UK diplomats fear end of special relationship if Trump re-elected
-Former senior officials also worry Britain may be sidelined if Joe Biden becomes president

英国外交官担心，如果特朗普再次当选，英美两国的特殊关系将会终结
——前高级官员也担心，如果拜登当选成为美国总统，英国可能也会被边缘化


(Boris Johnson welcomes Donald Trump to a Nato meeting in Watford in December 2019.)

（2019年12月，鲍里斯·约翰逊欢迎唐纳德·特朗普参加在沃特福德举行的一场北约会议。）
新闻：

The UK’s special relationship with the US may end if Donald Trump wins a second term, some of the UK’s most senior retired diplomats and Conservative foreign policy specialists have said. They also say that if the Democrat Joe Biden wins, Washington may view the EU rather than the UK as its primary partner.

英国一些最资深的退休外交官和保守派外交政策专家表示，如果唐纳德·特朗普赢得第二个任期，英国与美国的特殊关系可能会终结。他们还表示，如果民主党人乔·拜登获胜，那么美国政府可能会将欧盟（而非英国）视为主要合作伙伴。

The anxious assessment of what is at stake for Britain in the US presidential election in November has been made on and off the record in a variety of seminars over the past month, and underlines concerns at Trump’s performance during the coronavirus pandemic. It also reflects diplomatic outreach to the UK by Biden’s chief foreign policy adviser, Antony blxen.

过去一个月来，在各种研讨会上，专家们对11月美国总统大选对英国的影响进行了公开和非公开的焦虑评估，并强调了对特朗普在冠状病毒大流行期间表现的担忧。这也反映了拜登首席外交政策顾问安东尼·布林肯与英国的外交接触。


Rory Stewart, the former Conservative international development secretary, said in one assessment: “If Trump comes in for another four years that will be very challenging for the global system and for Britain’s relationship with the US. If we were to move away from the US, and Trump obviously poses the challenge that that may have to happen, we are going to find ourselves in a situation in which much of our Foreign Office infrastructure had been predicated on working very closely with the US for a very long time.

前保守党国际发展大臣罗里·斯图尔特在一份评估中表示：“如果特朗普再执政4年，将对全球体系和英美关系构成极大挑战。如果我们准备离开美国，并且特朗普显然传递出了这种情况可能一定会发生的挑战，那么我们将发现自己处于这样一种境地：我们外交部的大部分基础架构都建立在与美国长期密切合作的基础之上。

“If we have to move away from the US, it will involve a much bigger shift in national security infrastructure than we have ever experienced. Almost since Suez, they have been our default.”

“如果我们不得不离开美国，那么国家安全基础架构的转变将比我们以往经历的要大得多。几乎从苏伊士运河争端开始，这些架构就成了我们的默认架构。”


Sir John Sawers, the former head of M16 and a former UK ambassador to the UN, also said Trump’s re-election would be problematic. “There is no doubt President Trump is the most difficult president for us to deal with,” he said.

军情六处前负责人、前英国驻联合国大使约翰·索厄斯爵士也表示，特朗普的连任将会带来问题。“毫无疑问，特朗普总统是我们最难对付的总统，”他说。

“He does not really feel that sense of being part of that transatlantic community, he does not really believe in alliances. He does not really believe in American leadership in the world. We are seeing in this pandemic for the first time what a crisis is like without American leadership. It is the first time in our lifetime we have experienced that.

“他并没有真正感到自己是大西洋共同体的一员，他并不真正相信结盟。他并不真的相信美国在世界上的领导地位。我们正在从此次疫情中第一次看到，如果没有美国的领导，危机就会变成什么样。这是我们一生中第一次有这样的经历。

“If he gets elected for a second time some of the changes we have seen in the past few years will become embedded and entrenched and then, absolutely Britain will not be so much a bridge between the US and Europe. We will need to be bounding closely together with our European partners” .

“如果他再次当选，那么我们在过去几年看到的一些变化将变得根深蒂固，那时，英国绝对不会再成为美国和欧洲之间的桥梁。了我们需要与欧洲伙伴紧密合作。”

Speaking before the Black Lives Matter protests, he said the election was poised 50-50, and that if Biden were elected the UK would not simply be able to get back into bed with the US as it had been in the past. He called for “middle-level powers to come together to tackle China and climate change”. Both men were speaking at Cambridge University’s Centre for Geopolitics.

在“黑人的命也是命”抗议活动爆发之前，他表示，此次大选的结果半斤八两，因为如果拜登当选了，英国也将无法像过去那样简单地重新与美国合作。他呼吁“中层国家团结起来，共同应对中国和气候变化”。这两人都是在剑桥大学地缘政治中心发表讲话的。



Debate is fierce in British diplomatic circles about whether Trump merely marks the acceleration of a pre-existing trend to a more disengaged US, and whether Biden is either willing or able to reverse the trend.

在英国外交界，围绕特朗普是否只是标志着美国更不参与的趋势的加速，以及拜登是否愿意或能够扭转这一趋势的争论十分激烈。

blxen has tried to reassure British diplomats that Biden will re-engage with multilateral institutions, and told the London thinktank Chatham House that US leadership would return. “When Joe Biden looks at the world, one thing stands out. Whether we like it not, the world tends not to organise itself and, for 75 plus years, the US played the leading role in working to organise the world, establishing the institutions, writing the rules and setting the norms,” he said.

布林肯试图让英国外交官放心，拜登将重新与多边机构接触，并告诉伦敦智库查塔姆研究所，美国将重返领导地位。他说：“当乔·拜登看世界的时候，有一件事很突出。不管我们喜欢与否，世界往往不会自己组织起来。75多年来，美国在组织世界、建立机构、制定规则和规范方面发挥了领导作用。



The same diplomat also said, however, that Biden might – like Barack Obama – see Europe and particularly Germany as his primary interlocutor: “If you get a Joe Biden presidency in the US, then the relationship will focus again on Europe, on Germany and France, and we may feel a little neglected.”

这位外交官还表示，然而，拜登可能——就像巴拉克·奥巴马——将欧洲特别是德国视为他的主要对话者：“如果美国由乔·拜登担任总统，那么对外关系将再次聚焦于欧洲、德国和法国，我们可能会感到有点被忽视了。”

He said that although Boris Johnson was closer to Trump than most European leaders, the importance of the special relationship was overrated. “If I’m brutally frank it has not been that special for awhile,” he said. “If Obama wanted to know what Europe thought about something his first call was to Merkel.”

他说，尽管鲍里斯·约翰逊比大多数欧洲领导人更接近特朗普，但这种特殊关系的重要性被高估了。“坦白地说，一段时间里，英美关系没有那么特别了，”他说。“（就像）如果奥巴马想知道欧洲对此有何看法，他首先会给默克尔打了电话。”

Another ambassador from Tony Blair’s time as prime minister said: “It’s possible to imagine restored American leadership to a multilateral world. I do not think it is all over, but it does make the November election incredibly important. I cannot see that happening under a Trump II administration. It’s possible, however, to imagine Joe Biden trying to lead us back to a more normative, multilateral and cohesive world.” He pointed to Trump’s decision to withdraw 9,500 US troops from Germany as a sign of the pressure likely to be placed on Nato if he is re-elected.

另一位曾在托尼·布莱尔担任首相期间担任大使的人士表示：“美国在多边世界中恢复领导地位是可以想象的。我不认为一切都结束了，但这确实使11月的选举变得非常重要。我不认为特朗普第二届政府会出现这种情况。然而，我们可以想象，乔·拜登试图带领我们回到一个更加规范、多边和团结的世界。”他指出，特朗普从德国撤军9500名美军的决定表明，如果他再次当选，北约可能会承受压力。

In his address to Chatham House, blxen gave the impression that the US under Biden would seek to revive the Iran nuclear deal Obama signed but which Trump abandoned. Although he was unremitting in his criticism of Iran’s behaviour in the Middle East, he stressed that the original deal was designed to constrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions and not its wider behaviour.

布林肯在英国皇家国际事务研究所发表演讲时，给人的印象是，拜登领导下的美国将寻求重启奥巴马签署但被特朗普放弃的伊朗核协议。尽管他一直在批评伊朗在中东的行为，但他强调，最初的协议旨在限制伊朗的核野心，而不是其更广泛的行为。

blxen was also critical of China for its lack of transparency over the coronavirus, and called on Beijing to be a responsible stakeholder, a phrase first used in 2005 by the then US assistant secretary of state Robert Zoellick.

布林肯还在冠状病毒问题上指责中国，并呼吁中国政府成为“负责任的利益攸关方”——2005年，时任美国助理国务卿的罗伯特·佐利克首次使用了这个说法。