Biden’s escalating aid to Ukraine reflects a sea change in U.S. foreign policy

拜登增加对乌克兰的援助反映了美国外交政策的巨大变化

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When President Biden took office last year, he had three top foreign policy priorities: to revive NATO and other alliances that President Trump had savaged, to withdraw the last American troops from Afghanistan, and to compete more effectively with a newly assertive China.

拜登总统去年上台时，他有三个最重要的外交政策优先事项：恢复北约和特朗普总统曾猛烈抨击的其他联盟，从阿富汗撤出最后一批美国军队，以及与新崛起的中国进行更有效地竞争。

Russia, a declining power, seemed almost an afterthought. All Biden wanted from Moscow, he said last year, was “a stable, predictable relationship.”

俄罗斯作为一个衰落的大国，几乎是事后才想到的。拜登去年表示，他只想从莫斯科得到“稳定、可预测的关系”

Vladimir Putin had other ideas. Two months ago, Putin invaded Ukraine — and the result has been not only a tragic war, but a sea change in U.S. policy.

弗拉基米尔·普京还有其他想法。两个月前，普京入侵乌克兰——其结果不仅是一场悲惨的战争，而且是美国政策的巨大变化。

The struggle for Ukraine is now Biden’s main national security focus. The United States and Russia appear locked in a long-term confrontation reminiscent of the 20th century’s Cold War. The challenge of China is still out there, but strategists who hoped to shift U.S. troops from Europe to Asia have put those plans on hold.

争夺乌克兰的斗争现在是拜登的主要国家安全重点。美国和俄罗斯似乎陷入了一场让人想起20世纪冷战的长期对抗。中国的挑战仍然存在，但那些希望将美国军队从欧洲转移到亚洲的战略家们已经搁置了这些计划。

Last week, Biden announced that he was sending an additional $800 million in military aid to Ukraine, bringing the total over the last two months to more than $3 billion. More important than the dollar figure were the weapons included: heavy artillery, helicopters, armored personnel carriers, antiaircraft radar systems and the Phoenix Ghost, a new kamikaze attack drone.

上周，拜登宣布他将向乌克兰额外提供8亿美元的军事援助，使过去两个月的援助总额超过30亿美元。比美元数字更重要的是武器，包括：重型火炮、直升机、装甲运兵车、防空雷达系统和新型神风无人机“凤凰幽灵”。

The shopping list reflected a gradual escalation since the opening weeks of the war, when Biden and his aides emphasized the limits of what the United States was willing to do — in part to avoid risking direct conflict between Russian forces and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

购买清单反映了自战争开始几周以来逐步升级的趋势，当时拜登及其助手强调了美国愿意做的事情的局限性——部分是为了避免俄罗斯军队和北大西洋公约组织之间发生直接冲突的风险。

There would be no boots on the ground, they said, no long-range offensive weapons, and no U.S.-enforced “no-fly zone” to stop Russia’s air force from bombing Ukrainian cities. Nor would the United States agree to move MiG-29 aircraft from Poland through Germany to Ukraine.

他们说，地面上不会有靴子，不会有远程攻击性武器，也不会有美国强制的“禁飞区”来阻止俄罗斯空军轰炸乌克兰城市。美国也不会同意将米格-29飞机从波兰经德国运往乌克兰。

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and American hawks complained, but last week, Zelensky said the new aid package was “just what we were waiting for.”

乌克兰总统弗拉基米尔·泽连斯基和美国鹰派人士对此表示不满，但上周，泽连斯基表示，新的援助方案“正是我们所期待的”

What changed? As Ukraine’s armed forces performed better than expected — and Russia’s performed worse — the administration’s commitment to Kyiv deepened.

什么改变了？随着乌克兰军队的表现好于预期——而俄罗斯的表现更差——政府对基辅的承诺加深。

“Our policy is unequivocal that we will do whatever we can to help Ukraine succeed,” Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, said in a TV interview. “At the end of the day, what we want to see is a free and independent Ukraine [and] a weakened and isolated Russia.”

拜登的国家安全顾问杰克·沙利文在接受电视采访时说：“我们的政策是明确的，我们将尽一切努力帮助乌克兰取得成功。”“归根结底，我们希望看到的是一个自由和独立的乌克兰以及一个被削弱和孤立的俄罗斯。”

The administration’s attitude was also hardened, he added, by “what the Russians have done, frankly — killing civilians, atrocities, war crimes.”

他补充到“坦率地说，俄罗斯人的所作所为——杀害平民、暴行、战争罪行，政府的态度也因此而变得强硬。”

More broadly, Biden’s commitment to Ukraine appears to signal the end of a period of retrenchment in which Presidents Obama and Trump sought to disengage from the military entanglements launched by President George W. Bush.

更广泛地说，拜登对乌克兰的承诺，似乎标志着奥巴马总统和特朗普总统试图摆脱乔治·W·布什总统发起的军事纠葛的紧缩时期的终结。

Columbia University scholar Stephen Sestanovich has long argued that U.S. foreign policy tends to alternate between cycles of assertive international engagement, which he calls “maximalism,” and retrenchment.

哥伦比亚大学学者斯蒂芬·塞斯塔诺维奇长期以来一直认为，美国的外交政策倾向于在主张的国际参与（他称之为“极端主义”）和紧缩之间交替。

“What puts an end to retrenchment is almost always some sort of shock,” he told me last week, something that “makes people think that downsized policies, however desirable they might have seemed a few years earlier, just won’t cut it in a more dangerous world.”

他上周告诉我，“结束紧缩的几乎总是某种程度的震荡，”这种震荡“让人们认为，缩减规模的政策，不管几年前看起来多么可取，在一个更危险的世界里，都不应被消减。”

“Putin’s war has been exactly that sort of mind-focusing stimulus, and its effects are likely to be lasting ones,” he said.

他说：“普京的战争正是那种专注于思维的刺激，其影响可能是持久的。”。

If he’s right, the broader effects of the Ukraine crisis could include a Cold War-style division of the world into two blocs, one led by the United States, the other by China and Russia; long-term pressure from Congress for higher defense spending; and perhaps even a modest revival of bipartisanship in foreign policy.

如果他是对的，乌克兰危机的更广泛影响可能包括冷战式的世界分裂为两个集团，一个由美国领导，另一个由中国和俄罗斯领导；国会要求增加国防开支的长期压力；甚至可能是两党外交政策的温和复兴。

Those trends will all feel familiar to Biden, who served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the last half of the Cold War. A year or two ago, his fondness for NATO and other traditional U.S. alliances may have sounded like a throwback, but it has come in handy now.

拜登对这些趋势都很熟悉，他曾在冷战后半段担任参议院外交关系委员会委员。一两年前，他对北约和其他美国传统联盟的喜爱可能听起来像是倒退，但现在已经派上了用场。

He and his aides worked to focus NATO on Putin’s threats long before the invasion, enabling the alliance to impose coordinated sanctions as soon as the tanks rolled. His old-fashioned return to alliance-building turned out to be exactly what the West needed.

早在入侵之前，他和他的助手就致力于让北约关注普京的威胁，使北约能够在坦克开动时实施协调一致的制裁。事实证明，他回归结盟策略的老派做法正是西方所需要的。

Biden’s foreign policy has been far from perfect. His withdrawal from Afghanistan, to take only the most painful example, was a fiasco.

拜登的外交政策远非完美。仅举最痛苦的例子，他从阿富汗撤军是一场惨败。

But in Ukraine, at least, the president’s experience and instincts have served him well.

但至少在乌克兰，总统的经验和直觉对他很有帮助。

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