2017年07月
2017年07月31日
トルコはカタールでの軍事計画の話をすすめる。
Jun 16, 2017 | 20:23
Turkey Marches Ahead With Its Military Plans in Qatar
トルコはカタールでの軍事計画の話をすすめる。
Turkey Pushes Ahead With Its Military Plans in Qatar
Though Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies have cut ties with Qatar, touching off a diplomatic crisis in the Middle East, one friend has refused to abandon the small country on the Persian Gulf. Turkey's steadfast support of Qatar has stood out since the dispute began June 5. Not only has Ankara provided diplomatic and trade assistance to Doha, but it also has moved to expedite the deployment of Turkish forces to Qatar, a decision that will fortify the common ground forming between the two countries.
steadfast :断固とした
fortify:防備する
Building Stronger Security Ties
Though Turkey's parliament agreed to the deployment last week, the decision to base Turkish forces in Qatar dates back to a 2014 agreement between the two states. Turkey has already sent a limited number of troops to Qatar; according to several reports, between 100 and 150 troops have been stationed at a Qatari military base since October 2016. But these forces are only the vanguard of what is intended to become a more meaningful and permanent deployment. The Turkish military dispatched a three-person delegation on June 12 to coordinate the arrival of additional forces. The latest available information, however, indicates there are practical issues relating to the facility intended to host the Turkish troops that need to be resolved before they can arrive.
vanguard:先陣
Before the Turkish parliament and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan officially ratified the decision to send troops to Qatar, both countries had already agreed on the command structure of the Turkish base there. From that agreement, it would appear that Turkey is not simply looking for a base to run its own operations from, but is rather seeking a joint structure that will intertwine its activities with those of the Qatari military. While the Turkish forces will have their own facility, it will be under the command of a joint headquarters based in Doha, with a Qatari general at the helm supported by a Turkish general as his second in command.
helm:指揮する立場
Initially, Turkey planned to send about 600 troops to Qatar. While this number likely remains true for the next phase of Turkey's deployment, the vote in parliament and several statements by Turkish officials have generated talk of a much larger deployment that may follow, eventually totaling about 3,000 troops. Turkey is also considering sending fighter aircraft and warships to Qatar. Such a deployment would give Turkey a significant presence in Qatar, though it may not necessarily sound like one compared with the 11,000 U.S. forces currently stationed there.
Turkish forces would primarily be in Qatar to assist and train Qatari forces, though they would also use the base to launch their own military operations. In theory, the Turkish military could also defend the Qatari government against internal or external threats. A deployment of 3,000 Turkish troops, along with fighter aircraft and warships, could prove a considerable boost to Qatar's active military, which numbers about 11,800.
Depending on how the political crisis between Qatar and other Gulf states develops, Turkey could choose to deploy more troops than the 600 it plans to initially send as a sign of support for Qatar, or even to guarantee the security of the Qatari government if new risks emerge. While Turkey's deployment remains a work in progress and will build incrementally, it cannot be ruled out that the deployment may eventually reach a level that elevates it beyond its current position as a symbol of military cooperation and political unity.
Shared Goals in the Middle East
Strategically, the Turkish and Qatari governments have seen some of their interests align in recent years. Both have identified opportunities to extend their influence within the Middle East by supporting Islamist groups. This aid increased substantially after the Arab Spring, when long-suppressed political Islamists found footholds in crumbling political systems. Doha and Ankara justify their support for the Muslim Brotherhood and other such groups by claiming they are supporting democratic values and self-determination in the region. While Turkey and Qatar have some ideological alignment with Sunni Islamist groups, their backing is more about cultivating influence with popular movements that have millions of followers and adherents across the region.
crumbling:弱体化する
cultivating:親交を深める
adherents:信奉者
Doha's efforts over the years to build stronger security and trade ties with Turkey were similarly designed as a means to broaden Qatar's influence beyond what its small size should allow, and to provide it with an extra layer of support for its security outside the Saudi and U.S. umbrellas. Doha has watched Riyadh's efforts to circumvent its independence over the years, and resentment over being treated like a vassal state of the Saudi kingdom has helped prompt the Qatari government to diversify its alliances, even by developing ties with a Saudi rival like Turkey.
circumvent:回避する
vassal :家臣
Critically, Qatar's liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector — one of the largest in the world — allows Doha to maintain an independent economy. Because of its wealth, Qatar is not forced to fall in line with Saudi Arabia's policies to keep economic aid flowing, as is Bahrain. The health and independence of Qatar's LNG sector depends on the nation maintaining a balanced relationship with Iran, too, which bothers Saudi Arabia. And it is a relationship Qatar will not be willing to give up.
Turkey's presence in Qatar gives Ankara another means of challenging Saudi efforts to dominate the Middle East and lead the Sunni world. Saudi Arabia has a positive relationship with Turkey, but Riyadh sees Turkey's military presence in Qatar as an irritant and a challenge to its authority.
irritant:いらいらさせること
Meanwhile, despite its rift with Saudi Arabia and its growing security relationship with Turkey, Qatar's military cooperation with the United States remains robust. In no way does Turkey's military presence in Qatar give Doha the option to switch from its U.S. security guarantor to a Turkish backer. After all, the U.S.-Qatar military partnership goes back many years, and it doesn't rub Riyadh the wrong way. So even as it receives more support from Turkish forces, Doha is highly unlikely to discard the security and diplomatic strength that the U.S. presence in the country provides.
rift:亀裂
guarantor:保証人
rub:こする
discard:放棄する
トルコがカタールを軍事面で支援し、3000人を駐留させる。カタールには11800人の軍がある。アメリカ軍も11000人が駐留している。サウジはカタールを家臣のように位置づけようとしたが、できなかった。カタールは今回トルコが支援してくれたので、アメリカとともに、カタールの安全保障を支援してくれることになった。
火曜日。ではまた明日。
Turkey Marches Ahead With Its Military Plans in Qatar
トルコはカタールでの軍事計画の話をすすめる。
Turkey Pushes Ahead With Its Military Plans in Qatar
Though Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies have cut ties with Qatar, touching off a diplomatic crisis in the Middle East, one friend has refused to abandon the small country on the Persian Gulf. Turkey's steadfast support of Qatar has stood out since the dispute began June 5. Not only has Ankara provided diplomatic and trade assistance to Doha, but it also has moved to expedite the deployment of Turkish forces to Qatar, a decision that will fortify the common ground forming between the two countries.
steadfast :断固とした
fortify:防備する
Building Stronger Security Ties
Though Turkey's parliament agreed to the deployment last week, the decision to base Turkish forces in Qatar dates back to a 2014 agreement between the two states. Turkey has already sent a limited number of troops to Qatar; according to several reports, between 100 and 150 troops have been stationed at a Qatari military base since October 2016. But these forces are only the vanguard of what is intended to become a more meaningful and permanent deployment. The Turkish military dispatched a three-person delegation on June 12 to coordinate the arrival of additional forces. The latest available information, however, indicates there are practical issues relating to the facility intended to host the Turkish troops that need to be resolved before they can arrive.
vanguard:先陣
Before the Turkish parliament and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan officially ratified the decision to send troops to Qatar, both countries had already agreed on the command structure of the Turkish base there. From that agreement, it would appear that Turkey is not simply looking for a base to run its own operations from, but is rather seeking a joint structure that will intertwine its activities with those of the Qatari military. While the Turkish forces will have their own facility, it will be under the command of a joint headquarters based in Doha, with a Qatari general at the helm supported by a Turkish general as his second in command.
helm:指揮する立場
Initially, Turkey planned to send about 600 troops to Qatar. While this number likely remains true for the next phase of Turkey's deployment, the vote in parliament and several statements by Turkish officials have generated talk of a much larger deployment that may follow, eventually totaling about 3,000 troops. Turkey is also considering sending fighter aircraft and warships to Qatar. Such a deployment would give Turkey a significant presence in Qatar, though it may not necessarily sound like one compared with the 11,000 U.S. forces currently stationed there.
Turkish forces would primarily be in Qatar to assist and train Qatari forces, though they would also use the base to launch their own military operations. In theory, the Turkish military could also defend the Qatari government against internal or external threats. A deployment of 3,000 Turkish troops, along with fighter aircraft and warships, could prove a considerable boost to Qatar's active military, which numbers about 11,800.
Depending on how the political crisis between Qatar and other Gulf states develops, Turkey could choose to deploy more troops than the 600 it plans to initially send as a sign of support for Qatar, or even to guarantee the security of the Qatari government if new risks emerge. While Turkey's deployment remains a work in progress and will build incrementally, it cannot be ruled out that the deployment may eventually reach a level that elevates it beyond its current position as a symbol of military cooperation and political unity.
Shared Goals in the Middle East
Strategically, the Turkish and Qatari governments have seen some of their interests align in recent years. Both have identified opportunities to extend their influence within the Middle East by supporting Islamist groups. This aid increased substantially after the Arab Spring, when long-suppressed political Islamists found footholds in crumbling political systems. Doha and Ankara justify their support for the Muslim Brotherhood and other such groups by claiming they are supporting democratic values and self-determination in the region. While Turkey and Qatar have some ideological alignment with Sunni Islamist groups, their backing is more about cultivating influence with popular movements that have millions of followers and adherents across the region.
crumbling:弱体化する
cultivating:親交を深める
adherents:信奉者
Doha's efforts over the years to build stronger security and trade ties with Turkey were similarly designed as a means to broaden Qatar's influence beyond what its small size should allow, and to provide it with an extra layer of support for its security outside the Saudi and U.S. umbrellas. Doha has watched Riyadh's efforts to circumvent its independence over the years, and resentment over being treated like a vassal state of the Saudi kingdom has helped prompt the Qatari government to diversify its alliances, even by developing ties with a Saudi rival like Turkey.
circumvent:回避する
vassal :家臣
Critically, Qatar's liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector — one of the largest in the world — allows Doha to maintain an independent economy. Because of its wealth, Qatar is not forced to fall in line with Saudi Arabia's policies to keep economic aid flowing, as is Bahrain. The health and independence of Qatar's LNG sector depends on the nation maintaining a balanced relationship with Iran, too, which bothers Saudi Arabia. And it is a relationship Qatar will not be willing to give up.
Turkey's presence in Qatar gives Ankara another means of challenging Saudi efforts to dominate the Middle East and lead the Sunni world. Saudi Arabia has a positive relationship with Turkey, but Riyadh sees Turkey's military presence in Qatar as an irritant and a challenge to its authority.
irritant:いらいらさせること
Meanwhile, despite its rift with Saudi Arabia and its growing security relationship with Turkey, Qatar's military cooperation with the United States remains robust. In no way does Turkey's military presence in Qatar give Doha the option to switch from its U.S. security guarantor to a Turkish backer. After all, the U.S.-Qatar military partnership goes back many years, and it doesn't rub Riyadh the wrong way. So even as it receives more support from Turkish forces, Doha is highly unlikely to discard the security and diplomatic strength that the U.S. presence in the country provides.
rift:亀裂
guarantor:保証人
rub:こする
discard:放棄する
トルコがカタールを軍事面で支援し、3000人を駐留させる。カタールには11800人の軍がある。アメリカ軍も11000人が駐留している。サウジはカタールを家臣のように位置づけようとしたが、できなかった。カタールは今回トルコが支援してくれたので、アメリカとともに、カタールの安全保障を支援してくれることになった。
火曜日。ではまた明日。
2017年07月30日
中国とアメリカは戦争に向かっているのか? 教授、有識者、ジャーナリストは熱くなった話題に加わる。(4)
The problem is that the existing order, put in place by the United States after the Second World War, might be exactly what hampers efforts to thicken that web. In a sense, America is experiencing the dilemmas typical of an empire in its twilight years. Imperial powers in the middle of the twentieth century used to argue that they couldn’t withdraw as long as their colonial subjects were not ready to rule themselves. But, as the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan once explained to a rather baffled William F. Buckley, Jr., the continuance of colonial rule would not make them more ready. If the United States were to give up its policing duties in Asia too quickly, chaos might ensue. The longer its Asian allies remain dependent on U.S. military protection, however, the harder it will be for them to take care of themselves.
hampers:邪魔をする
baffled:困惑させる
The most desirable way to balance the rising power of China would be the creation of a regional defense alliance stretching from South Korea to Burma. Japan, as the leading economic and military power, would be the logical choice to lead such a coalition. This would mean, in an ideal world, that Japan should revise its pacifist constitution after a national debate, led not by a government of chauvinistic revanchists but by a more liberal administration. But we do not live in an ideal world. Abe’s revisionism (he has currently set 2020 as a deadline for the amended constitution) is unlikely to achieve its aims in Japan. Most Japanese are no keener than most Germans to play a major military role once again. And as long as Japanese leaders insist on whitewashing their country’s recent past they will never persuade other countries in the region to trust them.
chauvinistic:狂信的愛国主義の
revanchists:︰失地奪回主義者
This is the status quo that dependence on the United States has frozen into place. As much as Abe’s government wishes to remain under the American military umbrella, the American postwar order, including the pacifist constitution, still inflames right-wing resentment. Yet Washington, and especially the Pentagon, which shapes much of U.S. policy in East Asia, has consistently supported conservative governments in Japan, seeing them as an anti-Communist bulwark. Meanwhile, as long as the United States is there to keep the peace, the governments of Japan and South Korea will continue to snipe at each other, instead of strengthening their alliance.
inflames:感情を掻き立てる
resentment:憤り
bulwark:防護する人
snipe:非難する
China’s own attitude toward the status quo is far from straightforward. China may dream of sweeping its seas clean of the U.S. Navy. But, if the alternative is the military resurgence of Japan, the Chinese would probably opt for maintaining the Pax Americana. At the moment, though, the United States itself appears to be drifting. Trump has accused Japan of playing the U.S. for a sucker. He has even suggested that Japan and South Korea might build their own nuclear bombs. But the ex-generals and corporate executives who run his foreign policy seem to favor sticking to the world we know. Both of these policies are flawed. There is no ideal solution to the late-imperial dilemma. But the surest way to court disaster is to have no coherent plan at all.
drifting:ゆっくり動く
sucker:騙されやすい人
flawed:欠点のある
アメリカがアジアの傘となる限りは中国に対してアジアの結束はおぼつかない。今までのようにアメリカがアジアを守るのではなく、アジアの諸国が日本を始めとして、自ら守るための軍事を強化していく必要がある。かと言って日本とか韓国が核を持つことには賛成出来ない。中国に対抗していくには今後はアジアの軍事的な結束をアメリカがどう強化していくかだろう。日本もいつまでもどうでもいい小島に執着していてはいけない。
月曜日。今日は雑用が多い。ではまた明日。
hampers:邪魔をする
baffled:困惑させる
The most desirable way to balance the rising power of China would be the creation of a regional defense alliance stretching from South Korea to Burma. Japan, as the leading economic and military power, would be the logical choice to lead such a coalition. This would mean, in an ideal world, that Japan should revise its pacifist constitution after a national debate, led not by a government of chauvinistic revanchists but by a more liberal administration. But we do not live in an ideal world. Abe’s revisionism (he has currently set 2020 as a deadline for the amended constitution) is unlikely to achieve its aims in Japan. Most Japanese are no keener than most Germans to play a major military role once again. And as long as Japanese leaders insist on whitewashing their country’s recent past they will never persuade other countries in the region to trust them.
chauvinistic:狂信的愛国主義の
revanchists:︰失地奪回主義者
This is the status quo that dependence on the United States has frozen into place. As much as Abe’s government wishes to remain under the American military umbrella, the American postwar order, including the pacifist constitution, still inflames right-wing resentment. Yet Washington, and especially the Pentagon, which shapes much of U.S. policy in East Asia, has consistently supported conservative governments in Japan, seeing them as an anti-Communist bulwark. Meanwhile, as long as the United States is there to keep the peace, the governments of Japan and South Korea will continue to snipe at each other, instead of strengthening their alliance.
inflames:感情を掻き立てる
resentment:憤り
bulwark:防護する人
snipe:非難する
China’s own attitude toward the status quo is far from straightforward. China may dream of sweeping its seas clean of the U.S. Navy. But, if the alternative is the military resurgence of Japan, the Chinese would probably opt for maintaining the Pax Americana. At the moment, though, the United States itself appears to be drifting. Trump has accused Japan of playing the U.S. for a sucker. He has even suggested that Japan and South Korea might build their own nuclear bombs. But the ex-generals and corporate executives who run his foreign policy seem to favor sticking to the world we know. Both of these policies are flawed. There is no ideal solution to the late-imperial dilemma. But the surest way to court disaster is to have no coherent plan at all.
drifting:ゆっくり動く
sucker:騙されやすい人
flawed:欠点のある
アメリカがアジアの傘となる限りは中国に対してアジアの結束はおぼつかない。今までのようにアメリカがアジアを守るのではなく、アジアの諸国が日本を始めとして、自ら守るための軍事を強化していく必要がある。かと言って日本とか韓国が核を持つことには賛成出来ない。中国に対抗していくには今後はアジアの軍事的な結束をアメリカがどう強化していくかだろう。日本もいつまでもどうでもいい小島に執着していてはいけない。
月曜日。今日は雑用が多い。ではまた明日。
2017年07月29日
中国とアメリカは戦争に向かっているのか? 教授、有識者、ジャーナリストは熱くなった話題に加わる。(3)
Squeezed between the rivalry of China and the United States are China’s immediate neighbors and America’s allies. They are driven, mostly for domestic reasons, by their own forms of nationalism. Japan and South Korea have competing claims over a group of tiny islands in the Sea of Japan. Old wounds inflicted during the Japanese annexation of Korea between 1910 and 1945 are periodically reopened for political ends in South Korea, and the current Japanese government, led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, espouses a hard-right nationalism that downplays Japanese wartime atrocities. Abe wants to revise the postwar pacifist constitution, and his more ardent supporters think that the best way to do so is to present Japan’s past imperialism as a heroic effort to liberate Asia.
Squeezed:苦しめる
immediate:すぐ隣の
inflicted:もたらす
downplays:過小評価する
ardent:熱烈な
Abe’s nationalism is further complicated by its ambivalence toward the United States. The Japanese right has resented American interference in its domestic politics since the postwar occupation, especially when it concerns interpretations of Japan’s wartime past. At the same time, Abe is terrified that the United States might not come to Japan’s rescue against China or North Korea. One of Rachman’s most cogent insights is that having so many Asian allies dependent on U.S. military force may turn out to be a weakness rather than a strength.
ambivalence:相反する感情
resented:憤慨する
terrified:怯えている
cogent:当を得た
President Obama, perhaps foolishly, promised Abe in 2014 that the United States would intervene on Japan’s behalf if China were to threaten a number of tiny uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, which are claimed by both countries. Would the United States really risk a war over a few disputed rocks just for the sake of “credibility”? Rachman concludes his survey with a fine sentiment: “The great political challenge of the twenty-first century will be to manage the process of Easternization in the common interest of humankind.”
foolishly:愚かにも
credibility:威信
In a short book pointedly titled “Avoiding War with China” (University of Virginia), Amitai Etzioni has a more concrete idea of how China should be accommodated. Etzioni, a professor at George Washington University, is no softie. Having escaped from Nazi Germany as a child, he served as a commando in the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. Etzioni knows what war is like, in contrast to most armchair warriors in Washington or indeed Beijing, and he refuses to get overexcited by China’s martial prowess. China’s military, he writes, “seems to pose no credible threat to the United States in the region, let alone on a global scale. This conclusion is further supported by the observations of how and when China uses its clout.”
accommodated:調整する・配慮する・適応する
softie:騙されやすい人・感傷的な人
armchair:実体験を伴わない
prowess:卓越した能力
Etzioni admits that China has flouted international laws by claiming rights over islands far from its coastlines. It clearly wants to expand its influence from the Siberian borders all the way down to the sea-lanes running along Vietnam and the Philippines. But so far China has used almost no force to achieve its ends. Etzioni is convinced that Chinese policies are more concerned with rhetorical and symbolic assertions than with the outright projection of force. This means that, in his view, there is room for tension-easing compromise. Resources in the South China Sea could perhaps be shared. Certain concessions might be made; this or that island could be developed by China in exchange for territories elsewhere.
flouted:無視する
convinced:確信している
outright:徹底した・あからさまな
projection:見通し
concessions :譲歩
At the same time, he insists that there should be “clear red lines.” Certain “core interests” must be defended. The United States would have to intervene if Taiwan were in danger of being invaded. Free travel through sea and air around China has to be maintained. But Etzioni warns against “habitually interpreting Chinese acts of assertion as aggressive,” which, he says, “is symptomatic of a strategy that holds that China cannot be accommodated and that it must be contained by any means necessary.” This sounds eminently sensible. China’s intentions may, of course, not be quite as benign as Etzioni claims, and any territorial concession by the United States is likely to be read as a sign of weakness both by China and by America’s regional allies.
defended:擁護する
symptomatic:兆候がある
habitually :習慣的に
aggressive:攻撃的な
contained:含む
by any means:いかなる手段によっても
necessary:必然的な
eminently :極めて
sensible:賢明である
benign:おだやかな
Nonetheless, the United States, which is still the most powerful nation in the Pacific, should resist the temptation of belligerent posturing when it isn’t strictly necessary.
posturing:姿勢
If Etzioni seeks to tone down the threat of China’s rise to power, Howard French, a former Times correspondent in China and Japan, attempts to normalize it, in his “Everything Under the Heavens” (Knopf). The book, which I blurbed, is the only one under review that gives us a look at China from the inside as well as from the outside. French knows the country well, and has talked to many more people than the sort you encounter at academic conferences or Davos panels. Like Graham Allison, French explains Chinese politics through its history. But he avoids the kind of cultural generalizations that Lee Kuan Yew was fond of showering on grateful Western interlocutors. He has no truck with the idea, for example, that the Confucian tradition is essentially about obeying authority.
normalize:標準化する
blurbed:誇大に宣伝する
interlocutors:対話者
Instead, he stresses a political history that helps illuminate territorial conflicts between China and its neighbors. China, traditionally, is neither a nation-state nor a colonial empire, even though it currently includes areas of imperial conquest. The classic view of the world from China’s imperial capital cities took the country to be the center of civilization. The emperors ruled “all under heaven,” or tianxia. Peripheral areas, inhabited by less civilized people, would not have to be dominated by force, provided they paid sufficient tribute to the dragon throne. As long as the superiority of the Middle Kingdom was acknowledged, the blessings of Chinese civilization could be shared, and harmony would reign.
illuminate:解き明かす
It is no wonder, then, that the comparatively recent depredations suffered by China at the hands of barbarians—particularly of the “dwarf pirates” to the east (i.e., the Japanese)—were so keenly felt. In 1895, a superior Japanese Army humiliated the Chinese empire. A little more than forty years later, Japan caused the deaths of more than fourteen million Chinese. French, Allison, Kissinger, and Lee Kuan Yew all agree on one thing: China’s dream is to restore something of the old order that was lost almost two centuries ago. The Communist Party is effectively stirring up feelings that have been simmering at least since the eighteen-forties.
depredations:略奪行為
stirring:巻き起こす
simmering:くすぶり続けている
If Chinese emotions can be easily understood, so can those of the people living in the vicinity. The fact that the Japanese behaved appallingly in the nineteen-thirties doesn’t mean they should be left at the mercy of a regime that murders its own citizens for political reasons. But French agrees with Etzioni that China’s aspirations must be accommodated up to a point. This will mean “stopping China somewhere short of the maximal pursuit of its strategic goals.” French sees the United States as a regional facilitator, helping to strengthen cooperation among its allies. The most salient goal, he rightly observes, is “thickening the web among China’s wary neighbors, who have a shared interest in keeping China from using force to upend the existing order.”
vicinity:周辺
behaved:ふるまう
appallingly:恐ろしい
mercy:なすがままになって
aspirations:熱望
salient :目立った
wary:警戒して
upend:ひっくりかえす
中国がこうして南シナ海の領有とかアジアに勢力を拡大しようとしているのは1世紀前からの日本の中国に対する屈辱がある。その怨念を取り除こうとしている。そして、かっての中華帝国を取り戻そうとしている。中国の今の軍事力はまだおそるるに足りない。今までは彼らは軍事力で、南シナ海を領有してきてはいない。
こうした中国の現状に対する理解はそうかもしれない。韓国と違い中国はこうした大きな発想で対応しているのかもしれない。謝罪とか賠償ではなく、中国は偉大な中華帝国を再現することによってその屈辱を補おうとしているのかもしれない。流石に大人の国だ。
日曜日。母が胃瘻の手術が終わったので、退院するので、今日は見舞いに行こうと思っている。毎日、この年になって、超多忙の日々を送っているが、無理をしてでも行かないと行く機会がない。ではまた明日。
Squeezed:苦しめる
immediate:すぐ隣の
inflicted:もたらす
downplays:過小評価する
ardent:熱烈な
Abe’s nationalism is further complicated by its ambivalence toward the United States. The Japanese right has resented American interference in its domestic politics since the postwar occupation, especially when it concerns interpretations of Japan’s wartime past. At the same time, Abe is terrified that the United States might not come to Japan’s rescue against China or North Korea. One of Rachman’s most cogent insights is that having so many Asian allies dependent on U.S. military force may turn out to be a weakness rather than a strength.
ambivalence:相反する感情
resented:憤慨する
terrified:怯えている
cogent:当を得た
President Obama, perhaps foolishly, promised Abe in 2014 that the United States would intervene on Japan’s behalf if China were to threaten a number of tiny uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, which are claimed by both countries. Would the United States really risk a war over a few disputed rocks just for the sake of “credibility”? Rachman concludes his survey with a fine sentiment: “The great political challenge of the twenty-first century will be to manage the process of Easternization in the common interest of humankind.”
foolishly:愚かにも
credibility:威信
In a short book pointedly titled “Avoiding War with China” (University of Virginia), Amitai Etzioni has a more concrete idea of how China should be accommodated. Etzioni, a professor at George Washington University, is no softie. Having escaped from Nazi Germany as a child, he served as a commando in the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. Etzioni knows what war is like, in contrast to most armchair warriors in Washington or indeed Beijing, and he refuses to get overexcited by China’s martial prowess. China’s military, he writes, “seems to pose no credible threat to the United States in the region, let alone on a global scale. This conclusion is further supported by the observations of how and when China uses its clout.”
accommodated:調整する・配慮する・適応する
softie:騙されやすい人・感傷的な人
armchair:実体験を伴わない
prowess:卓越した能力
Etzioni admits that China has flouted international laws by claiming rights over islands far from its coastlines. It clearly wants to expand its influence from the Siberian borders all the way down to the sea-lanes running along Vietnam and the Philippines. But so far China has used almost no force to achieve its ends. Etzioni is convinced that Chinese policies are more concerned with rhetorical and symbolic assertions than with the outright projection of force. This means that, in his view, there is room for tension-easing compromise. Resources in the South China Sea could perhaps be shared. Certain concessions might be made; this or that island could be developed by China in exchange for territories elsewhere.
flouted:無視する
convinced:確信している
outright:徹底した・あからさまな
projection:見通し
concessions :譲歩
At the same time, he insists that there should be “clear red lines.” Certain “core interests” must be defended. The United States would have to intervene if Taiwan were in danger of being invaded. Free travel through sea and air around China has to be maintained. But Etzioni warns against “habitually interpreting Chinese acts of assertion as aggressive,” which, he says, “is symptomatic of a strategy that holds that China cannot be accommodated and that it must be contained by any means necessary.” This sounds eminently sensible. China’s intentions may, of course, not be quite as benign as Etzioni claims, and any territorial concession by the United States is likely to be read as a sign of weakness both by China and by America’s regional allies.
defended:擁護する
symptomatic:兆候がある
habitually :習慣的に
aggressive:攻撃的な
contained:含む
by any means:いかなる手段によっても
necessary:必然的な
eminently :極めて
sensible:賢明である
benign:おだやかな
Nonetheless, the United States, which is still the most powerful nation in the Pacific, should resist the temptation of belligerent posturing when it isn’t strictly necessary.
posturing:姿勢
If Etzioni seeks to tone down the threat of China’s rise to power, Howard French, a former Times correspondent in China and Japan, attempts to normalize it, in his “Everything Under the Heavens” (Knopf). The book, which I blurbed, is the only one under review that gives us a look at China from the inside as well as from the outside. French knows the country well, and has talked to many more people than the sort you encounter at academic conferences or Davos panels. Like Graham Allison, French explains Chinese politics through its history. But he avoids the kind of cultural generalizations that Lee Kuan Yew was fond of showering on grateful Western interlocutors. He has no truck with the idea, for example, that the Confucian tradition is essentially about obeying authority.
normalize:標準化する
blurbed:誇大に宣伝する
interlocutors:対話者
Instead, he stresses a political history that helps illuminate territorial conflicts between China and its neighbors. China, traditionally, is neither a nation-state nor a colonial empire, even though it currently includes areas of imperial conquest. The classic view of the world from China’s imperial capital cities took the country to be the center of civilization. The emperors ruled “all under heaven,” or tianxia. Peripheral areas, inhabited by less civilized people, would not have to be dominated by force, provided they paid sufficient tribute to the dragon throne. As long as the superiority of the Middle Kingdom was acknowledged, the blessings of Chinese civilization could be shared, and harmony would reign.
illuminate:解き明かす
It is no wonder, then, that the comparatively recent depredations suffered by China at the hands of barbarians—particularly of the “dwarf pirates” to the east (i.e., the Japanese)—were so keenly felt. In 1895, a superior Japanese Army humiliated the Chinese empire. A little more than forty years later, Japan caused the deaths of more than fourteen million Chinese. French, Allison, Kissinger, and Lee Kuan Yew all agree on one thing: China’s dream is to restore something of the old order that was lost almost two centuries ago. The Communist Party is effectively stirring up feelings that have been simmering at least since the eighteen-forties.
depredations:略奪行為
stirring:巻き起こす
simmering:くすぶり続けている
If Chinese emotions can be easily understood, so can those of the people living in the vicinity. The fact that the Japanese behaved appallingly in the nineteen-thirties doesn’t mean they should be left at the mercy of a regime that murders its own citizens for political reasons. But French agrees with Etzioni that China’s aspirations must be accommodated up to a point. This will mean “stopping China somewhere short of the maximal pursuit of its strategic goals.” French sees the United States as a regional facilitator, helping to strengthen cooperation among its allies. The most salient goal, he rightly observes, is “thickening the web among China’s wary neighbors, who have a shared interest in keeping China from using force to upend the existing order.”
vicinity:周辺
behaved:ふるまう
appallingly:恐ろしい
mercy:なすがままになって
aspirations:熱望
salient :目立った
wary:警戒して
upend:ひっくりかえす
中国がこうして南シナ海の領有とかアジアに勢力を拡大しようとしているのは1世紀前からの日本の中国に対する屈辱がある。その怨念を取り除こうとしている。そして、かっての中華帝国を取り戻そうとしている。中国の今の軍事力はまだおそるるに足りない。今までは彼らは軍事力で、南シナ海を領有してきてはいない。
こうした中国の現状に対する理解はそうかもしれない。韓国と違い中国はこうした大きな発想で対応しているのかもしれない。謝罪とか賠償ではなく、中国は偉大な中華帝国を再現することによってその屈辱を補おうとしているのかもしれない。流石に大人の国だ。
日曜日。母が胃瘻の手術が終わったので、退院するので、今日は見舞いに行こうと思っている。毎日、この年になって、超多忙の日々を送っているが、無理をしてでも行かないと行く機会がない。ではまた明日。
2017年07月28日
中国とアメリカは戦争に向かっているのか? 教授、有識者、ジャーナリストは熱くなった話題に加わる。(2)
Behind that tension is a clash between two competing forms of nationalism. The pride in the glorious poetry of the Tang dynasty, the sophisticated statecraft of the Han dynasty, or the fine arts of the Ming is less prominent than reminders of historical hurts. Contemporary Chinese nationalism—propagated in schools, museums, monuments, television series, movies, and political speeches—increasingly rests on that most explosive of goals: wiping out the national humiliations of the past. In particular, there’s a desire to avenge the sufferings inflicted in the past century and a half, notably by the British in the mid-nineteenth-century Opium Wars, and by the Japanese in the nineteen-thirties and forties.
statecraft:政治的手腕
prominent:目立つ
rests:に基づく
explosive:爆発物
avenge :復讐する
sufferings:苦しみ
The Chinese Communist Party still pays lip service on occasion to Marx, Lenin, and Mao, but the main message is clear: only under its steady leadership will China be a great power again, one that will not only show Japan and other peripheral powers their proper place but also make sure that past indignities at the hands of the West will never be repeated. This is the core of what Xi Jinping, the country’s most authoritarian leader since Mao, calls the “Chinese Dream.” Allison, curiously, compares this dream to F.D.R.’s New Deal. (Even more curiously, he cites Lee Kuan Yew’s comparison of Xi with Nelson Mandela.) In fact, the dream is nationalist through and through: hatred of Japan is officially encouraged, and so is resentment of the United States.
lip service:口先だけ
indignities:屈辱
resentment :憤り
Rachman claims that the Party’s embrace of this aggrieved type of nationalism “can be dated quite precisely” to June, 1989, when Deng Xiaoping decided to crack down violently on the peaceful protests against one-party rule—not just in Tiananmen Square but all over China. After having gunned down its own citizens, the regime promoted nationalism in order to restore the tarnished legitimacy of Communist Party rule. In fact, “patriotic education” focussing on the shame of the past began earlier than that.
aggrieved:傷ついた
tarnished:光沢を失った
When, in the early nineteen-eighties, Deng Xiaoping opened China’s doors to capitalism, and is thought to have used the slogan “To get rich is glorious,” nationalism began to replace Maoism as the official ideology. After the horrors of Mao’s bloody purges and man-made famines, Communist ideals no longer convinced many Chinese. So Deng was faced with the problem of how to make one-party rule acceptable. He also had to cover himself against accusations of selling out to the former enemy by courting Japanese investments and cheap loans. This is why, in 1985, the massive Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall was built, reminding people of the slaughter perpetrated in that city by Japanese troops in 1937—a slaughter to which little attention had previously been paid.
convinced :納得させる
courting:求める
cover :援護する
sell out:裏切る
perpetrated:犯す
“You can’t always blame everything on the crows.”
Since nationalism is now the main ideology propping up the legitimacy of China’s regime, no Chinese leader can possibly back down from such challenges as Taiwan’s desire for independence or Tibetan resistance to Han Chinese rule or anything else that might make China look weak in the eyes of its citizens. This is why Donald Trump’s loose talk about revising the One China policy inflamed a mood that is already dangerously combustible.
back down:取り消す
loose:とりとめのない
inflamed:悪化させる
combustible:カッとなりやすい
It’s worth bearing in mind that “The China Dream” is actually the title of a best-selling book by Colonel Liu Mingfu, whose arguments for China’s supremacy in an Asian renaissance sound remarkably like Japanese propaganda in the nineteen-thirties. Rachman quotes him saying that “when China becomes the world’s leading nation, it will put an end to Western notions of racial superiority.” The only Western power that might stand in the way of this project of Chinese hegemony is the United States.
Colonel:大佐
Since 1945, the United States, with its many bases in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, has effectively played the role of regional policeman. Partly out of institutional habit, partly out of amour propre, and partly out of fear of seeing its power slip, the United States has had its own issues with nationalism, even before Trump came blundering onto the scene.
amour propre:自尊心
power slip:力がなくなること
blundering:ウロウロする
Joseph Nye, the scholar and former U.S. government official, once argued that accepting China’s dominance over the Western Pacific would be unthinkable, because “such a response to China’s rise would destroy America’s credibility.” In a conversation with Rachman in 2015, another American official put this in saltier terms: “I know the U.S. navy and it’s addicted to pre-eminence. If the Chinese try to control the South China Sea, our guys will fucking challenge that. They will sail through those waters.”
saltier:きわどい
addicted:中毒で
pre-eminence:優位
American swagger will always have its enthusiasts. Gordon G. Chang, the author of a 2001 book titled “The Coming Collapse of China,” recently wrote a piece in The National Interest that praised Trump effusively for cutting “the ambitious autocrat down to size” during Xi’s visit to Mar-a-Lago. Trump, Chang recounts, arrived late to greet his guest. He announced a missile strike against Syria over the chocolate cake. He made Xi “look like a supplicant.”
swagger:威張った態度
enthusiasts:熱狂した人
over the chocolate cake:をたべながら
supplicant:助けを求める人
Trump may have revelled in this behavior, but Chang’s acclaim is idiotic. Deliberately making the Chinese leader lose face, if that’s what happened, can only worsen a fraught situation. American bluster—the reflex of the current U.S. President in the absence of any coherent policy—is a poor response to Chinese edginess.
revelled:非常に喜ぶ
acclaim:賞賛
idiotic:ばかげた
Deliberately:故意に
fraught:ことを不安にさせる
bluster:空威張り
reflex :反射運動
edginess:いらいらすること
Now that China has developed missiles that can easily sink aircraft carriers, and the United States is responding with tactical plans that would aim to take out such weapons on the Chinese mainland, a minor conflict could result in a major showdown.
showdown:対決
習近平の掲げる中国の夢は一世紀半におよぶ中国の屈辱の歴史を払拭するためだ。前半のイギリスの占領、後半に日本の侵略に対しての怨念を消し去るためだ。こうした中国の台頭に対してアメリカは十分な認識が欠けている。中国は中華帝国を再興しようとしている。アメリカはそれに対して絶対的な優位をもっていると勘違いしている。危険なことだ。
最近、トランプが北朝鮮に対して中国に制裁を依頼したが、中国が動かないので、怒っているようだが、筋違いだ。中国はアメリカによって命令を受けるつもりはない。そこをトランプは勘違いしている。誰もが彼の子分ではないのだ。
土曜日。今日は海野塾だ。ではまた明日。
statecraft:政治的手腕
prominent:目立つ
rests:に基づく
explosive:爆発物
avenge :復讐する
sufferings:苦しみ
The Chinese Communist Party still pays lip service on occasion to Marx, Lenin, and Mao, but the main message is clear: only under its steady leadership will China be a great power again, one that will not only show Japan and other peripheral powers their proper place but also make sure that past indignities at the hands of the West will never be repeated. This is the core of what Xi Jinping, the country’s most authoritarian leader since Mao, calls the “Chinese Dream.” Allison, curiously, compares this dream to F.D.R.’s New Deal. (Even more curiously, he cites Lee Kuan Yew’s comparison of Xi with Nelson Mandela.) In fact, the dream is nationalist through and through: hatred of Japan is officially encouraged, and so is resentment of the United States.
lip service:口先だけ
indignities:屈辱
resentment :憤り
Rachman claims that the Party’s embrace of this aggrieved type of nationalism “can be dated quite precisely” to June, 1989, when Deng Xiaoping decided to crack down violently on the peaceful protests against one-party rule—not just in Tiananmen Square but all over China. After having gunned down its own citizens, the regime promoted nationalism in order to restore the tarnished legitimacy of Communist Party rule. In fact, “patriotic education” focussing on the shame of the past began earlier than that.
aggrieved:傷ついた
tarnished:光沢を失った
When, in the early nineteen-eighties, Deng Xiaoping opened China’s doors to capitalism, and is thought to have used the slogan “To get rich is glorious,” nationalism began to replace Maoism as the official ideology. After the horrors of Mao’s bloody purges and man-made famines, Communist ideals no longer convinced many Chinese. So Deng was faced with the problem of how to make one-party rule acceptable. He also had to cover himself against accusations of selling out to the former enemy by courting Japanese investments and cheap loans. This is why, in 1985, the massive Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall was built, reminding people of the slaughter perpetrated in that city by Japanese troops in 1937—a slaughter to which little attention had previously been paid.
convinced :納得させる
courting:求める
cover :援護する
sell out:裏切る
perpetrated:犯す
“You can’t always blame everything on the crows.”
Since nationalism is now the main ideology propping up the legitimacy of China’s regime, no Chinese leader can possibly back down from such challenges as Taiwan’s desire for independence or Tibetan resistance to Han Chinese rule or anything else that might make China look weak in the eyes of its citizens. This is why Donald Trump’s loose talk about revising the One China policy inflamed a mood that is already dangerously combustible.
back down:取り消す
loose:とりとめのない
inflamed:悪化させる
combustible:カッとなりやすい
It’s worth bearing in mind that “The China Dream” is actually the title of a best-selling book by Colonel Liu Mingfu, whose arguments for China’s supremacy in an Asian renaissance sound remarkably like Japanese propaganda in the nineteen-thirties. Rachman quotes him saying that “when China becomes the world’s leading nation, it will put an end to Western notions of racial superiority.” The only Western power that might stand in the way of this project of Chinese hegemony is the United States.
Colonel:大佐
Since 1945, the United States, with its many bases in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, has effectively played the role of regional policeman. Partly out of institutional habit, partly out of amour propre, and partly out of fear of seeing its power slip, the United States has had its own issues with nationalism, even before Trump came blundering onto the scene.
amour propre:自尊心
power slip:力がなくなること
blundering:ウロウロする
Joseph Nye, the scholar and former U.S. government official, once argued that accepting China’s dominance over the Western Pacific would be unthinkable, because “such a response to China’s rise would destroy America’s credibility.” In a conversation with Rachman in 2015, another American official put this in saltier terms: “I know the U.S. navy and it’s addicted to pre-eminence. If the Chinese try to control the South China Sea, our guys will fucking challenge that. They will sail through those waters.”
saltier:きわどい
addicted:中毒で
pre-eminence:優位
American swagger will always have its enthusiasts. Gordon G. Chang, the author of a 2001 book titled “The Coming Collapse of China,” recently wrote a piece in The National Interest that praised Trump effusively for cutting “the ambitious autocrat down to size” during Xi’s visit to Mar-a-Lago. Trump, Chang recounts, arrived late to greet his guest. He announced a missile strike against Syria over the chocolate cake. He made Xi “look like a supplicant.”
swagger:威張った態度
enthusiasts:熱狂した人
over the chocolate cake:をたべながら
supplicant:助けを求める人
Trump may have revelled in this behavior, but Chang’s acclaim is idiotic. Deliberately making the Chinese leader lose face, if that’s what happened, can only worsen a fraught situation. American bluster—the reflex of the current U.S. President in the absence of any coherent policy—is a poor response to Chinese edginess.
revelled:非常に喜ぶ
acclaim:賞賛
idiotic:ばかげた
Deliberately:故意に
fraught:ことを不安にさせる
bluster:空威張り
reflex :反射運動
edginess:いらいらすること
Now that China has developed missiles that can easily sink aircraft carriers, and the United States is responding with tactical plans that would aim to take out such weapons on the Chinese mainland, a minor conflict could result in a major showdown.
showdown:対決
習近平の掲げる中国の夢は一世紀半におよぶ中国の屈辱の歴史を払拭するためだ。前半のイギリスの占領、後半に日本の侵略に対しての怨念を消し去るためだ。こうした中国の台頭に対してアメリカは十分な認識が欠けている。中国は中華帝国を再興しようとしている。アメリカはそれに対して絶対的な優位をもっていると勘違いしている。危険なことだ。
最近、トランプが北朝鮮に対して中国に制裁を依頼したが、中国が動かないので、怒っているようだが、筋違いだ。中国はアメリカによって命令を受けるつもりはない。そこをトランプは勘違いしている。誰もが彼の子分ではないのだ。
土曜日。今日は海野塾だ。ではまた明日。
2017年07月27日
中国とアメリカは戦争に向かっているのか? 教授、有識者、ジャーナリストは熱くなった話題に加わる。
June 19, 2017 Issue
Are China and the United States Headed for War?
Professors, pundits, and journalists weigh in on a heated topic.
By Ian Buruma
中国とアメリカは戦争に向かっているのか?
教授、有識者、ジャーナリストは熱くなった話題に加わる。
Illustration by Javier Jaen
Overheated topics invjavascript:void(0)ariably produce ill-considered books. Some people will remember the time, in the late nineteen-eighties, when Japan was about to buy up America and conquer the world. Many a tidy sum was made on that premise. These days, the possibility of war with China is stirring emotions and keeping publishers busy. A glance at a few new books suggests what scholars and journalists are thinking about the prospect of an Asian conflagration; the quality of their reflections is, to say the least, variable.
invjavascript:void(0):多分コンピューター用語?
ariably:とりとめもなく
ill-considered:よく考えられていない
tidy sum:相当なお金
premise:前提
stirring :呼び起こす
conflagration:大火災・戦争
reflections:反響・影響
variabl:不安定な
to say the least:控えめに言っても
The worst of the bunch, Graham Allison’s “Destined for War” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), may also be the most influential, given that its thesis rests on a catchphrase Allison has popularized, “Thucydides’s Trap.” Even China’s President, Xi Jinping, is fond of quoting it. “On the current trajectory,” Allison contends, “war between the U.S. and China in the decades ahead is not just possible, but much more likely than currently recognized.” The reason, he says, can be traced to the problem described in the fifth century B.C.E. in Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War. Sparta, as the established power, felt threatened by the rising might of Athens.
bunch:その中で最悪のもの
Destined:する運命にある
popularized:社会に広める
Thucydides’s Trap:ツキジデスの罠 戦争が不可避な状態まで従来の覇権国家と、新興の国家がぶつかり合う現象を指す。 アメリカ合衆国の政治学者グレアム・アリソンが作った造語。
contends:主張する
Peloponnesian War:ペロポネソス戦争 アテナイを中心とするデロス同盟とスパルタを中心とするペロポネソス同盟との間に発生した、古代ギリシア世界全域を巻き込んだ戦争である。
In such conditions, Allison writes, “not just extraordinary, unexpected events, but even ordinary flashpoints of foreign affairs, can trigger large-scale conflict.” Allison sees Thucydides’ Trap in the wars between a rising England and the established Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century, a rising Germany versus Britain in the early twentieth century, and a rising Japan versus the United States in the nineteen-forties. Some historical tensions between rising powers and ruling ones were resolved without a catastrophic war (the Soviet challenge to U.S. dominance), but many, Allison warns, were not. And there’s no disputing China’s steep military and economic rise in recent decades. Its annual military budget has, for most of the past decade, increased by double digits, and the People’s Liberation Army, even in its newly streamlined form, has nearly a million more active service members than the United States has.
flashpoints :引火点
As recently as 2004, China’s economy was less than half that of the United States. Today, in terms of purchasing-power parity, China has left the United States behind. Allison is so excited by China’s swift growth that his prose often sounds like a mixture of a Thomas Friedman column and a Maoist propaganda magazine like China Reconstructs. Rome wasn’t built in a day? Well, he writes, someone “clearly forgot to tell the Chinese. By 2005, the country was building the square-foot equivalent of today’s Rome every two weeks.”
prose:散文
Allison underrates the many problems that could slow things down quite soon: China’s population is aging so rapidly that an ever smaller pool of young people will have to support a growing number of old people, who lack proper welfare provisions; the country is an ecological disaster zone; the dead hand of Communist Party control makes necessary economic reforms difficult; innovative thinking is hampered by censorship; and so on. In terms of military hardware—aircraft carriers and the like—China still lags well behind the United States. And the United States has a wide network of allies in Asia, while China has almost none.
underrates:過小評価する
dead hand:執拗な悪い影響
hampered:邪魔をする
lags:遅れをとる
Still, China plainly aspires to be the dominant power in East and Southeast Asia, and this is making the United States and its allies increasingly nervous. Southeast Asians are spooked by Chinese claims of sovereignty over the South China Sea, bolstered by the construction of artificial islands with landing grounds. Japan, although it has a substantial military force, is saddled with a pacifist constitution. South Korea doesn’t quite know whether to resist Chinese domination or cozy up to it. The British historian Michael Howard’s remark about nineteenth-century France, quoted in Allison’s book, could easily apply to the United States today. The “most dangerous of all moods,” Howard said, is “that of a great power which sees itself declining to the second rank.”
plainly:はっきりと
aspires:切望する
spooked:怯える
landing grounds:着陸地面
saddled:縛り付けられて
Allison finds risks of Thucydides’ Trap on both sides of the divide: the rising power feels frustrated and the established one feels threatened. The thesis, in those general terms, isn’t implausible. His book would be more persuasive, however, if he knew more about China. Allison’s only informants on the subject appear to be Henry Kissinger and the late Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, both of whom he regards with awe. This leads to some odd contradictions and a number of serious historical howlers.
divide:分裂
frustrated:不満を持っている
thesis:命題
informants:資料提供者
awe:畏敬の念
howlers:喚き立てる人
On one page, quoting Kissinger quoting the ancient military strategist Sun Tzu, Allison assures us that China likes to outclass its enemies without using force. On a later page, he warns us that Chinese leaders may use military force “preemptively to surprise a stronger opponent who would not have done likewise.” Allison says that he wishes, with “my colleague Niall Ferguson,” to set up a council of historians to advise the U.S. President, and yet his own grasp of history appears to be rather shaky.
outclass:負かす
preemptively:先制的に
shaky:あやふやな・不安定な
He imagines that George Kennan’s Long Telegram in 1946 argued that “America could survive only by destroying the USSR, or transforming it”; Kennan’s argument was, rather, that Soviet aggression needed to be contained. Contrary to Lee’s propaganda, Singapore was far from an “inconsequential fishing village” when Lee came to power, in the nineteen-fifties. (It was already a populous and significant port city.)
inconsequential:取るに足らない
Twenty-three million Chinese did not flee to Taiwan to escape Mao (the number is more like two million) and build “a successful democracy” (the native Taiwanese mostly did that). And how does Allison know that “few in China would say that political freedoms are more important than reclaiming China’s international standing and national pride”? Lee Kuan Yew may have told him that. But, given the absence of freedom of speech in China, we cannot know.
reclaiming:取り戻す
For all that, China’s challenge to the established postwar order needs to be taken seriously. Gideon Rachman, the Financial Times foreign-affairs commentator, considers China’s increasing clout in the broader context of what he calls, in a remarkably ugly phrase, “Easternization,” which is also the title of his well-written new survey (just published by Other Press). The gravity of economic and military power, he argues, is moving from West to East. He is thinking of more than the new class of Chinese billionaires; he includes India, a country that might one day surpass even China as an economic powerhouse, and reminds us that Japan has been one of the world’s largest economies for some time now.
gravity:重力
Tiny South Korea ranks fourteenth in the world in purchasing-power parity. And the Asian megacities are looking glitzier by the day. Anyone who flies into J.F.K. from any of the metropolitan areas in China, let alone from Singapore or Tokyo, can readily see what Rachman has in mind. There is a great deal going on in Asia. The question is what this will mean, and whether “Easternization” is an illuminating concept for understanding it.
glitzier:派手な
by the day:日ごとに
illuminating:浮き彫りにする
One difficulty is that East and West are slippery categories. The concept of European civilization has at least some measure of coherence. The same can be said for Chinese civilization, extending to Vietnam in the south and Korea in the north. But what unifies “the East”? Korea has almost nothing in common with India, apart from a tenuous connection through ancient Buddhist history. Japan is a staunch U.S. ally and its contemporary culture is, in many respects, closer to the West than to anything particularly Eastern. Previous attempts to create a sense of Pan-Asian solidarity, such as the Japanese imperialist mission in the nineteen-thirties and forties, have been either futile or disastrous.
slippery :掴みどころにない
coherence:首尾一貫性
unifies:一体化する
tenuous:もろい
staunch:熱烈な
in many respects:多くの点で
futile:無益な
In fact, many of Rachman’s informants belong to an international elite that cannot be easily pinned down to East or West. It is refreshing that he does not depend on Lee Kuan Yew or Henry Kissinger for his knowledge of Asia, but his is still very much a view from the top. This isn’t a criticism: we want to know what senior diplomats, government ministers, heads of state, and well-connected academics think. But, if we’re trying to understand a large number of diverse Asian countries, the approach has its limitations.
Since the struggle for dominance in East and Southeast Asia is the hot topic at hand, the bulk of Rachman’s book concerns that question, and he has interesting things to say about it, even though his conclusion is a trifle lame. He does not argue that China seeks to rule the world. But he does claim, persuasively, that “the question of whether and how the Americans should resist Chinese ambitions in the Asia-Pacific is likely to be the most critical issue in international relations over the coming decades since it pits the world’s two most powerful nations against each other.”
trifle lame:つまらない時代遅れのもの
pits:競わせる
アメリカと中国との関係をアジアを中心に議論している。アジアとか東洋と言っても様々な国家が混在しているから一様には定義ができない。このアジアに対して中国がアメリカに対抗してどのように台頭するのかは歴史が参考になる。アメリカが中国に軍事力とか経済力で遅れを取るという認識が中国との力の均衡を戦争によってバランスを取ろうとしてきたような過去の歴史がある。
アメリカと中国がこの10年で戦争をするようなことは考えられないが、アメリカの後退と中国の躍進が米中のパワーバランスを変えていくのは間違いない。トランプがその変換点かもしれない。となると中国はアメリカに取って代わってどのような戦略をこのアジアに展開していくのだろうか。孫子は言った。上兵(じょうへい)は謀(ぼう)を伐(う)ち、その次は交を伐ち、その次は兵を伐ち、その下(げ)は城を攻む。ということだろう。
金曜日。いつもの昼食会と今夜は石油会が新富町の青葉である。ではまた明日。
Are China and the United States Headed for War?
Professors, pundits, and journalists weigh in on a heated topic.
By Ian Buruma
中国とアメリカは戦争に向かっているのか?
教授、有識者、ジャーナリストは熱くなった話題に加わる。
Illustration by Javier Jaen
Overheated topics invjavascript:void(0)ariably produce ill-considered books. Some people will remember the time, in the late nineteen-eighties, when Japan was about to buy up America and conquer the world. Many a tidy sum was made on that premise. These days, the possibility of war with China is stirring emotions and keeping publishers busy. A glance at a few new books suggests what scholars and journalists are thinking about the prospect of an Asian conflagration; the quality of their reflections is, to say the least, variable.
invjavascript:void(0):多分コンピューター用語?
ariably:とりとめもなく
ill-considered:よく考えられていない
tidy sum:相当なお金
premise:前提
stirring :呼び起こす
conflagration:大火災・戦争
reflections:反響・影響
variabl:不安定な
to say the least:控えめに言っても
The worst of the bunch, Graham Allison’s “Destined for War” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), may also be the most influential, given that its thesis rests on a catchphrase Allison has popularized, “Thucydides’s Trap.” Even China’s President, Xi Jinping, is fond of quoting it. “On the current trajectory,” Allison contends, “war between the U.S. and China in the decades ahead is not just possible, but much more likely than currently recognized.” The reason, he says, can be traced to the problem described in the fifth century B.C.E. in Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War. Sparta, as the established power, felt threatened by the rising might of Athens.
bunch:その中で最悪のもの
Destined:する運命にある
popularized:社会に広める
Thucydides’s Trap:ツキジデスの罠 戦争が不可避な状態まで従来の覇権国家と、新興の国家がぶつかり合う現象を指す。 アメリカ合衆国の政治学者グレアム・アリソンが作った造語。
contends:主張する
Peloponnesian War:ペロポネソス戦争 アテナイを中心とするデロス同盟とスパルタを中心とするペロポネソス同盟との間に発生した、古代ギリシア世界全域を巻き込んだ戦争である。
In such conditions, Allison writes, “not just extraordinary, unexpected events, but even ordinary flashpoints of foreign affairs, can trigger large-scale conflict.” Allison sees Thucydides’ Trap in the wars between a rising England and the established Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century, a rising Germany versus Britain in the early twentieth century, and a rising Japan versus the United States in the nineteen-forties. Some historical tensions between rising powers and ruling ones were resolved without a catastrophic war (the Soviet challenge to U.S. dominance), but many, Allison warns, were not. And there’s no disputing China’s steep military and economic rise in recent decades. Its annual military budget has, for most of the past decade, increased by double digits, and the People’s Liberation Army, even in its newly streamlined form, has nearly a million more active service members than the United States has.
flashpoints :引火点
As recently as 2004, China’s economy was less than half that of the United States. Today, in terms of purchasing-power parity, China has left the United States behind. Allison is so excited by China’s swift growth that his prose often sounds like a mixture of a Thomas Friedman column and a Maoist propaganda magazine like China Reconstructs. Rome wasn’t built in a day? Well, he writes, someone “clearly forgot to tell the Chinese. By 2005, the country was building the square-foot equivalent of today’s Rome every two weeks.”
prose:散文
Allison underrates the many problems that could slow things down quite soon: China’s population is aging so rapidly that an ever smaller pool of young people will have to support a growing number of old people, who lack proper welfare provisions; the country is an ecological disaster zone; the dead hand of Communist Party control makes necessary economic reforms difficult; innovative thinking is hampered by censorship; and so on. In terms of military hardware—aircraft carriers and the like—China still lags well behind the United States. And the United States has a wide network of allies in Asia, while China has almost none.
underrates:過小評価する
dead hand:執拗な悪い影響
hampered:邪魔をする
lags:遅れをとる
Still, China plainly aspires to be the dominant power in East and Southeast Asia, and this is making the United States and its allies increasingly nervous. Southeast Asians are spooked by Chinese claims of sovereignty over the South China Sea, bolstered by the construction of artificial islands with landing grounds. Japan, although it has a substantial military force, is saddled with a pacifist constitution. South Korea doesn’t quite know whether to resist Chinese domination or cozy up to it. The British historian Michael Howard’s remark about nineteenth-century France, quoted in Allison’s book, could easily apply to the United States today. The “most dangerous of all moods,” Howard said, is “that of a great power which sees itself declining to the second rank.”
plainly:はっきりと
aspires:切望する
spooked:怯える
landing grounds:着陸地面
saddled:縛り付けられて
Allison finds risks of Thucydides’ Trap on both sides of the divide: the rising power feels frustrated and the established one feels threatened. The thesis, in those general terms, isn’t implausible. His book would be more persuasive, however, if he knew more about China. Allison’s only informants on the subject appear to be Henry Kissinger and the late Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, both of whom he regards with awe. This leads to some odd contradictions and a number of serious historical howlers.
divide:分裂
frustrated:不満を持っている
thesis:命題
informants:資料提供者
awe:畏敬の念
howlers:喚き立てる人
On one page, quoting Kissinger quoting the ancient military strategist Sun Tzu, Allison assures us that China likes to outclass its enemies without using force. On a later page, he warns us that Chinese leaders may use military force “preemptively to surprise a stronger opponent who would not have done likewise.” Allison says that he wishes, with “my colleague Niall Ferguson,” to set up a council of historians to advise the U.S. President, and yet his own grasp of history appears to be rather shaky.
outclass:負かす
preemptively:先制的に
shaky:あやふやな・不安定な
He imagines that George Kennan’s Long Telegram in 1946 argued that “America could survive only by destroying the USSR, or transforming it”; Kennan’s argument was, rather, that Soviet aggression needed to be contained. Contrary to Lee’s propaganda, Singapore was far from an “inconsequential fishing village” when Lee came to power, in the nineteen-fifties. (It was already a populous and significant port city.)
inconsequential:取るに足らない
Twenty-three million Chinese did not flee to Taiwan to escape Mao (the number is more like two million) and build “a successful democracy” (the native Taiwanese mostly did that). And how does Allison know that “few in China would say that political freedoms are more important than reclaiming China’s international standing and national pride”? Lee Kuan Yew may have told him that. But, given the absence of freedom of speech in China, we cannot know.
reclaiming:取り戻す
For all that, China’s challenge to the established postwar order needs to be taken seriously. Gideon Rachman, the Financial Times foreign-affairs commentator, considers China’s increasing clout in the broader context of what he calls, in a remarkably ugly phrase, “Easternization,” which is also the title of his well-written new survey (just published by Other Press). The gravity of economic and military power, he argues, is moving from West to East. He is thinking of more than the new class of Chinese billionaires; he includes India, a country that might one day surpass even China as an economic powerhouse, and reminds us that Japan has been one of the world’s largest economies for some time now.
gravity:重力
Tiny South Korea ranks fourteenth in the world in purchasing-power parity. And the Asian megacities are looking glitzier by the day. Anyone who flies into J.F.K. from any of the metropolitan areas in China, let alone from Singapore or Tokyo, can readily see what Rachman has in mind. There is a great deal going on in Asia. The question is what this will mean, and whether “Easternization” is an illuminating concept for understanding it.
glitzier:派手な
by the day:日ごとに
illuminating:浮き彫りにする
One difficulty is that East and West are slippery categories. The concept of European civilization has at least some measure of coherence. The same can be said for Chinese civilization, extending to Vietnam in the south and Korea in the north. But what unifies “the East”? Korea has almost nothing in common with India, apart from a tenuous connection through ancient Buddhist history. Japan is a staunch U.S. ally and its contemporary culture is, in many respects, closer to the West than to anything particularly Eastern. Previous attempts to create a sense of Pan-Asian solidarity, such as the Japanese imperialist mission in the nineteen-thirties and forties, have been either futile or disastrous.
slippery :掴みどころにない
coherence:首尾一貫性
unifies:一体化する
tenuous:もろい
staunch:熱烈な
in many respects:多くの点で
futile:無益な
In fact, many of Rachman’s informants belong to an international elite that cannot be easily pinned down to East or West. It is refreshing that he does not depend on Lee Kuan Yew or Henry Kissinger for his knowledge of Asia, but his is still very much a view from the top. This isn’t a criticism: we want to know what senior diplomats, government ministers, heads of state, and well-connected academics think. But, if we’re trying to understand a large number of diverse Asian countries, the approach has its limitations.
Since the struggle for dominance in East and Southeast Asia is the hot topic at hand, the bulk of Rachman’s book concerns that question, and he has interesting things to say about it, even though his conclusion is a trifle lame. He does not argue that China seeks to rule the world. But he does claim, persuasively, that “the question of whether and how the Americans should resist Chinese ambitions in the Asia-Pacific is likely to be the most critical issue in international relations over the coming decades since it pits the world’s two most powerful nations against each other.”
trifle lame:つまらない時代遅れのもの
pits:競わせる
アメリカと中国との関係をアジアを中心に議論している。アジアとか東洋と言っても様々な国家が混在しているから一様には定義ができない。このアジアに対して中国がアメリカに対抗してどのように台頭するのかは歴史が参考になる。アメリカが中国に軍事力とか経済力で遅れを取るという認識が中国との力の均衡を戦争によってバランスを取ろうとしてきたような過去の歴史がある。
アメリカと中国がこの10年で戦争をするようなことは考えられないが、アメリカの後退と中国の躍進が米中のパワーバランスを変えていくのは間違いない。トランプがその変換点かもしれない。となると中国はアメリカに取って代わってどのような戦略をこのアジアに展開していくのだろうか。孫子は言った。上兵(じょうへい)は謀(ぼう)を伐(う)ち、その次は交を伐ち、その次は兵を伐ち、その下(げ)は城を攻む。ということだろう。
金曜日。いつもの昼食会と今夜は石油会が新富町の青葉である。ではまた明日。
2017年07月25日
EU離脱 イギリスはBrexitの直面している。 この政府がBrexitの障害について否定的でいる限りはこの国は大きな不幸へと向かっている。
Leaving the European Union
Britain faces up to Brexit
As long as the government stays in denial about Brexit’s drawbacks, the country is on course for disaster Jul 22nd 2017
EU離脱
イギリスはBrexitの直面している。
この政府がBrexitの障害について否定的でいる限りはこの国は大きな不幸へと向かっている。
CRISIS? What crisis? So many have been triggered in Britain by the vote a year ago to leave the European Union that it is hard to keep track. Just last month Theresa May was reduced from unassailable iron lady to just-about-managing minority prime minister. Her cabinet is engaged in open warfare as rivals position themselves to replace her. The Labour Party, which has been taken over by a hard-left admirer of Hugo Chavez, is ahead in the polls. Meanwhile a neurotic pro-Brexit press shrieks that anyone who voices doubts about the country’s direction is an unpatriotic traitor. Britain is having a very public nervous breakdown.
keep track:経過を追う
unassailable :言いまかせない
warfare:戦争
admirer:崇拝者
neurotic:ノイローゼにかかっている
shrieks:甲高い声で叫ぶ
unpatriotic:愛国心のない
traitor.:反逆者
breakdown:神経衰弱
The chaos at the heart of government hardly bodes well for the exit negotiations with the EU, which turned to detailed matters this week and need to conclude in autumn 2018. But the day-to-day disorder masks a bigger problem. Despite the frantic political activity in Westminster—the briefing, back-stabbing and plotting—the country has made remarkably little progress since the referendum in deciding what form Brexit should take. All versions, however “hard” or “soft”, have drawbacks (see article). Yet Britain’s leaders have scarcely acknowledged that exit will involve compromises, let alone how damaging they are likely to be. The longer they fail to face up to Brexit’s painful trade-offs, the more brutal will be the eventual reckoning with reality.
bodes:にとって良い前兆である
disorder:混乱
frantic:取り乱した
back-stabbing:陰口で人の足を引っ張ること
plotting:たくらみ
drawbacks:欠点
let alone:はさておき
Winging it
In the 13 months since the referendum, the awesome complexity of ending a 44-year political and economic union has become clear. Britain’s position on everything from mackerel stocks to nuclear waste is being worked out by a civil service whose headcount has fallen by nearly a quarter in the past decade and which has not negotiated a trade deal of its own in a generation. Responsibility for Brexit is shared—or, rather, fought over and sometimes dropped—by several different departments.
Winging it:ぶっつけ本番で行う
awesome:とてつもない
mackerel:サバ
Initially Britain’s decision not to publish a detailed negotiating position, as the EU had, was put down to its desire to avoid giving away its hand. It now seems that Britain triggered exit talks before working out where it stood. The head of its public-spending watchdog said recently that when he asked ministers for their plan he was given only “vague” assurances; he fears the whole thing could fall apart “at the first tap”.
assurances:保証
fall apar:行き詰まる
As the scale of the task has become apparent, so has the difficulty of Britain’s position. Before the referendum Michael Gove, a leading Brexiteer in the cabinet, predicted that, “The day after we vote to leave, we hold all the cards.” It is not turning out like that. So far, where there has been disagreement Britain has given way. The talks will be sequenced along the lines suggested by the EU. Britain has conceded that it will pay an exit bill, contrary to its foreign secretary’s suggestion only a week ago that Eurocrats could “go whistle” for their money.
given way:譲歩する・屈する
conceded:渋々認める
go whistle:断念する
The hobbled Mrs May has appealed to other parties to come forward with ideas on how to make Brexit work. Labour, which can hardly believe that it is within sight of installing a radical socialist prime minister in 10 Downing Street, is unsurprisingly more interested in provoking an election. But cross-party gangs of Remainer MPs are planning to add amendments to legislation, forcing the government to try to maintain membership of Euratom, for instance, which governs the transit of radioactive material in Europe.
hobbled:足を引きずって歩く
Euratom:欧州原子力共同体
Even within the government, the prime minister’s lack of grip means that cabinet ministers have started openly disagreeing about what shape Brexit should take. Philip Hammond, the chancellor, has been sniped at because he supports a long transition period to make Brexit go smoothly—a sensible idea which is viewed with suspicion by some Brexiteers, who fear the transition stage could become permanent.
sniped :非難する
The reopening of the debate is welcome, since the hard exit proposed in Mrs May’s rejected manifesto would have been needlessly damaging. But there is a lack of realism on all sides about what Britain’s limited options involve. There are many ways to leave the EU, and none is free of problems. The more Britain aims to preserve its economic relationship with the continent, the more it will have to follow rules set by foreign politicians and enforced by foreign judges (including on the sensitive issue of freedom of movement). The more control it demands over its borders and laws, the harder it will find it to do business with its biggest market. It is not unpatriotic to be frank about these trade-offs. Indeed, it is more unpatriotic to kid voters into thinking that Brexit has no drawbacks at all.
needlessly:無駄に
frank:明らかな
kid:からかう
drawbacks:障害
The government has not published any estimates of the impact of the various types of Brexit since the referendum, but academic studies suggest that even the “softest” option—Norwegian-style membership of the European Economic Area—would cut trade by at least 20% over ten years, whereas the “hardest” exit, reverting to trade on the World Trade Organisation’s terms, would reduce trade by 40% and cut annual income per person by 2.6%. As the economy weakens, these concerns will weigh more heavily. Britain’s economy is growing more slowly than that of any other member of the EU. The election showed that its voters are sick of austerity. Our own polling finds that, when forced to choose, a majority now favours a soft Brexit, inside the single market (see article).
reverting:戻る
weigh:影響する
Back in play
A febrile mood in the country, and the power vacuum in Downing Street, mean that all options are back on the table. This is panicking people on both sides of the debate. Some hardline Brexiteers are agitating again for Britain to walk away from the negotiations with no deal, before voters have a change of heart. Some Remainers are stepping up calls for a second referendum, to give the country a route out of the deepening mess. As the negotiations blunder on and the deadline draws nearer, such talk will become only more fevered.
febrile:熱のこもった
power vacuum:政権の空白状態
blunder:恐る恐る進む
fevered:熱に浮かされた
So it is all the more crucial that all sides face up to the real and painful trade-offs that Brexit entails. The longer Britain keeps its head in the sand, the more likely it is to end up with no deal, and no preparations for the consequences. That would bring a crisis of a new order of magnitude.
entails:もたらす
magnitude:大規模な新たな秩序の危機
Brexitに対して、一体イギリス人は何を考えているのだろうかといった記事。確かに、今までの議論はまともではない。EU市場に残りたいが、罰金は払いたくない。結局、国民にBrexitとは何かを教えないで投票を行ったことが悪い。どう転がっても、イギリスの経済は凋落していく。そうした説明をしないで、国民を騙してしまった。キャメロンが一番悪い。もう一度、国民投票をして、再度どうするか決めればいい。メンツにばかりこだわっていたら、イギリスの経済は取り返しの付かないことになってしまう。
木曜日。ではまた明日。
Britain faces up to Brexit
As long as the government stays in denial about Brexit’s drawbacks, the country is on course for disaster Jul 22nd 2017
EU離脱
イギリスはBrexitの直面している。
この政府がBrexitの障害について否定的でいる限りはこの国は大きな不幸へと向かっている。
CRISIS? What crisis? So many have been triggered in Britain by the vote a year ago to leave the European Union that it is hard to keep track. Just last month Theresa May was reduced from unassailable iron lady to just-about-managing minority prime minister. Her cabinet is engaged in open warfare as rivals position themselves to replace her. The Labour Party, which has been taken over by a hard-left admirer of Hugo Chavez, is ahead in the polls. Meanwhile a neurotic pro-Brexit press shrieks that anyone who voices doubts about the country’s direction is an unpatriotic traitor. Britain is having a very public nervous breakdown.
keep track:経過を追う
unassailable :言いまかせない
warfare:戦争
admirer:崇拝者
neurotic:ノイローゼにかかっている
shrieks:甲高い声で叫ぶ
unpatriotic:愛国心のない
traitor.:反逆者
breakdown:神経衰弱
The chaos at the heart of government hardly bodes well for the exit negotiations with the EU, which turned to detailed matters this week and need to conclude in autumn 2018. But the day-to-day disorder masks a bigger problem. Despite the frantic political activity in Westminster—the briefing, back-stabbing and plotting—the country has made remarkably little progress since the referendum in deciding what form Brexit should take. All versions, however “hard” or “soft”, have drawbacks (see article). Yet Britain’s leaders have scarcely acknowledged that exit will involve compromises, let alone how damaging they are likely to be. The longer they fail to face up to Brexit’s painful trade-offs, the more brutal will be the eventual reckoning with reality.
bodes:にとって良い前兆である
disorder:混乱
frantic:取り乱した
back-stabbing:陰口で人の足を引っ張ること
plotting:たくらみ
drawbacks:欠点
let alone:はさておき
Winging it
In the 13 months since the referendum, the awesome complexity of ending a 44-year political and economic union has become clear. Britain’s position on everything from mackerel stocks to nuclear waste is being worked out by a civil service whose headcount has fallen by nearly a quarter in the past decade and which has not negotiated a trade deal of its own in a generation. Responsibility for Brexit is shared—or, rather, fought over and sometimes dropped—by several different departments.
Winging it:ぶっつけ本番で行う
awesome:とてつもない
mackerel:サバ
Initially Britain’s decision not to publish a detailed negotiating position, as the EU had, was put down to its desire to avoid giving away its hand. It now seems that Britain triggered exit talks before working out where it stood. The head of its public-spending watchdog said recently that when he asked ministers for their plan he was given only “vague” assurances; he fears the whole thing could fall apart “at the first tap”.
assurances:保証
fall apar:行き詰まる
As the scale of the task has become apparent, so has the difficulty of Britain’s position. Before the referendum Michael Gove, a leading Brexiteer in the cabinet, predicted that, “The day after we vote to leave, we hold all the cards.” It is not turning out like that. So far, where there has been disagreement Britain has given way. The talks will be sequenced along the lines suggested by the EU. Britain has conceded that it will pay an exit bill, contrary to its foreign secretary’s suggestion only a week ago that Eurocrats could “go whistle” for their money.
given way:譲歩する・屈する
conceded:渋々認める
go whistle:断念する
The hobbled Mrs May has appealed to other parties to come forward with ideas on how to make Brexit work. Labour, which can hardly believe that it is within sight of installing a radical socialist prime minister in 10 Downing Street, is unsurprisingly more interested in provoking an election. But cross-party gangs of Remainer MPs are planning to add amendments to legislation, forcing the government to try to maintain membership of Euratom, for instance, which governs the transit of radioactive material in Europe.
hobbled:足を引きずって歩く
Euratom:欧州原子力共同体
Even within the government, the prime minister’s lack of grip means that cabinet ministers have started openly disagreeing about what shape Brexit should take. Philip Hammond, the chancellor, has been sniped at because he supports a long transition period to make Brexit go smoothly—a sensible idea which is viewed with suspicion by some Brexiteers, who fear the transition stage could become permanent.
sniped :非難する
The reopening of the debate is welcome, since the hard exit proposed in Mrs May’s rejected manifesto would have been needlessly damaging. But there is a lack of realism on all sides about what Britain’s limited options involve. There are many ways to leave the EU, and none is free of problems. The more Britain aims to preserve its economic relationship with the continent, the more it will have to follow rules set by foreign politicians and enforced by foreign judges (including on the sensitive issue of freedom of movement). The more control it demands over its borders and laws, the harder it will find it to do business with its biggest market. It is not unpatriotic to be frank about these trade-offs. Indeed, it is more unpatriotic to kid voters into thinking that Brexit has no drawbacks at all.
needlessly:無駄に
frank:明らかな
kid:からかう
drawbacks:障害
The government has not published any estimates of the impact of the various types of Brexit since the referendum, but academic studies suggest that even the “softest” option—Norwegian-style membership of the European Economic Area—would cut trade by at least 20% over ten years, whereas the “hardest” exit, reverting to trade on the World Trade Organisation’s terms, would reduce trade by 40% and cut annual income per person by 2.6%. As the economy weakens, these concerns will weigh more heavily. Britain’s economy is growing more slowly than that of any other member of the EU. The election showed that its voters are sick of austerity. Our own polling finds that, when forced to choose, a majority now favours a soft Brexit, inside the single market (see article).
reverting:戻る
weigh:影響する
Back in play
A febrile mood in the country, and the power vacuum in Downing Street, mean that all options are back on the table. This is panicking people on both sides of the debate. Some hardline Brexiteers are agitating again for Britain to walk away from the negotiations with no deal, before voters have a change of heart. Some Remainers are stepping up calls for a second referendum, to give the country a route out of the deepening mess. As the negotiations blunder on and the deadline draws nearer, such talk will become only more fevered.
febrile:熱のこもった
power vacuum:政権の空白状態
blunder:恐る恐る進む
fevered:熱に浮かされた
So it is all the more crucial that all sides face up to the real and painful trade-offs that Brexit entails. The longer Britain keeps its head in the sand, the more likely it is to end up with no deal, and no preparations for the consequences. That would bring a crisis of a new order of magnitude.
entails:もたらす
magnitude:大規模な新たな秩序の危機
Brexitに対して、一体イギリス人は何を考えているのだろうかといった記事。確かに、今までの議論はまともではない。EU市場に残りたいが、罰金は払いたくない。結局、国民にBrexitとは何かを教えないで投票を行ったことが悪い。どう転がっても、イギリスの経済は凋落していく。そうした説明をしないで、国民を騙してしまった。キャメロンが一番悪い。もう一度、国民投票をして、再度どうするか決めればいい。メンツにばかりこだわっていたら、イギリスの経済は取り返しの付かないことになってしまう。
木曜日。ではまた明日。