| 双语新闻 Bilingual News | 双语对照阅读 分级系列阅读 智能辅助阅读 在线英语学习 |
|
| 双语新闻 Bilingual News | 双语对照阅读 分级系列阅读 智能辅助阅读 在线英语学习 |
| [英文] [中文] [双语对照] [双语交替] [] |
| WASHINGTON — President Biden’s challenge on Tuesday night was to unite Americans behind his confrontation with a brutal Russian leader who has shattered more than three decades of post-Cold War peace without setting off fears that the return of superpower conflict will inflict an unacceptable cost. | 华盛顿——周二晚，拜登总统发表国情咨文演讲时所面临的挑战是：既要让美国人团结起来，支持他对抗破坏了后冷战时代30余年和平的俄罗斯残暴领导人，同时又不会引发人们的担心，即超级大国冲突的回归将带来不可接受的代价。 |
| Even as scenes of ruin were being flashed to the world from the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv and Kharkiv, Mr. Biden argued that it was worth paying a price — one he suggested he could limit — to preserve freedom in Eastern Europe. And he celebrated his success in organizing the Western allies to impose truly painful sanctions on Russia’s economy as punishment for the invasion of Ukraine and with the hope of loosening President Vladimir V. Putin’s hold over his country. | 就在乌克兰城市基辅和哈尔科夫被战火毁坏的景象展现在全世界面前时，拜登提出，值得为维护东欧的自由付出代价，他还指出，这个代价是可控的。他也庆祝了自己成功组织西方盟友对俄罗斯实施了令其真正感到痛苦的经济制裁，作为对俄罗斯入侵乌克兰的惩罚，并希望以此松动普京总统对俄罗斯的控制。 |
| Mr. Putin’s aggression, he argued, had actually strengthened an Atlantic alliance the Russian leader intended to splinter. And he made the case that even if Mr. Putin prevailed on the ground in Ukraine, Russia would emerge from this “premeditated and unprovoked” war “weaker and the rest of the world stronger.” | 拜登提出，普京的侵略行径实际上加强了他本想分裂的大西洋联盟。他还指出，即使普京入侵乌克兰得手，俄罗斯也会在这场“有预谋的无端”战争中“变弱，而世界其他地方将变强”。 |
| Yet Mr. Biden left unaddressed, at least for now, several of the hardest questions about where America goes next — and how it will ultimately emerge from Mr. Putin’s audacious effort to dismantle a world order largely designed in Washington. | 但至少在目前，拜登尚未提出如何解决美国面临的几个最棘手的问题，包括美国下一步要怎么办，以及对于普京想瓦解一个主要由华盛顿设计的世界秩序的冒险努力，最终要如何摆脱它？ |
| What happens if the combination of destabilizing Russia’s currency, depriving it of access to Western technology and freezing the assets of its oligarchs and their families fails to force Mr. Putin into retreat? And what if, once he is finished with Ukraine, the Russian leader keeps going, determined to re-establish the sphere of influence that the Soviet Union’s last leaders gave up, disastrously in Mr. Putin’s view? | 如果破坏俄罗斯货币的稳定、使其无法获得西方技术、冻结该国寡头及其家庭的资产等措施都不能迫使普京做出让步的话，该怎么办？而且，如果在拿下乌克兰后，这位俄罗斯领导人仍不罢休，决意重建苏联最后几任领导人所放弃的势力范围的话（在普京眼里，当年的放弃是灾难之举），该怎么办？ |
| For the first time since satellites detected the massing of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border last fall, Mr. Biden openly acknowledged that he is not certain where Mr. Putin is going to stop. | 自从卫星在去年秋季侦察到俄罗斯军队在乌克兰边境集结以来，拜登首次公开承认，他无法确定普京要走到哪一步。 |
| So he drew the line along the borders of an expanded NATO, the map Mr. Putin insists must be rolled back. “Our forces are not going to Europe to fight in Ukraine, but to defend our NATO allies,” he said, “in the event that Putin decides to keep moving west.” | 所以，拜登把界限划在北约扩张后的边界上，而普京则坚持认为，北约必须后退。拜登说，“如果普京决定继续西进的话，我们的军队去欧洲，不是为了在乌克兰作战，而是为了保卫我们的北约盟友。” |
| That last line was the most ominous. Mr. Biden and his aides have frequently debated in recent months whether the Russian leader’s ambitions go far beyond Ukraine. | 最后这句话最不祥。近几个月来，拜登及其助手们经常对这位俄罗斯领导人的野心是否远远超出乌克兰展开辩论。 |
| They look at the electronic maps on the screens in the White House Situation Room, and question whether, at nearly 70, the Russian leader thinks this is his last moment to string together a conquered Ukraine, a captive Belarus, a dependent Kazakhstan and maybe even a vulnerable Moldova into an approximation of the Soviet Union’s old glory. | 他们看着白宫战情室里屏幕上的电子地图，想搞清楚，这位年近七旬的俄罗斯领导人是否认为，这是他把征服下来的乌克兰、听话的白俄罗斯、依附的哈萨克斯坦，也许甚至还有脆弱的摩尔多瓦，串联一个与类似于苏联昔日辉煌的产物的最后机会。 |
| Eastern Europe was not the battlefield Mr. Biden had in mind when he raised the idea last year that the battle of “autocracy versus democracy” would be the defining foreign policy principle of his administration. | 去年，拜登提出“专制与民主”之争将是界定其政府外交政策的原则时，他脑子里想的战场不在东欧。 |
| At the time, he was thinking more about China than Russia, more about spurring 21st-century American competitiveness than containing a Russia laden with grievances from the 20th century. When Mr. Biden first started talking about the “battle between the utility of democracies in the 21st century and autocracies,” he was focused on the long game of rebuilding the American semiconductor manufacturing base, keeping ahead of an innovative Chinese military and demonstrating that the messy business of self-determination can still outperform top-down power. | 当时，他考虑更多的是中国，而不是俄罗斯，更多是如何激发21世纪美国的竞争力，而不是遏制充满了20世纪怨恨的俄罗斯。拜登第一次开始谈论“21世纪的民主制度实用性与专制制度的较量”时，他的注意力在一个长期博弈上，包括重建美国半导体制造基地，继续领先不断创新的中国军队，并证明事务乱作一团但个人有自主权的国家，仍能胜过靠自上而下权力运作的国家。 |
| Russia was regarded as a disrupter, but one that could most likely be kept in the box. | 虽然俄罗斯被视为一个搅局者，但也是最有可能受到掣肘的搅局者。 |
| Now it is clear that containing Mr. Putin could dominate the next three years of his presidency, imperiling the much delayed “pivot to Asia” that has been long discussed in American foreign policy circles but never fully executed. | 现已明显的是，遏制普京可能会主导拜登未来三年的总统任期，危及拖延已久的“转向亚洲”计划，这个计划一直在美国外交政策圈子里讨论，但从未全面实施。 |
| Mr. Biden sounded on Tuesday night like a man who had decided that history gave him no other choice. | 拜登在周二晚的讲话中听起来像是个认为历史让他别无选择的人。 |
| Mr. Biden is one of the few remaining architects of the post-Soviet order still in power in Washington, and to him, the borders of NATO are more than lines on a map. They are a living testament to what happens when free people can pick their own allies. | 拜登参与缔造了后苏联秩序，这些人中仍在华盛顿掌权的已为数不多，对拜登来说，北约的边界不只是地图上的线。它们是活生生的见证——当自由的人民可以选择自己的盟友时，会发生什么。 |
| To Mr. Putin, of course, that same map looks like an invading boa constrictor, a string of nations lured by the West in a plot to squeeze Russia until it can no longer breathe. He has railed against that design since 2007. And when he began to act — invading Georgia in 2008 and annexing Crimea in 2014 — he met little Western resistance. It took a long while for the United States and its allies to organize sanctions, and they had little bite when imposed. | 当然，对普京来说，同一地图看上去像一条入侵的巨蟒，在西方的诱惑下，一连串国家加入了挤压俄罗斯的阴谋，直到将其置于死地。普京自2007年起一直强烈抗议北约扩张。他开始行动后——2008年入侵格鲁吉亚、2014年吞并克里米亚——并没有遇到多少西方的抵制。美国及其盟友用了很长时间才组织起制裁，而且制裁实施后收效甚微。 |
| Mr. Biden was part of those decisions, especially on Crimea. But he seemed to acknowledge on Tuesday evening that the weak response had only encouraged Russia’s strongman. “Throughout our history we’ve learned this lesson: When dictators do not pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos,” Mr. Biden said. The cost to America and the world “keeps rising,” he added. | 拜登参与了那些决策的制定，尤其是在克里米亚问题上。他周二晚似乎承认，软弱的回应助长了俄罗斯的独裁者。“纵观我们的历史，我们已吸取了这个教训：当独裁者们不用为侵略行为付出代价时，他们就会制造更多混乱，”拜登说。美国和世界面临的损失会“继续上升”，他补充道。 |
| But Mr. Biden’s description of the problem does not help much in figuring out how this war ends. | 但拜登对这个问题的描述对搞清楚这场战争将如何结束没有多少帮助。 |
| Clearly, Mr. Putin is not planning to return to the old days of negotiating arms control treaties and rules for conducting military exercises, as the United States has offered. Instead, he is testing whether he can achieve more lasting change by force rather than by negotiation, and do it in weeks rather than years. | 很明显，普京并不打算像美国建议的那样，重回军备控制条约和军事演习规则的谈判。相反，他正在检验自己制造更持久变化的能力，能否通过武力而不是谈判，花几周时间而不是几年，让这种变化成为现实。 |
| For his part, Mr. Biden has offered no offramps to the Russian leader, at least publicly, no compromises of the kind that marked the division of Europe after World War II. And Mr. Putin has shown no interest in them, figuring that having gone this far, he may achieve more by continuing his brutal tactics than he can by diplomacy. | 就拜登而言，他还没有给这位俄罗斯领导人提供任何下台阶的办法，至少没有在公开场合，没有那种在第二次世界大战后把欧洲划为不同阵营的妥协。普京也没有对妥协表现出任何兴趣，认为既然已经走了这么远，继续使用残酷手段，而不是外交，也许会有更大收获。 |
| Not surprisingly, Mr. Biden, both a designer and an enthusiastic promoter of the Western alliance, views Mr. Putin’s eagerness to tear it apart as a desperate effort to turn back the clock. | 既是西方联盟的设计者，又是其热心推动者的拜登将普京急于使这个联盟分崩离析的行为看作是一种把时间拨回到过去的绝望努力，也就不足为奇了。 |
| But he also knows that there is no guarantee that Mr. Putin — emboldened by the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, convinced of his power to withstand any sanctions thrown at him — will fail. | 但拜登也知道，不能保证普京必将失败。美国从阿富汗撤军已使普京更有信心，他相信自己有能力承受任何制裁。 |
| “No one can say definitively what kind of world will emerge from the ashes in Ukraine,” Richard Fontaine, the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security and a Republican foreign policy strategist, wrote on Tuesday. | “没人能确切地说，一个什么样的世界会从乌克兰的灰烬中出现，”新美国安全中心首席执行官、共和党外交政策策略师理查德·方丹周二写道。 |
| President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not know, either, when he addressed Congress in 1941, with Hitler just six months from bombing and laying siege to Kyiv amid his drive into the Soviet Union. | 罗斯福总统1941年初在国会发表演讲时也不知道。那个演讲刚过六个月，希特勒就在对苏联发动攻击的过程中，对基辅进行了轰炸和围困。 |
| “The parallels between that moment and this one are striking,” Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian, said on Tuesday, noting that democracy at the time was being “threatened within America and outside,” referring in part to the isolationist “America First” movement that has echoes today in the pro-Trump wing of the Republican Party. | ”那个时刻与这个时刻之间有显著的相似之处，”研究美国总统的历史学家迈克尔·贝施洛斯周二说。他指出，美国的民主当时受到了来自“国内外的威胁”，这部分指的是“美国第一”的孤立主义运动，它在今天共和党内支持特朗普的一派中得到了回应。 |
| Roosevelt rose to the moment, defined America’s “Four Freedoms,” and built the Lend-Lease Act to help Britain keep Nazi Germany at bay. But America did not enter the war until it was forced to, at the end of 1941. | 罗斯福迎难而上，提出了美国的“四大自由”，制定了帮助英国抵御纳粹德国进攻的《租借法案》。但美国直到1941年底才被迫参战。 |
| In 2022, Mr. Biden’s task is to keep history from repeating itself. But he acknowledged that it would be a while before the full implications of Russia’s decision to go to war to play out. | 2022年，拜登的任务是防止历史重演。但他承认，俄罗斯决定发动战争的全部影响还需要一段时间才能显现出来。 |
| “This is the real test,” he said. “It’s going to take time. So let us continue to draw inspiration from the iron will of the Ukrainian people.” | “这是真正的考验，”拜登说。“这需要时间。所以，让我们继续从乌克兰人民的坚强意志中获得鼓舞吧。” |
OK阅读网 版权所有(C)2017 | 联系我们