，这推动核武国家在行为上更加谨慎。核武器的存在还创建了一种新的全球等级制度：少数核武国家居于顶端，其余国家则居于下面。

Today, the interstate rules of the game are degrading. Highly sophisticated capabilities for inflicting violence on remote targets, as well as cross-border state-sponsored terrorism, are undermining the clear demarcation of what is permissible and what is not. Scientific advances have also increased the potential scope of acts whose perpetrators may not be easily identified and which may not be intercepted in a timely fashion.

如今，国家间的游戏规则正在失效。对远程目标实施打击的先进能力，以及由政府支持的跨境恐怖主义，正使“可为”和“不可为”之间的明确界线变得模糊起来。科技进步还扩大了某一类行为的空间，此类行为的肇事者更难辨认，也更难以及时阻止。

Indeed, the world community is witnessing an increasing reliance by states on covert acts of violence without declarations of war. Leaders can now use long-distance air drones for lethal strikes across national borders against targeted individuals, occasionally killing civilians, too.

的确，国际社会正在见证的是：各国日趋依赖秘密暴力手段，而不公开宣战。如今，领导人可以下令出动远程无人机，越境对目标人员进行致命打击，而这种打击有时也会伤害到平民。

The sophisticated dissemination of computer viruses can disrupt the military industrial assets of rivals. States can commission unacknowledged assassinations of foreign leaders and of scientists engaged in weapons development. They may back hacking of foreign institutions for intelligence purposes as well as of private business entities to gain commercial advantages.

使用尖端手段传播计算机病毒，可以扰乱对手的军工资产。各国还有能力对外国领导人和从事武器研发的科学家进行无人承认的刺杀。他们可能支持黑客侵入外国机构的电脑以获取情报，或者侵入私营商业实体的电脑以取得商业优势。

Some states are also experimenting with more comprehensive cyber warfare designed to disrupt the operational infrastructure of targeted states, as in the case of the assault on Estonia and its banking institutions in 2007. A rogue but technologically sophisticated state can now gain the capacity to launch a non-lethal but paralysing cyber attack on the socioeconomic system and the most important state institutions of a target country.

有的国家还在试验更全面的网络战争模式，以扰乱目标国家的基础设施，正如2007年爱沙尼亚及其银行业机构受到的攻击那样。技术先进的流氓国家如今拥有足够的能力，可以对目标国家的社会经济系统和最重要的政府机构发动虽不致命、但足以导致全面瘫痪的网络攻击。

The dangers inherent in the degradation of the already vulnerable international system cannot be overstated. Social chaos, with paralysing fear magnified by uncertainty as to its origins, could spread. Making matters potentially even worse, such degradation is not the product of one or another particularly menacing state. Rather, it is the consequence of the rising vulnerability of the global system to cumulative pressures: technological innovation, massive and increasingly impatient populist upheavals and a shift in the distribution of geopolitical power.

对于原本已经十分脆弱的国际体系，其退化过程中蕴含的危险怎么强调都不过分。社会混乱可能蔓延，对于攻击来源的不确定性将加剧人们的末日恐惧，导致社会瘫痪。潜在更加糟糕的是，国际体系的退化并非某一个咄咄逼人的国家的产物，而是全球体系在各种累积压力（技术创新、大规模及越来越不耐烦的民粹主义骚乱，地缘政治实力的重新洗牌）下脆弱性日益加剧的后果。

In that volatile context, competing states tends to be subjective in judgments of their own conduct. There are lessons to be learnt from the onset of the nuclear weapons age. After the end of the second world war in 1945, the US wisely abstained from a pre-emptive attack that would have exploited its atomic monopoly but would probably have had monstrous consequences. But self-restraint ushered in a Soviet effort to gain first nuclear equality then superiority. America’s admirably consistent determination to prevent the latter, as well as probably also the rise of a nuclear-armed but increasingly anti-Soviet China, compelled the Soviet Union to settle eventually for verifiable nuclear weapons parity.

在这种复杂多变的局面下，敌对国家倾向于对自己的行为作出主观的评判。在这方面，核武时代初期的情况可以提供启示。1945年第二次世界大战结束之后，美国明智地没有利用其在原子弹方面的垄断地位发动先发制人的攻击，那种攻击可能产生可怕后果。然而，美国的自制导致苏联先是努力获得平等的核地位，后来又试图超过美国。由于美国令人钦佩地坚决不让苏联在核武实力上超越自己，很可能加上拥有核武器并越来越反苏的中国的崛起，苏联最终被迫满足于可核查的核武对等原则。