中國1945 毛的革命與美國命中註定的選擇

“To err is human. To blame someone else is politics.” Hubert H. Humphrey’s aphorism came to mind as I was reading “China 1945,” Richard Bernstein’s excellent history of United States policy toward China at the end of World War II. The comment is particularly apt when intractable problems provide myriad paths to failure but no clear right answer — and the civil war in China after Japan’s surrender was just such a problem. (Today, think of Syria.) The debates over China policy were acrimonious and personal, and this was several years before Joseph McCarthy lent his name to sneering political assassination.

“犯錯是人性，歸罪於他人則是政治，”閱讀理查德·伯恩斯坦(Richard Bernstein)的《中國1945》(China 1945)時，休伯特·H·漢弗萊(Hubert H. Humphrey)的格言不禁涌上心頭。這是一本關於“二戰”後美國對華政策歷史的精彩著作。漢弗萊的話尤其適用於那種棘手的難題，它們可以導致無數條通往失敗的道路，卻沒有任何清晰的正確答案——日本投降後中國的內戰正是這樣的問題（試想如今的敘利亞）。關於中國政策的爭論激烈而又充滿人身攻擊，幾年後，約瑟夫·麥卡錫(Joseph McCarthy)的名字就成了政治迫害的代稱。

Bernstein, a student of Harvard’s John King Fairbank and a formerNew York Times reporter, covers China’s political context in 1945 like a scholar, but maintains his journalist’s eye for human drama. In 1945 American officials in China were trying to achieve three impossibly conflicting aims: prevent a civil war between ­Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang regime and Mao Zedong’s Communist Party; keep the United States out of any civil war that might occur; and stop the Communists and their Soviet backers from seizing control of northern China from Chiang’s government, a World War II ally. The third aim could not be accomplished without violating the second. But the second could not be seriously violated because America was, understandably, tired of war.

伯恩斯坦是哈佛大學費正清教授的學生，曾在《紐約時報》擔任記者，他在本書中如學者一般記述1945年中國的政治環境，但又以記者的視角關注人性的戲劇。1945年，駐華美國官員試圖達成三個自相矛盾、不可能實現的目標：其一，阻止蔣介石領導的國民黨政府與毛澤東領導的共產黨之間爆發內戰；其二，保證美國政府不捲入可能發生的內戰；其三，阻止共產黨及其蘇聯支持者從美國“二戰”期間的盟友蔣介石政府手中奪去對中國北方的控制權。除非違背第二個目標，就不可能實現第三個目標，但第二個目標又不能被嚴重違背，因爲，可以理解，美國已經厭倦了戰爭。

So that left preventing civil war. Even before Japan surrendered, United States officials were trying to persuade Chiang and Mao to cease hostilities and establish a coalition government. Bernstein convincingly deems this mission doomed, though it was headed in 1946 by George Marshall, the greatest American statesman of his generation. Chiang was politically beholden to factions that could never allow sustained compromise with Mao’s Communists; and Chiang himself was bullheaded. Mao was a radical ideologue and manipulator who viewed cooperation with rivals in the same way as his role model, Joseph Stalin.

所以就只剩下阻止內戰了。早在日本投降之前，美國官員就已經開始試圖說服蔣介石和毛澤東放下敵意，成立聯合政府。貝恩斯坦令人信服地認定，儘管這項任務在1946年是由同代美國政治家中最優秀的喬治·馬歇爾(George Marshall)領導，但註定凶多吉少。蔣介石在政治上要對若干小集團負責，這些集團不可能長期對毛澤東的共產黨妥協；而蔣介石本人也很頑固。毛澤東則信奉激進的意識形態，而且對於“與競爭對手合作”這種事，和他的榜樣約瑟夫·斯大林(Joseph Stalin)持有同樣看法。

Marshall’s eccentric predecessor, Ambassador Patrick J. Hurley, was deluded in believing that with his Oklahoma horse sense and lawyerly acumen he could broker a lasting coalition government. But in late November 1945, he abruptly resigned in frustration, publicly blaming Foreign Service Asia experts like John Paton Davies and John Stewart Service for undercutting his efforts. Hurley complained that they had unfairly criticized Chiang’s government while coddling the Communists, and scandalously accused them of disloyalty to him and their nation (apparently in that order of importance).

馬歇爾的前任帕特里克·J·赫爾利(Patrick J. Hurley)大使是個性情古怪的人，有着俄克拉荷馬人的判斷力和律師式的聰明，他被哄騙着相信自己可以在雙方之間斡旋，協助建立一個持久的聯合政府。但在1945年11月底，他卻帶着挫敗感突然辭職，還公開譴責戴維斯(John Paton Davies)和謝偉思(John Stewart Service)等美國駐外事務處的亞洲專家損害了他的努力。赫爾利抱怨，他們對蔣介石政府的指控有欠公正，同時過分縱容共產黨，他還嚴厲地指責這些專家背叛了他，也背叛了國家（顯然他認爲背叛他比背叛國家更不能忍）。

There are no unalloyed heroes in Bernstein’s story. While hardly traitors, Davies and Service were guilty of serious analytic misdemeanors. They naïvely advocated accommodation of the Communists because they believed that Mao’s revolutionary movement was more democratic and nationalist than it actually was.

伯恩斯坦的故事中沒有真正的英雄。但也沒有什麼叛徒。戴維斯和謝偉思在判斷上嚴重失誤。他們天真地宣揚與共產黨和解，因爲他們相信毛澤東的革命運動更民主、更民族主義，事實卻非如此。

Even if Mao had entertained a temporary deal with Chiang in the late 1940s, however, he was not one to keep promises or share power. After all, he purged and tortured many of his loyal followers once he “liberated” China. No pragmatist, Mao pursued a radical agenda that left more Chinese dead than even the Japanese imperialists did. And Bernstein could have taken his critique of these American officials’ analysis one step further. When Mao finally broke with the Soviets in the late 1950s and ’60s, as some American officials predicted in 1945 that he would, he did so not because he was forsaking the Stalinist model. Quite the opposite. Mao accused Stalin’s successors — Khrushchev and Brezhnev — of insufficient support for international revolution and excessive compromise with the United States.

40年代末期，就算毛有興趣同蔣介石締結臨時合約，他也並不是那種會信守承諾或分享權力的人。畢竟，一俟他“解放”中國之後，便開始清洗和迫害許多自己的忠實追隨者。毛並不是實用主義者，他追求激進的政治進程，害死的中國人甚至比日本帝國主義還多。伯恩斯坦本可以更進一步地去批評美國官員們的分析。20世紀50到60年代，毛澤東最終同蘇聯決裂，美國官員們在1945年便已經預見了這一幕，但他這樣做並不是因爲摒棄斯大林模式。恰恰相反，毛澤東譴責斯大林的繼任者赫魯曉夫(Khrushchev)和勃列日涅夫(Brezhnev)不夠支持國際革命事業，過分向美國妥協。

My main objection to Bernstein’s book is a quibble concerning part of its subtitle: “America’s Fateful Choice.” Right-wing critics blamed Truman for “losing China” to the Communists by being insufficiently supportive of Chiang. After Vietnam, left-wing academics lamented that there had been a “lost chance” for friendship with Mao, if onlyWashington had seized it. Bernstein’s subtitle suggests he will take a position in this tired debate. But he correctly rejects both positions. If any foreigners lost China to Communism, it was the rabidly anti-Communist Japanese imperialists who undercut Chiang’s legitimacy and created space for revolution. And no amount of accommodation could have turned Mao into a trusted American ally in the 1950s.

我對伯恩斯坦這本書最大的意見是對副標題的吹毛求疵——“美國命中註定的選擇”。右翼評論家批評杜魯門(Truman)沒有給蔣介石足夠支持，因此從共產黨手中“失去了中國”。越南戰爭後，左派學者又哀嘆失去了與毛建立友誼的“機會”，好像華盛頓真有這個機會似的。伯恩斯坦的副標題彷彿暗示自己將在這場令人厭倦的爭論中選擇立場。但他實事求是地對兩邊的立場都做了否定。如果有任何外國人把中國讓給了共產主義，那也應該是瘋狂反共的日本帝國主義者，他們損害了蔣介石政府的合法性，爲共產黨的革命創造了空間。而在50年代，沒有任何和解方式可以令毛澤東投向可信的美國聯盟。

Truman chose an ineffective middle road: side with Chiang, but not too much. Bernstein blames American domestic politics for this diluted policy, and there is some truth to that. But Truman had no better option. He gave Chiang a fighting chance to secure his own country without dragging a war-weary America into a huge civil conflict on the Soviets’ doorstep, and Chiang failed. Direct American intervention would have been the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet simply abandoning wartime allies to insurrection would have harmed Washington’s reputation for resolve.

杜魯門選擇了無效的中間道路：和蔣介石站在統一戰線，但是不提供太多支持。伯恩斯坦認爲是美國的內政導致了這種無力的政策，這個觀點有幾分正確性。但杜魯門並沒有更好的選擇。他給了蔣介石一個保衛國家的戰鬥機會，同時又沒有把已經厭倦戰爭的美國拖入一場在蘇聯門口發生的大內戰中去，而蔣介石失敗了。當時如果美國進行干預，將會是一場在錯誤的時間、錯誤的地點發生的錯誤的戰爭。但是如果放任戰時盟國陷入內亂，又會損害華盛頓的信譽。

More important, indifference to Communism’s spread in China would have undercut the administration’s domestic effort to mobilize support for Cold War strategies in geostrategically more important places like Europe, Japan and the Middle East. Truman’s options were “bad,” “worse” and “terrible.” Truman wisely chose “bad.” Not all global problems have American solutions, and often the best policy choice is to manage and minimize costs. Moderation in the defense of liberty is no vice.

更重要的是，當時政府正在國內歐洲、日本和中東等從地緣政治而言更重要的地帶爲鞏固“冷戰”戰略而進行努力，如果放任共產主義在中國蔓延，政府的這些工作就將受到損害。杜魯門面臨的選擇有“糟糕”、“更糟”和“糟糕極了”。杜魯門明智地選了“糟糕”。美國並不能解決所有全球問題，而最好的政治選擇通常是能夠控制成本、把代價減少到最低程度的選擇。在自由的保護之下深思熟慮並不是什麼壞事。