國家力量捲土重來 老式的外交仍發揮着主導作用

Is the state making a comeback? It can certainly look like it. Old-fashioned interstate conflicts are roiling the China Sea and Russia’s western borders. Inter-governmental meetings such as the last Apec conference and the Group of 20 leading economies in Sydney took on an unwonted urgency. More positively, it is old-fashioned diplomacy that is making the running on issues from Iran’s nuclear programme to global warming.

國家正在“捲土重來”？看起來可能就是如此。老式的國家間衝突正攪動着中國海(China Sea)和俄羅斯西部邊境。政府間會議，比如剛結束的亞太經合組織(Apec)會議和20國集團(G20)悉尼峯會，都具備了一種少有的緊迫性。更能證明這一點的是，在從伊朗核計劃到全球變暖等一系列問題上，老式的外交仍發揮着主導作用。

Yet the dominant view since the early 1990s has been that globalisation meant the transformation of the world through non-state actors. The end of the cold war ushered in an almost Marxist expectation that the state would wither away – overshadowed by free flows of money and goods, undermined by non-state actors of which terrorist groups were only the most obvious. It was an expectation shared right across the political spectrum.

然而，上世紀90年代初以來的主流觀點一直是，全球化導致非國家力量成爲世界變革的主導因素。冷戰的結束催生了一種近乎馬克思主義式的預期：在資本與貨物自由流動的巨大陰影下，在非國家力量（恐怖組織只是其中最明顯的一支力量）的削弱下，國家將逐漸消亡。各個政治派別都曾產生這種預期。

On the left, critics of market globalisation anticipated the rise of people power. Non-governmental organisations would supersede the supposedly worn out institutions of the nation state and create new, more vibrant forms of political activity. Technology would bring better solutions to old problems, bypassing stagnant state institutions.

在左翼陣營，市場全球化的批評者曾預期民衆力量會崛起。非政府組織將取代應該已破敗不堪的民族國家機構，並創立新的、更具活力的政治活動體制。科技將爲老問題帶來更有效的解決辦法，繞開死氣沉沉的國家機構。

The neoliberal right hailed the rise of global finance, the dismantling of capital controls and the deregulation of banking, not least because all of these weakened national governments’ capacity to control markets. In manufacturing and services, enormous new powers accrued to corporations able to take advantage of differing tax regimes and wage levels across the world.

新自由主義(Neoliberalism)右翼陣營則爲全球金融的崛起、資本管制的解除和銀行業的去監管叫好，其重要原因在於，這幾個因素都弱化了民族國家政府對市場的管制能力。在製造業和服務業，巨大的新興力量漸漸集中到那些能利用全球稅制和工資水平差異牟利的企業手中。

Yet these hopes underestimated the sheer staying power – indeed the legitimacy – of the state and its institutions, and the extreme difficulty of creating new ones from scratch. NGOs remain on the sidelines: international organisations are vehicles for clusters and coalitions of national states to act in concert where they can. To that extent they are essentially derivative, reflecting the wishes of their most powerful members. The idea that they could be freed from the clutches of national governments was a pipe dream.

但是，這些預期低估了國家及國家機構的巨大耐久力（其實就是其合法性），以及從無到有創建新機構的極端困難性。非政府組織唱的仍然是配角：國際組織是民族國家爲在可能領域採取一致行動而設立的抱團及聯合平臺。就此而言，它們本質上屬於派生物，反映的是其最強大成員的意願。有人認爲它們能擺脫民族國家政府的控制，這種想法就是白日做夢。

And the neoliberal infatuation with unfettered markets has not fared much better. The era of globalisation was always one of instability and in Mexico, east Asia, and Russia, the costs of crisis were evident to those who cared throughout the 1990s. But it was only a decade later, when the failure of Lehman Brothers and its aftermath robbed Americans and Europeans of their faith in capitalism, that perceptions started to change where it counted.

新自由主義對自由市場的迷戀，導致的結果也沒好到哪去。全球化時代一直伴隨着動盪；整個20世紀90年代，在墨西哥、東亞和俄羅斯，危機帶來的損失對那些關心這一切的人來說顯而易見的。但自由市場經濟體的民衆觀念開始發生轉變是在10年之後，那一年，雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)垮臺及其餘波導致歐美人喪失了對資本主義的信心。

Since then, power has shifted back towards the state on multiple fronts. It was, after all, taxpayers who bailed the banks out. It fell to central banks, in conjunction with finance ministries, to superintend the exit from crisis. Since 2010, the increasing inequality that has accompanied the recovery has fuelled an underlying swell of electoral anger not only against the banks but also against the light tax burdens enjoyed by many global corporations. The change in sentiment threatens further trade liberalisation and has propelled calls for the international harmonisation of corporation taxes up the political agenda. At the same time, Vladimir Putin’s muscle-flexing illustrates the continued indispensability of states in settling matters of war and peace.

自那以來，國家已在多個方面“捲土重來”。畢竟，是納稅人拯救了銀行業。正是多國的央行和財政部攜起手來，才引領世界脫離了危機。自2010年以來，與復甦相伴而來的是不平等的加劇，這可能已令選民對銀行乃至對許多跨國企業享有的輕稅負產生更大的憤慨。民衆情緒的變化對進一步的貿易自由化構成了威脅，並引發了把制定國際統一公司稅擺在政治議程更靠前位置的呼聲。同時，弗拉基米爾•普京(Vladimir Putin)炫耀武力的行爲表明，在解決戰爭與和平的問題時，國家一直是不可或缺的。

In reality, the state has been with us the whole time. Its fiscal imprint has hardly changed in decades: US government receipts, for instance, are much the same percentage of output today as in 1960. In the UK, public spending has fluctuated within a fairly narrow band throughout the same period. What happened over the past two or three decades was less a withering away of the state than a recalibration of official priorities. Abdicating strategic planning internally, the state become an arbiter of regulatory regimes. Externally, it transformed defence budgets, transferring resources from men to machines.

在現實中，國家由始至終沒有離開過我們。幾十年來，國家的財政印跡幾乎沒有發生變化：比如，如今的美國政府收入與經濟產出之比，與1960年基本相同。同期，英國的公共支出一直在相當窄的範圍內波動。過去二三十年發生的事，更多的是一種官方優先事項的重校，而不是國家力量的日漸衰落。對內，國家不再做戰略規劃，變身成爲監管體制的仲裁者。對外，國家大幅調整了防務預算，把資源從人轉到機器上。

The financial crisis has accelerated some of these trends and started to reverse others. States – or the politicians who lead them – are still reluctant to do what would have been done in the 1940s. They remain strikingly reluctant to impose tougher penalties on banks or to identify unemployment as a priority. But what is perhaps important is what the crisis has done globally: by discrediting the more mythical idealisations of the market, it has encouraged the restoration of state power as a goal in itself. This programme is easily harnessed by authoritarian leaders in the name of national sovereignty and democracy. Hungary and Russia exemplify the trend. We have heard a lot, this past 20 years, about the decline of the state. We will not be hearing much more.

金融危機加快了上述部分趨勢，並開始逆轉另一些趨勢。國家——或者說領導國家的政治人士——仍不願做原本在上世紀40年代就可做到的事情。他們仍極不願意對銀行處以更嚴厲的懲罰、或把解決失業作爲優先任務。但重要的可能是金融危機在全球造成的後果：它讓那些神乎其神的、把市場理想化的理論名譽掃地，從根本上促使人們把恢復國家的力量做爲一項目標。這一進程容易被假託國家主權與民主之名的威權領導人利用。匈牙利和俄羅斯就是這一趨勢的典型例子。過去二十年，我們聽到了許多關於國家力量走下坡路的議論。未來，這種議論不會顯著增多。