2019年经济学人 书评--《一个不可能实现的梦想:里根,戈尔巴乔夫和一个没有原子弹的世界》(1)（在线收听）

Books & arts

来源于《图书与艺术》版块

Book Review

书评

Cold-war summitry

冷战峰会

Dancing on ice

冰上起舞

An Impossible Dream: Reagan, Gorbachev, and a World Without the Bomb.

《一个不可能实现的梦想:里根、戈尔巴乔夫和一个没有原子弹的世界》

By Guillaume Serina.

此书作者：纪尧姆·瑟利纳

A world without nuclear weapons still seems far-fetched. But in October 1986 it was closer than many realised. In his book, Guillaume Serina tells the tantalising story of the Reykjavik summit between the Soviet and American leaders, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, who came within a whisker of a ten-year deal to eliminate both countries’ arsenals.

一个没有核武器的世界似乎仍然遥不可及。但在1986年10月，这一数字比许多人意识到的还要接近。纪尧姆?瑟利纳在书中讲述了苏联和美国领导人米哈伊尔?戈尔巴乔夫和罗纳德?里根在雷克雅维克举行峰会时引人入胜的故事。里根差一点就与苏联达成了一项为期10年的消除两国军火库的协议。

Agreement was desirable yet impossible. Both sides were aware that they had far more nuclear warheads and missiles than they needed. The Soviet side also knew that the cost of maintaining nuclear weapons was crippling the economy. Less fully appreciated was the fragility of the balance of terror, which was at risk less from warmongering than from misunderstandings, glitches or accidents. On several occasions during the cold war, only thin threads of luck and good judgment averted the apocalypse. But agreement meant crossing icesheets of mistrust. And on the American side, Reagan’s fixation on the Strategic Defence Initiative, or Star Wars—space-based missile-busting lasers—proved an insuperable obstacle.

达成协议是可取的，但却是不可能的。双方都意识到，他们拥有的核弹头和导弹远远超过了所需。苏联方面也知道，维持核武器的成本正在损害经济。人们没有充分认识到的是恐怖平衡的脆弱，这种脆弱与其说是由于战争煽动，不如说是由于误解、故障或事故。在冷战期间，只有几次运气和良好的判断力才避免了这场灾难。但达成协议意味着跨越不信任的冰原。而在美国方面，里根对战略防御计划(即“星球大战”)的执着——即以太空为基础的导弹摧毁激光——被证明是一个无法逾越的障碍。

The Soviets offered the United States a big concession: to let it continue with “laboratory” testing of this new scheme. The definition of that proviso could have been stretched to meet all practical requirements (33 years later, the Star Wars technology is nowhere near useful deployment). But Reagan had set his heart on a futuristic system that would make his country safe for ever, and did not want to return home seeming to have given it away. As Roald Sagdeev, a Soviet nuclear expert, puts it: “The Americans oversold the Strategic Defence Initiative, and the Russians overbought it.”

苏联给了美国一个很大的让步:让美国继续对这个新计划进行“实验室”测试。这个附带条件的定义本可以扩展到满足所有实际需求(33年后，《星球大战》技术还远未得到有效的部署)。但是里根已经把注意力放在了一个未来主义的系统上，这个系统将使他的国家永远安全，他不想回家，似乎已经放弃了它。正如苏联核专家罗尔德?萨迪夫所言:“美国人超售战略防御计划，而俄罗斯人却买超了。”