周波：中美潛在爆發點在南海

【文/周波，譯/觀察者網 韓樺】

忘掉貿易戰吧。如果21世紀最嚴峻的挑戰是如何尋找中美競爭中共存的辦法，真正的危險則是一場意外事件引發了衝突，造成雙方都始料不及，也難以把控的後果。最可能的潛在爆發點當屬中國南海。

《紐約時報》2月3日頭版刊登評論文章“中美能夠競爭共存”

中方堅信，並在其2014年的立場文件中闡明，中國對南海諸島及其附近海域擁有“無可爭辯的主權”。中國政府表示其立場具有堅實的歷史和法理依據，因為“中國是最早發現、命名、勘探和開發南海諸島資源的國家，也是最早並持續對南海諸島實行主權管轄的國家”。

一些沿海國家對此持有不同意見—最明顯的是菲律賓，也包括越南，文萊，馬來西亞，以及最近表示異議的印度尼西亞。他們基於本國曆史和地理的記述，也提出其領土聲索，這些聲索有時相互矛盾。

而美國則一直宣稱不在這些主權爭議上選邊站隊，並聲稱它只想確保地區水域的航行自由。

但是中國以多種方式譴責美國這種自詡的“中立”為虛偽。美國學者傅泰林（Taylor Fravel）也指出，美國政策中似乎有一種固有的矛盾：一方面聲稱要置身地區爭議之外，另一方面在該地區的行動又不斷抬頭，尤其是在美國認定中國為“該地區緊張局勢加劇的根源”之後。

此外，每當美國軍艦駛進中國控制的南海島礁附近,或者進入中國軍艦巡邏的水域時，危險相遇的風險就會加劇。

2001年，美國海軍偵察機和中國戰鬥機相撞，造成中國飛行員犧牲。中方當時扣留了美方飛行員和機組成員。華盛頓方面並未正式對事件和犧牲飛行員道歉和負責,但在表示了兩次“非常遺憾”之後，緊張的外交對峙才慢慢得以化解。此後，在2001年，接着是2009年，2013年，2014年，2015年和2018年，中美軍艦和軍機在南海多次近距離相遇。

特朗普執政期間，美國海軍明顯增加了在中國的主權水域“航行自由”行動的次數，這些行動增加了衝突的風險。2018年9月，美國海軍驅逐艦“迪凱特號”和中國海軍驅逐艦“蘭州號”在南海險些相撞，最近距離僅45碼（約41米），可謂近年來最驚險遭遇。

如果今天在中國南海再發生一次碰撞，中美雙方絕不會像2001年那樣容易解決衝突。在華盛頓進攻性地故意激化同北京的競爭，但一個不斷崛起的中國只會更加堅定地捍衞自身主權。修昔底德指出，戰爭動因不外乎三者：恐懼、榮譽和利益，中國南海一應俱全。

中國近年來大力發展武器裝備和海軍艦隊並在南海建立哨所一定程度上促使了特朗普政府在其2017年《國家安全戰略報告》和2018年《國防戰略報告》中，定性中國為“戰略競爭對手”，美國還稱中國是“修正主義國家”。

中國繼而在2019年發佈的國防白皮書中回敬美國是“奉行單邊主義政策”和“挑起和加劇大國競爭”。

雙邊競爭似在升温，那麼問題來了：中美如何避免衝突，或者一場新的冷戰？答案恰恰是，重温冷戰。

冷戰初期，美蘇戰機毫不遲疑向對方開火.。因為柏林的地位和東西柏林分割問題，兩國在1948年，1958年和1961年發生過三次危機。1962年10月爆發的古巴導彈危機把當時的兩個超級大國帶到了核戰爭邊緣。由於一些還算適用的協議，加上牢固可靠的緊急通訊熱線，雙方避免了直接衝突。這説明儘管冷戰期間雙方手段有限，但在衡量全面衝突之利害後，死對頭也能建立信任。

1972年，華盛頓和莫斯科簽署了《防止公海及其上空事件的協定》，在達成的諸多事項中包括承諾使用清晰的通訊信號，以防止任意一方“騷擾或危及”即便已受到監視的船隻，“最大程度小心、謹慎地接近”公海上的艦船。協定極大地降低了冷戰時期美蘇危險相遇的風險，後來雖然沒能防止1988年2月發生的兩艘蘇聯軍艦在黑海撞擊兩艘美國軍艦那樣的例外事件，但據時任美國海軍戰爭學院法學教授佩德羅佐2012年發佈的一份報告，在協定簽署後的兩年之內，每年的意外事件發生次數由100次顯著降低到了40次。

蘇聯和美國在冷戰時期都能設法避免熱戰發生，相比之下，中美關係遠不及那麼對抗，因此今天雙方仍有理由對雙邊關係保持一定信心。

中美目前的軍事競爭囿於西太平洋，因此有別於美蘇在全球範圍內的軍備競賽。美國以為中國想把他趕出西太平洋，中國則認為美國不僅想阻止其正當合理發展遠洋海軍的雄心，還想把中國的影響力限定在亞洲大陸東海岸以內。

雖然中國以令人驚歎的速度壯大軍事實力，卻沒有任何想取代美國成為世界警察的慾望。中國軍隊遠離本土的軍事行動，例如在亞丁灣、非洲大陸等，都僅限於應對如海盜、維和及自然災害等威脅。反之，美國海軍則是定期派軍艦到亞太海域蓄意“挑戰”——用他們自己的話説——某些沿海國家的“過度海洋聲索”。

哪怕是最右翼的觀察家也不會把中美描述成真正的敵人。在去年10月的香山論壇—中國版“香格里拉對話”會上，國防部長魏鳳和表示，“中美軍事關係總體穩定，但也面臨不少困難和挑戰”。

相比冷戰時期的蘇聯和美國，中美之間現有的互信措施要“原始”得多。從某種意義上講，這或許是一種安慰，説明兩國關係還沒那麼糟，因此不需要那些多措施。但是，從長遠來看，中美兩國還是有必要建立更多的互信措施。

1998年，中美兩國基於“相互尊重的精神”，簽署了《關於建立加強海上軍事安全磋商機制的協定》，以“建立一個穩定的雙邊海軍和空軍磋商渠道”。2014年，雙方又達成不具法律約束力的《海上意外相遇規則》和《海空相遇安全行為準則諒解備忘錄》。

即便中美兩國在1998年簽署了協議，之後兩國軍機仍然相撞;2014年的兩份準則簽署之後，兩軍艦機也有過數次危險接近。換言之，僅靠互信措施，既不能避免意外事件，也不能消除戰略互疑，過去如此，現在也一樣。但是，互信措施依然是在中美利益分歧下防止雙方擦槍走火，繼續發展工作關係的基礎。

中國軍力正在繼續發展，與美國軍力差距逐步縮小，因此雙方亟需更多規則，不僅適用兩國已合作的打擊海盜或者搶險救災領域，而且要應用於太空探索、網絡空間和人工智能等領域。

中國人傳統上篤信陰陽學説，因此認為競爭與合作並不矛盾。但是這對美國來説卻似乎是個問題。華盛頓和一些西方國家的官僚們，對於中國沒有亦步亦趨緊隨美國，或至少更“民主”一些都表示沮喪。但中國何時拍過胸脯説要變得跟美國一樣？中國不像美國又有何妨？競爭中共存，仍有可能。

（觀察者網譯自《紐約時報》，翻頁閲讀英文原文）

China and America Can Compete and Coexist

Forget the trade war. If the gravest challenge of the 21st century is finding ways that China and the United States can coexist competitively, the real danger is that an unexpected incident might trigger a conflict that neither side has anticipated or could possibly control. The likeliest potential flash point is the South China Sea.

China believes, and has said as much in a 2014 position paper, that it has “indisputable sovereignty” over the South China Sea islands and the adjacent waters. This claim is solidly grounded in history and law, the government argues, because “China was the first country to discover, name, explore and exploit the resources of the South China Sea islands and the first to continuously exercise sovereign powers over them.”

Some coastal states in the region disagree — most notably perhaps the Philippines, but also Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and more recently, Indonesia. They defend other, sometimes competing, territorial claims, based on their own accounts of history and geography.

The United States, for its part, has historically vowed not to take sides in these disputes over sovereignty, arguing that it only wants to protect free navigation in the region’s waters.

But China has denounced America’s professed commitment to neutrality as hypocritical in several ways. And as academics like M. Taylor Fravel have argued, there seems to be something of an inherent contradiction in the United States’ policy: between its claim to want to stay out of local disputes and the resurgence of its operations in the region, particularly since it identified one country — China — as “the primary source of increased tensions” there.

What’s more, whenever an American vessel sails close to islands or rocks controlled by China, in waters patrolled by Chinese ships, the risk of a dangerous encounter rises.

In 2001, a Chinese fighter jet collided with a United States Navy surveillance plane, killing the Chinese pilot. A tense diplomatic standoff over the detained American pilot and crew was resolved after Washington said, twice, that it was “very sorry” — without officially accepting responsibility for the accident and death. Since then, there have been quite a few close encounters between American and Chinese military vessels and aircraft, again in 2001, and then in 2009, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2018.

Under the Trump administration, the United States Navy has increased its freedom-of-navigation operations, including in waters that China claims as its own, and those maneuvers increase the risk of an incident. The American destroyer Decatur and the Chinese destroyer Lanzhou narrowly avoided a collision, by just 45 yards, in September 2018 — the hairiest encounter in years.

Should another collision occur today, it won’t be resolved as easily as the one in 2001 was. An ever-rising China can only be more determined to safeguard what it sees as its sovereign rights, especially when Washington has deliberately intensified its competition with Beijing, and rather aggressively. Thucydides identified three motivations — fear, honor and interest — as the main causes of a war, and the South China Sea features them all.

Partly because China has ramped up its military arsenal and fleet in recent years, as well as built up outposts in the South China Sea, the Trump administration has called it a “strategic competitor,” including in the 2017 National Security Strategy paper and the 2018 National Defense Strategy. Washington has also said that Beijing is a “revisionist power.”

China, in turn, released a defense white paper last summer that described the United States as having “adopted unilateral policies” and “provoked and intensified competition among major countries.”

With the temperature seeming to rise on both sides, how can a conflict, or something like a new cold war, between China and the United States be avoided? Precisely by looking at the actual Cold War.

In the early years of that protracted standoff, American and Soviet aircrafts didn’t hesitate to fire at one another. There were three crises over the status of divided Berlin, in 1948, 1958 and 1961. The Cuban missile crisis brought the two superpowers to the brink of nuclear war in October 1962. And yet outright conflict was averted, thanks to a few modest agreements and well-established hotlines for emergency communication. Even bitter enemies can build trust, and with imperfect tools, when they measure the stakes of a full-on clash.

In 1972, Washington and Moscow signed the Agreement on the Prevention of Incidents on and Over the High Seas — vowing, among other things, to use clear communication signals, avoid “embarrassing or endangering” even ships under their surveillance and exercise “the greatest caution and prudence in approaching” vessels on the high seas. The accord didn’t prevent two Soviet ships from bumping into two American ships in Soviet territorial waters in February 1988, but that was an outlier incident, and the agreement does seem to have drastically reduced the overall risk of dangerous encounters. Within two years of its entry into force, according to a 2012 paper by Raul (Pete) Pedrozo, then a law professor at the United States Naval War College, the number of incidents per year had dropped from 100 to 40.

If the Soviet Union and the United States managed to avoid a major conflict during the Cold War, then some degree of confidence seems in order today about the far less confrontational relations between China and the United States.

Unlike the military rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, which was global, any military competition between the United States and China is confined to the western Pacific. America thinks that China wants to drive it out of the region; China believes America wants to block its legitimate ambition to develop a blue-water navy and hopes instead to confine China’s influence to the eastern coast of continental Asia.

Yet even though China has built up its military capacity at an awesome speed, it has shown no appetite to replace the United States as world policeman. China’s operations far from its shores, such as in the Gulf of Aden or on the African continent, are limited to addressing threats such as piracy or participating in peacekeeping and disaster relief. The United States Navy, on the other hand, regularly sends ships to the Asia-Pacific region in a deliberate effort to “challenge” — its own term — the “excessive maritime claims” of some coastal states.

Still, even the wariest of observers have yet to describe China and the United States as actual enemies. At the last Xiangshan Forum in October — the Chinese government’s version of the Shangri-La Dialogue — Wei Fenghe, the defense minister, said, “The China-United States military relationship is generally stable, but we are confronted with many difficulties and challenges.”

The confidence-building measures that exist today between China and the United States are rudimentary compared to those between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War. In a way, this may be a comforting fact: a suggestion that relations haven’t become so hostile as to require many such measures. Yet more of them will be necessary in the long run.

In 1998, China and the United States, acting in “the spirit of mutual respect,” signed the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement to “establish a stable channel for consultations between their respective maritime and air forces.” In 2014 came the nonbinding Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea and the Memorandum of Understanding regarding the Rules of Behavior for Safety of Air and Maritime Encounters.

Chinese and American aircraft nonetheless collided after the 1998 agreement, and there have been dangerously close calls even since the two later sets of guidelines. In other words, confidence-building measures alone can neither prevent incidents nor overcome strategic distrust — today no more than in the past. And yet they remain essential to preventing any mishap from escalating and to developing working relations between China and America despite their divergent interests.

As China’s military strength continues to grow and it closes the gap with the United States, both sides will almost certainly need to put more rules in place, not only in areas like antipiracy or disaster relief — where the two countries already have been cooperating — but also regarding space exploration, cyberspace and artificial intelligence.

For Chinese people, who traditionally believe in yin and yang, the notion that rivals can cooperate isn’t a contradiction in terms. It seems to be a problem for America, however. Officials in Washington and other Western capitals have expressed dismay that China hasn’t become more like the United States, or at least more democratic. But did China ever pledge to become like the United States? And so what if it hasn’t become that? Competitive coexistence is still possible.

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