This week the generals persuaded Donald Trump to keep up the fight in Afghanistan. A frustrated US president agreed reluctantly. Time will tell whether his personality and politics can sustain a long-term commitment.
本周，美国的将军们劝说唐纳德?特朗普(Donald Trump)总统继续保持在阿富汗的战斗。失望的特朗普勉强同意了。时间将证明他的个性和政谋能否支撑一项长期承诺。

Half a year into his presidency, Mr Trump’s foreign policy has five distinctive features. The Trumpian approach differs from that of his predecessors in type, not just degree, and other countries around the world need to be aware of the dissonance with past conduct.
在担任总统的半年间，特朗普的外交政策呈现出五大显著特征。特朗普式外交在类型上（而不只是程度上）与众多前任截然不同，世界各国都需要认识到这种与过去行为的不一致性。

First, Mr Trump is transactional, not institutional. He views foreign policy like a dealmaker and does not care whether the outcomes fit America’s traditional practice of building systems that advance its interests and values. As a negotiator, Mr Trump will be periodically confrontational. He can be impulsive. He welcomes creating uncertainty, which he believes builds leverage. Mr Trump’s ego plays an exceptionally large role and so do personal — and even family — relations. He is the first president in my experience who does not believe the office is larger than himself.
首先，特朗普属于交易型领导人，而非制度型。他像交易撮合者一样看待外交政策，不关心其政策结果是否符合美国的传统做法——建立推进美国的利益和价值观的制度。在谈判桌上，特朗普将不时展现对抗性姿态。他容易冲动。他喜欢制造不确定性，并认为这种不确定性能够增强其影响力。特朗普的自我意识在其中发挥着极其巨大的作用，还有他的私人（甚至家庭）关系。他是我经历过的首位不认为机构大于个人的总统。

Second, Mr Trump’s domestic political interests will dominate his foreign policy. One wise American statesman suggested to me this spring that Mr Trump, like other presidents, wants to be successful, and therefore would move closer to mainstream policies. This assessment depends on how one defines success: I believe Mr Trump’s aim is a political realignment, which he thinks he can achieve by embracing and voicing the grievances of his voters.
第二，特朗普在国内政治中的利益将主导其外交政策。一位充满智慧的美国政治家今春提示我：特朗普像别的总统一样希望获得成功，因而，他将进一步向主流政策靠近。这一判断取决于如何定义成功：我认为特朗普的目标是进行政治重组，他认为这可以通过迎合并表达支持他的选民的不满来实现这一目标。

Accordingly, he welcomes battles over trade, immigration and his wall with Mexico. Note as well that the president’s directive in the Middle East is to destroy the terrorists of Isis — obvious enemies that his backers can recognise. He has no plans to complement military action by creating forces or safe zones that can establish a rough power balance on the ground and resist Iranian expansion.
因此，他欢迎围绕贸易、移民的拉锯战，执意在美墨边境建墙。还要注意的是，特朗普中东政策的主要目标是消灭“伊拉克和黎凡特伊斯兰国”(ISIS)恐怖分子——其支持者能分辨出的公认的敌人。他并未计划通过帮助地区国家训练军队或设立安全区来补充军事行动，从而在该地区建立一种大致的权力平衡，并抵制伊朗的扩张。

After being compelled to remain in Afghanistan when he wanted to withdraw, Mr Trump will redefine the battle as smashing terrorism in line with his supporters, even though he really will need to strengthen the Kabul government’s capacity to succeed.
特朗普本希望从阿富汗撤军，但在被迫留在阿富汗后，他将把这场斗争重新定义为消灭恐怖主义的战争，以便与其支持者保持一致，尽管他真正需要做的是加强喀布尔政府成功治理国家的能力。

Third, trade policy will reflect most explicitly Mr Trump’s dissonant outlook. He proudly embraced protectionism in his inaugural address, the first president since Herbert Hoover to make such a public stand. Take Mr Trump at his word. In order to signal a belligerent break with the past, he abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership, whose new rules and market openings would have benefited the US. Mr Trump and Wilbur Ross, commerce secretary, view bilateral trade deficits in the way businesspeople view negative net income: as losing. Therefore, countries that have large bilateral surpluses with the US — such as Mexico, South Korea and Germany — will draw presidential ire.
第三，贸易政策将最明显地反映出特朗普的另类视界。他曾在就职演说中自豪地拥抱保护主义，成为继赫伯特?胡佛(Herbert Hoover)之后首位公开表述此类立场的总统。特朗普也是说到做到。为了表示与过去彻底决裂，他抛弃了《跨太平洋伙伴关系协定》（Trans-Pacific Partnership，简称TPP），该协定的新规则和市场开放本能够让美国受益。特朗普与商务部长威尔伯?罗斯(Wilbur Ross)用商界人士看待负净利润的方式看待双边贸易逆差：亏本。因而，对美国存在巨额双边贸易顺差的国家（如墨西哥、韩国和德国）都将引发特朗普的愤怒。

Adroit early visits by the leaders of China and Japan led them to hope they could avoid Mr Trump’s aim, but they are mistaken. The president’s problem will be that bilateral trade deficits are hard to modify through trade policies; to address them, the administration will most likely turn from rules for fair competition and openness toward managed outcomes, dictated market shares and requirements for national content. Watch the renegotiation of Nafta to learn how Mr Trump will try to translate political rhetoric into policy.
先前对美国进行的顺利访问，使中国和日本领导人希望能够避免成为特朗普的目标，但他们判断错了。特朗普面临的问题是，双边贸易逆差很难通过贸易政策来调整；为解决这些问题，特朗普政府最大的可能是，放弃公平竞争和开放的规则，转向干预竞争结果、控制市场份额和规定国家成分要求。看看正在重新谈判的《北美自由贸易协定》(NAFTA)，就可以了解特朗普将怎样设法把政治辞令转化为政策。

Fourth, Mr Trump is ambivalent about alliances. He believes that the US has been too generous and can no longer afford the 70-year old security system that America led in creating after the second world war. But the US alliance network has forged a resiliency through professional ties, planning, institutions and even the careers, customs and habits of the US military.
第四，特朗普对以美国为首的联盟持矛盾态度。他认为美国一直以来过于慷慨，无法再维持其在二战后牵头打造的、已有70年历史的旧安全体系。但美国的联盟网络已经通过专业纽带、规划、制度，甚至美军的职业生涯、习俗和习惯形成了生命力。

James Mattis, secretary of defence, embodies that heritage. Therefore, while Trump is not likely to invest much effort in alliance management, he may comply with past practice, albeit with periodic blasts of complaint, as he is doing in Afghanistan.
国防部长詹姆斯?马蒂斯(James Mattis)体现了这一传统。因此，虽然特朗普不大可能在联盟管理方面投入太多精力，但马蒂斯或将遵循惯例——尽管他也会不时地像在阿富汗那样发出抱怨。

Finally, Mr Trump’s tenure is underscoring a vital point about America: it is far bigger than the president. Unlike China, Americans chose a constitutional order, not a ‘Core Leader’. US policies are products of shared and separated powers among various institutions and parties: the Senate and House, of course, but also courts, states, cities, federal departments and the private sector, including businesses and civil society.
最后，特朗普的任期凸显了美国的一个关键特点：国家比总统本身大得多。与中国不同，美国人选择的是宪法秩序，而非“核心领导人”。美国的政策是各种机构和政党之间共享权力和分权的产物，这些机构既包括参议院、众议院，也包括法院、州、市、联邦部门以及包括企业和公民社会在内的私营部门。

Ironically, Mr Trump’s acolytes consider the US founders’ careful construction to be a “deep state”, mistaking the institutions of a healthy republic for some faceless resistance to Trump’s whims. But in foreign policy, some patriots will not support Mr Trump’s pitting of American nationalism against the country’s internationalism. They recognise that most often US nationalism and internationalism have been in synchrony, not conflict, and that the mixture created America’s unique global leadership.
具有讽刺意味的是，特朗普的助手们认为，美国国父精心打造的制度是一股“暗深势力”(deep state)，将一个健康的共和国的制度误认为是对特朗普种种奇想的无端抵制。但在外交政策方面，一些爱国者不会支持特朗普用美式民族主义对抗美国的国际主义。他们认为，美国的民族主义与国际主义多数时候都是同步的，并不相冲突，而且正是这种结合创造了美国独特的全球领导力。