Bret Devereaux

布雷特·德弗罗
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It is the week of July 4th and so I hope that everyone will once again forgive me for taking a break from our normal fare to write out an argument that I’ve had brewing for quite some time. I especially beg the indulgence of all of my international readers since I am once again – in the proper tradition of my country – going to go on at some length about my country. It is, after all, what we do.

鉴于这周正好是美国国庆，我不得不请求大家原谅我暂且摸鱼一段时间。尤其是对于我网上的读者们，希望大家多多包容，我又得遵循传统再多谈谈我们国家的那些事了。毕竟，这就是我们所做的。

For this year’s July 4th, I want to tackle the question of ‘Is the United States exceptional or great?’ Not because I think it is a difficult question, but because I think it is such a surprisingly easy question that I find myself repeatedly frustrated that it is, in some circles, considered an interesting question. Take for instance this this Newsroom clip from 2012 that seems to make the rounds online at least once a year where the Aaron-Sorkin-hero dunks on a college sophomore by arguing, “there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re [the United States] is the greatest country in the world.”

在今年的7月4日，我想讨论一个问题：美国是个例外的伟大国家吗？倒不是说我觉得这问题难以回答，而是这问题的答案如此一目了然，可我总看到某些圈子里把这个讨论得兴致勃勃，令我实在有些懊恼。就好像艾伦·索金在他《新闻编辑室》那个名片段中，角色对一群大二学生所说的那样，“完全没有证据支持我们是最伟大的国家这一说法。”
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The diatribe that statement is treated by the visual language of the scene like a truth bomb, which is why it is so odd because Jeff Daniels’ character is not merely wrong, but (as I intend to show) laughably so. Indeed, he leads into this remark with a statement that “207 sovereign states in the world, like 180 of them have freedom,” a statement that is not now and has never in the whole sweep of recorded history ever been remotely true. 2005 was the best year on record for freedom globally according to Freedom House and in that year 89 countries were ‘free’ countries – 46% of the world’s countries and 45.97% of the world’s people. That was the highest year of freedom ever in human history and it comes just below half of the ‘truth bomb’s’ best guess at how common freedom is. The majority of humans on Earth have never, at any point in human history, lived in a free country. One should not take their geopolitics from Aaron Sorkin.

在那一段剧情里，视听语言将他连珠炮一般的发言处理得好像是真相炸弹一般。然而诡异之处就在这里，因为杰夫·丹尼尔斯的那个角色不仅说错了，甚至还错得可笑。例如，他那段发言里说过，“全世界207个主权国家里，大概180个都拥有自由”。纵观人类历史，这件事可从未发生过。根据自由之家的记录，2005年已经是情况最好的一年了，自由国家的数量也才有89个，差不多是全球国家数量的46%，占世界人口45.97%。这已经是人类历史上自由情况最好的一年了，但也不过是上面那段“真相炸弹”中的一半。颗星球上的大多数人类可从未生活在一个自由的国家。大家实在不该从艾伦·索金这里学习地缘政治。

But I wanted to address the question more broadly: to what degree can the United States be considered great, exceptional or ‘the greatest.’ But at the outset we need be very clear what we are measuring here: we are not asking if the United States is the best country. That’s an entirely subjective judgment; what the best of anything will be is going to depend mostly on what a person prefers. It is a matter of values and taste and de gustibus non est disputandum (“on taste, one must not argue”). Likewise ‘great’ is not the superlative of ‘good’ (that, as a reminder, is ‘best’); I am not asking if the United States has had a positive impact on the world here (once again a deeply subjective question). Instead ‘greatness’ is about extent, amount, ability, or eminence: great means ‘very big’ not ‘very good.’ Thus Alexander, Catherine and Peter are all called ‘great’ but one may well argue if they were ‘good.’ And ‘exceptional’ also does not mean good; things can be exceptionally bad! The point of something being exceptional is merely that it is different in uncommon ways; to be ‘great’ is to be exceptional specifically in scale.

不过我想谈的问题不只是这个；我想探讨的是，以哪种标准美国才能被看做是“伟大”、“例外”甚至是“最伟大”的国家呢？我们得先说清楚，这里不是讨论“美国是不是最好的国家”，毕竟“最好”完全是一个主观判断——什么才是最好很大程度上取决于一个人的喜好倾向。古语有云，“各取所好，无需自辩”（De gustibus non est disputandum）。自然，“伟大”在这里也不是“好”的最高级形式，我也不是在问美国有没有对世界做出积极贡献（毕竟这又是个相当主观的问题了）。我想谈的伟大，是关于体量、能力、威名的，比起“非常好”更接近于“超级大”。亚历山大、凯瑟琳和彼得都有个“Great”作为尊号，也没人谈论他们是不是“好人”。“例外”当然更和“好”无关了，毕竟事情完全可以坏得出奇嘛！所以这里的“例外”仅指和通常情况不同，“伟大”则指其规模独树一帜。

So again, I am not asking if the United States is the ‘best’ country; I rather like my country, but I understand it is not to everyone’s taste and that is fine: different people have different opinions and everyone in the world is entitled to their own opinion except for Aaron Sorkin. I certainly cannot fault anyone who likes their own country better than I like mine. Instead I want to explore a number of ways in which the United States might clearly be considered ‘great’ or even ‘the greatest’ (either now or ever) to make the case both that the United States is obviously and indisputably exceptional and that several of these exceptional facets provide quite a lot of evidence to support the contention that the United States is, in those ways, a great country.

总而言之，这里不是在问大家美国是否是最好的国家。我虽想说自己的国家是最好的，但也明白大家都各有想法，每个人都有权对艾伦·索金的话保留自己的观点。如果有人认为自己的国家比我的国家好，我自然无法责难什么。因此我所做的，就是找出几条指标，能让我们借此明确地判定美国是否“伟大”乃至是“最伟大的”（无论过去还是现在），并通过美国在某些方面清晰明了、无可争辩的例外性，更进一步地证明美国在此种意义上是一个伟大的国家。

But first, before we dive in, as always if you like what you are reading here, please share it. If you want upxes whenever a new post appears, you can click below for email upxes or follow me on twitter (@BretDevereaux) for upxes as to new posts as well as my occasional ancient history, foreign policy or military history musings. Finally, if you really like it, you can support my writing on Patreon.

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Economics

经济

We should start with one observation that forms the basis for a number of others: the United States is both the biggest rich country (that is, it is the largest high income country) and the richest big country (that is, it has the highest income per capita of any country with a large population or land area) both now and at any other time in history. The largest country with a higher GDP per capita (PPP adjusted) larger than the United States is the UAE with just 9.9m people to the United State’s 331m, while the richest country larger than the United States is China with a PPP adjusted GDP per capita of just $21,364 ($14k unadjusted) to the United States’ $76,027. To put it another way, the next biggest rich country (defined as a GDP per capita PPP adjusted above $45,000) is Japan at just 125m people, a bit more than a third of the USA’s population, while the next richest big country (population over 150 million; if we drop this much further we just end up comparing the USA with Japan again) is China with well under a third of the GDP per capita.

首先我们要阐明一个事实，也就是下面要讨论的基础：纵观历史，美国是世界上最大的富裕国家（意即美国是最大的高收入国家），也是大国中最富有的（意即在拥有庞大人口和广袤疆土的国家中拥有最高的人均收入）。人均GDP（购买力平价调整后）高于美国的国家中，最大的国家是阿联酋，那也只有990万人口，美国却有3.31亿人；人口多于美国的国家中，最富裕的中国其人均GDP也只有21364 美元，参考购买力平价调整前只有1.4万美元，而美国则有76027。作为对比，第二大的富裕国家是日本，其人均GDP经购买力平价调整后为45000，且日本仅有1.25亿人口，只比美国人口的三分之一多一点儿。而第二富的大国是中国（这里的大国以人口超过1.5亿为标准，如果再往下类推就又回到日美对比了），而中国的人均GDP只有美国三分之一不到。

In short then, the United States has no peer economies to which it can really be compared. There are two countries which are much larger in population but also much poorer (China and India) and there are a small number of countries which are somewhat richer, but much, much smaller. Population size does matter for the comparison too because we’re taking averages and medians to generate these sorts of statistics so it should be no surprise that countries that are, in effect, small sample sizes can produce greater outlier results; it is much harder to get on the thin end of the distribution with a very large sample set, yet the United States has clearly done this. If one, for instance, compares the EU (far closer to the United States collectively in land area and population) rather than its exceptional1 smaller components the difference becomes obvious: the EU average GDP per capita – despite being a unx made up almost entirely of developed countries – is still 30% lower than the United States.

简而言之，没有别的经济体可以真的与美国相比。印度和中国两国虽然人口远超过美国，但也穷了不少。还有一些国家虽然比美国富裕些，人口却无法相提并论。由于统计时是取中位数，人口规模自然会对评估经济会起到很大作用；样本小则偏差值低，数据看起来更好，而人口众多的大国，其数据离散得自然更为严重，然而美国却做到了。打个比方，如果将欧盟看做一个整体，那么虽然欧盟几乎全由发达国家组成，他们的人均GDP也还是比美国低了30%。
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Now one might complain about measuring GDP per capita on the grounds that inequality – and the United States has quite high inequality for a developed country – means that much of that wealth doesn’t filter down. Which is true, but besides the point as the United States also has an uncommonly high median adult income, second in the OECD behind only tiny Luxembourg.2 So while inequality in the United States remains high, its economy also delivers a very high economic3 standard of living to the general population; indeed, much higher than any country of remotely comparable size.

或许有人会说，以人均GDP评判并不公平，更何况作为一个发达国家，美国的贫富差距算是相当大的了，这意味着相当多的财富并没有向下流动。这话没错，可要知道美国的收入水平中位数可是仅次于小小的卢森堡。美国的贫富差距虽高，但也给了普通民众极高的经济水平，在体量相近的国家中也罕有其比。

This is of course a product of the fact that the United States is the largest economy in the world measured by the absolute value of the goods produced (that is, nominal GDP).4 Now you can argue that literally tremendous economy also produces inequality, that it doesn’t fund the government services you want or that it is generally crass and morally undesirable in some way and that’s fine. What you can’t argue is that it isn’t exceptional or great. It is, indeed, in a literal sense, the most exceptional and greatest economy presently or ever; countries stuck around subsistence are very common. Countries with nominal GDPs above $25trillion – well that is literally only ever happened once.5 That is in part because US worker productivity is very high (roughly equal with Germany) and in part because American companies have been remarkably successful. Of the largest companies in the world by revenue, the United States has four in the top ten (including both the gold and bronze medals), eight in the top twenty, and 23 of the top fifty, handily beating out China, the runner-up (3 in the top 10, 5 in the top 20, 13 in the top 50).6 At the same time the combination of an outsized economy and a high median income (thus meaning that households have lots of disposable income) means that the United States is capable of doing very big things; it has a lot of ‘surplus’ production which can be channeled into this or that.

综上，我们可以得出一个结论：以生产总值论，美国确实是世界上最大的经济体。虽然你也可以说，这样巨大的经济体量带来了社会不公，许多钱并没有投到政府服务上，还有许许多多令人不满之处；然而，唯一无可否认的就是，这样的经济体确实“例外”且伟大。可以说，美国就是有史以来最为独特和伟大的经济体，毕竟挣扎在温饱线上的国家才是数不胜数。历史上，国家总体GDP超过25万亿的事情还只发生过一次。能有这样的成绩，一半是因为美国工人的生产效率很高（大体与德国人持平），一半是因为美国的企业极为成功。按收入计算，全球最大的10家企业中，美国公司占据4席，包揽第一与第三名。在20名中占据8位，前50里更有23家都是美国企业，轻而易举地击败了亚军中国（中国的数据仅次于美国，前10里有3家，前20有5家，前50有13家）。这无疑体现了美国的实力雄厚，能力卓绝，才能让大量的“盈余”产品流向各处。

Consequently, the United States dominates the global economy in a way that no other country does and no other country has ever done; the British Empire at its height comes closest but it existed in a system of economic ‘great powers,’ whereas the United States has, at most, just one peer economy in China. Yet for the size of its economy, China lacks many of the structural economic advantages of the United States. The US dollar remains the most commonly used international and reserve currency in the world; it’s roughly 60% share of global currency reserves effectively unchanged since the fall of the Soviet unx. And either through direct dollarization, official pegs or de facto currency pegs, the dollar serves as the currency or currency substitute of more countries than any other (though a number of countries have also anchored to the Euro). Meanwhile, because the United States hosts the largest financial center in the world (New York City) and its close allies host the next two most important (London and Tokyo), the United States with its allies (see below) is able to functionally set the rules for the global economy.

可以说，美国主导全球经济的程度是古往今来没有任何国家做到过的。大英帝国在全盛时期尚要屈居于列强经济体系之中，而美国，可称匹敌的仅中国一人而已。若是考较两国经济，中国还比美国欠缺许多结构性的经济优势。此外，美元仍旧是全球最常用的结算货币和储备货币，自苏联解体之后，美元占据全球外汇储备60%左右的份额已经长久未变过了。在许多国家直接使用美元，或者是与美元进行货币挂钩的情况下，美国长期作为许多国家的流通货币或替代品使用（虽然也有一些国家用的欧元）。此外由于美国拥有全球最大的金融中心（纽约），且另外两大金融中心在美国盟友手里（伦敦和东京），美国及其盟友也可以从机制上为全球经济制定规则。

The United States is thus effectively unique: the only country to combine a large population with a very high per capita income. As implied in some of the comparisons above, the closest other candidates for ‘big countries with high income’ are Japan (125m people, $39.2k GDP per capita) and Germany (83m people, $51.86k GDP per capita) countries that are both smaller and poorer on average than the United States. And please note, poorer, not poor. Obviously both Germany and Japan are ‘rich’ countries. But that fact makes the United States’ economy both obviously exceptional and clearly great. Indeed, by absolute size, it is the greatest economy both now and at any point.

美国在经济上是如此的非同凡响：唯有它能在拥有庞大人口的同时保持超高的人均收入。在上述提到的许多国家中，能接近“高收入大国”的国家唯有日本（1.25亿人口，人均GDP3.92万美元）和德国（0.83亿人口，人均GDP5.186万美元），从人口到人均都逊于美国。请注意，即使低于美国，二者也绝非穷国，还都算“富裕”国家。这一事实更凸显了美国经济那明显的例外与伟大。考虑到绝对规模，那么美国绝对是目前乃至历史任何时期中最伟大的经济体。

Knowledge

知识
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I’ll be blunt: the United States is the most technologically advanced country to have ever existed. This is a tricky metric to average because it comes so many different fields and of course many countries excel in one field or another, but no country excels in anywhere near as many fields or on as many metrics as the United States does when it comes to technology or the production of knowledge.

我就直说了吧：美国有史以来科技最先进的国家。这其实是一个很难衡量的指标，毕竟科学这方面领域繁多，许多国家都在某一两项领域里领先旁人，可在科研与知识生产方面，还没有哪个国家能像美国这样在如此多的领域和指标里领先。

We can start with universities. The United States makes up 4.25% of the world’s population but around half of its top research universities. Ranking universities is to a degree subjective but one may take an average of the rankings (I’ll use this one) to get at least a rough sense of the state of things; a merely rough sense will do because the disparity is so massive nothing more precise is required. Eight of the top ten universities worldwide are American; 13 of the top 20; 23 of the top 50; 38 of the top 100. That is, to put it bluntly, preposterous, and no other country’s university system compares (though of course there are many fine universities in other countries!). It is certainly exceptional. Indeed, anyone with even a passing familiarity with academic hiring in either the STEM or humanities fields will be well aware that it has been true for decades and remains true that the flow of top-tier academic talent is towards the United States rather than away and for good reason.7

我们先从大学说起。美国的人口只占全球的4.25%，却拥有全球一半的顶级科研高校。给全球大学做排名虽然多少会有点主观倾向，但如果将他们综合起来看，也能得出个大概的结论。全球10所顶级大学里，有8所都是美国的；前20里有13所，前50里有23所，前100里有38所都是美国大学。这样的优势简直离谱，可以说这世上就没有哪个国家的大学体系能和美国相提并论（我没有说别的国家就没有好大学的意思），这不算“例外”还有啥是例外。如果您对美国的招生录取有一点概念，不论是科学、数学和工程教育还是人文领域，那您自然会懂我的话：几十年来，一直都是顶尖学术人才流向美国，而非美国流向外国。

The same dominance is visible in the tech economy (indeed, the two go hand-in-hand). As Forbes counts it, of the ten largest tech companies in the world, 7 are American; 13 of the top 20. That level of dominance too is preposterous. The obvious comparison point would be the EU – a collection of developed economies roughly the same size as the United States when put together – which has just two entries on the list.8 Software in particular is astoundingly dominated by American firms (though note that list excludes companies with substantial hardware interests); ‘internet’ companies are not quite as US dominated, but the United States still makes up a simple majority of the largest companies. The point here of counting companies is that it provides at least some window into who is producing the most advanced and popular products worldwide.

如此的优势也体现在了美国的科技经济领域。根据福布斯统计，全球前10的科技公司里，有7家是美国的，这也是离谱得很。如果非要比较，能和美国相比的大概是欧盟——将欧盟各国加到一起才能和美国差不多体量，可欧盟也只有2家进入榜单。软件领域更是美国公司的天下（请注意表单里并不包含在硬件领域有大量涉猎的公司）。“互联网”企业虽不完全由美国主导，但美国所拥有的大公司也是最多的。讲这些公司的事情是想让大家能稍微了解到，究竟是谁在为全球提供最为先进也最受欢迎的产品。

Or take another way to measure the question: the COVID-19 pandemic essentially created a sudden dramatic test of the medical and bio-tech capabilities of every country in the world at essentially the same time to develop vaccines. The most effective vaccine to result from this effort was the Moderna vaccine, developed in the United States using an entirely new technology (vaccines using mRNA); essentially tied with it for effectiveness and speed of development was the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, also using mRNA, which was a United States (Pfizer) and Germany (BioNTech) collaboration. A third vaccine, the Johnson & Johnson (or Janssen) vaccine was developed by a Dutch lab of a Belgian subsidiary of an American company (Johnson and Johnson) and so represents another EU-US joint venture.9

其实，还有一件事也可以用于这个问题的论证：新冠病毒的大流行给全球每个国家都带来了一场有关医疗与生物科技的突击检测。各国虽基本上是在同一时间开始了自己的疫苗研发，可最有效的疫苗还要数美国研制的莫德纳疫苗，那是用到了全新科技的mRNA疫苗。有效性和研发速度与莫德纳疫苗大致相当的是辉瑞-BioNTech疫苗，也用到了mRNA技术，是由美国公司辉瑞和德国BioNTech联合研发的。第三名的强生疫苗虽然是荷兰的实验室研发的，但也隶属于美国强生公司的比利时子公司，自然也是美欧合资企业的成果。

The tricky thing, of course, with technology is that technological advancement is just that: it is about advancement,10 and so some other country might well sprint ahead tomorrow (or might have already sprinted ahead in ways that are difficult to see), but for now the United States appears to remain at the cutting edge of technological advancement and scholarly production.

当然，科技领先的优势并不是一成不变的，或许明天就会有十数个国家奋起直追，超越美国；也许在某些不为人知的领域已经有谁超过美国了也说不定。但就今天而言，美国仍旧是科技领域和人才培养上名列前茅的国家。

Culture

文化

Last year we talked about how the culture of the United States was unusual: in a sea of nation-states the United States is unusual in rejecting the nation as an organizing concept; I’m hesitant to say this is a unique feature of the United States, but it certainly is unusual. The United States is already an uncommonly blended country (as discussed in the lix above) and only becoming more so. And despite – or perhaps because of – the difficulties that often come with such a diverse population, the United States is also arguably the world’s oldest functioning democracy and likewise arguably has the world’s oldest still-used constitution. All of which is clearly exceptional, even accounting for recent polarization and turmoil.

去年我们就讨论过美国的文化有多么与众不同：在世界上有那么多单一民族国家，可美国却并不把这视作自己的组成方式。我不知道这是否可以说是美国的特质，但这一点的确尤为独特。美国已然是一个独树一帜的多民族混合国家，其融合程度还在不断加强。尽管这庞杂的人口组成带来了不少麻烦，这份麻烦或许却也帮助美国成为了世界上建立时间最早的民主政体，并拥有全球最古老的仍在使用的宪法。尽管美国近期的社会有两极分化的混乱之象，如此成就也无疑堪称“例外”。

Despite the heterogeneity of the United States’ population, American culture is distinctive. In particular, by at least some measurements, the United States is above and away the most individualist country in the world, an outlier even compared to other English-speaking countries (which also tend towards a strong individualist bent). The United States is also effectively alone as a high-income country which is also very religious, both in terms of saying that religion is important but also in actual religious observance like daily prayer. Of course not all exceptions are good; the United States is unusually violent for a high income country. Interestingly in both religion and violence, the United States becomes much more typical if you look at all countries but is extremely exceptional as a high income country; it might well be argued that for better and for worse one thing that seems to make the United States exceptional is that it became a rich country without adopting the normal behaviors and values of other rich countries.11

文化方面，美国不仅内部多有差异，从整体上看也堪称独特。大体而言，美国人属于非常强调个人主义的国家，就算是在英语世界（基本上也都有强烈的个人主义倾向）中也是独一份了。美国也是独有的在保持高收入的同时又非常宗教化的国家，不仅十分重视宗教的地位，国民还遵守着每日祈祷之类的宗教惯例。当然，并不是所有的“例外”都是好事：作为高收入国家，美国的暴力犯罪也是异常之多。有趣的是，如果只看宗教与犯罪情况，美国在世界各国中算是个常见典型了，可它就独特在自己还是个高收入国家。不管你如何评估此事的好坏，美国都是例外的：它在成为富裕国家的同时，却没拥有其他富裕国家的价值观和行为规范。

Or to put it another way, the United States is the country equivalent of a rich American that nevertheless continues to insist they’re just ‘middle class.’12

换句话说，美国就好比一个人，虽然腰缠万贯，却总爱说自己“不过是中产阶级”。

On the other hand, American culture and cultural products are pervasive in a way that no other culture has ever really been. English is the most spoken language in the world (including second language speakers, who make up a large majority of English speakers), though of course this is a consequence not merely of American influence but also a legacy of British power. On the other hand it has created an avenue for the startling pervasiveness of American culture. Of the top grossing films worldwide, American production companies are responsible for all of the top 29 before Skyfall (2012) finally gives us a non-American entry.13 Even if one takes merely the ‘international‘ (meaning non-American) box-office numbers, the top ten are still entirely American films, with Chang jin hu at 1414 at last breaking the American production or co-production sweep. To put that in perspective, only counting box office outside the United States, there are three movies featuring the character ‘Captain America’ as one of the primary heroes before the first fully non-American film on the list.

从另一方面讲，美国文化及其文化产品畅销全球的程度也是此前任何文化未曾达到过的。英语是世界上使用人口最多的语言（包括了事实上占大多数的，将英语当做第二语言使用的人），其中不仅有美国的原因，还有英帝国遗产的影响。这无疑为美国文化的流行铺平了道路。在全球电影票房榜上，前29部都是由美国制作公司所负责的，直到2012年的《007:大破天幕危机》才终于有一部非美国电影挤了进来。（作者注：《哈利波特与死亡圣器》第二部，还有《指环王：王者归来》是和非美国公司合作的，而且都基于英国作者的原著，所以这里也有些讨论空间）。哪怕只看“国际票房”也就是美国以外的票房，美国电影也包揽了前10名，直到不久前的《长津湖》才打破了美国出品与合作出品的垄断。换个角度看，如果只计算美国以外的票房，三部以“美国队长”为主角的超级英雄电影在票房上也超过了下面所有完全非美国的电影。

The positive impact this must have on US diplomacy seems obvious.

这些显然对美国的外交产生了积极影响。

The point here isn’t to say that other countries don’t make good movies (they do) or that those movies aren’t successful locally (they often are), but that the US film industry is alone in having a commanding presence in every media market where it isn’t actively banned by governments. American products aren’t quite so dominant in other media – the United States clearly shares the dominant position in gaming with Japan in terms of best-selling games worldwide, for instance – but for one country to be so prominent everywhere culturally is certainly exceptional. US products utterly dominate global brand recognition, for instance. In fact this level of global pervasiveness is entirely unique, a product of American cultural pervasiveness colliding with the first emergence of a truly globalized culture, itself made possible in part by information technologies invented in the United States. That has allowed the United States to project the kind of cultural hegemony that great powers might have enjoyed in their local regions, but to do so globally for the first time. No country has ever been as culturally pervasive as the United States. As a historian I can only wonder what future historians will make of the long-term impact of the American cultural moment in shaping an emerging global culture.15

我并不是说其他国家就没有好电影，也不是否认这些电影或许在当地大获成功这件事，然而美国电影工业确实独步天下，只要没有被别国政府故意设置禁令，就会在该市场占据支配地位。在其他领域，美国文化产品就没有如此超然的境遇，举例而言，游戏界就有日本与美国共享着主导地位。不过一个国家在文化的方方面面都有举足轻重的地位本身就是一个例外。美国产品完全主导了全球品牌认知度。实际上，这种遍及全球的传播程度本身就是罕见的，它是美国文化在全球传播中，与第一次真正意义上出现的全球文化相冲突而形成的产物，其本身正通过在美国发明的信息技术而成为可能。这也让美国得以在地区投射出文化霸权——这种事情在过去虽也有强国乐意为之，但将之扩展到全球范围尚属首次。没有国家能够像美国那样将文化传遍四海。作为一名历史学家，我也很想知道，未来的历史学家们将如何描述美国文化在塑造正在形成的全球文化时所产生的深远影响呢？

It is a stunning and singular achievement and alone would be enough to mark the United States for greatness (which again is not the same as ‘goodness’ – if you hate mass produced American films, that’s fine, the point is extent and amount, not subjective quality), the signal achievement of a world historic state and culture…were it not for the next thing.

这是一项惊人且独一无二的成就，单此一项就足以证明美国的伟大（再次声明，这里的“伟大”并不等同于“好”，如果你讨厌美国电影也没关系，这里的重点是体量而不是主观意义上的影片质量），堪称是世界历史上一个国家和文化的标志性成就，但我们没说下一项。

Power

军力

The United States today is the most powerful country to have ever existed, by functionally every metric. Even as the diplomatic and security environment the United States faces becomes more challenging (in part by our own making), the position the United States occupies today is one no other country has ever occupied.

今日的美国是迄今为止最强大的国家，从任何尺度上讲都是如此。尽管美国所面对的外交与安全环境正日益收到挑战（其中有部分是由我们自己造成的），美国在今天所具有的地位仍不是别的任何国家所达到过的。

It is generally observed that the United States continues to have the most powerful military in the world. While the American edge in military power may have eroded since the 1990s, absolutely massive U.S. military spending continues to buy an incomparably massive amount of military power. The United States operates half of the world’s active aircraft carriers, 11 of the top 11 for raw combat power (which mostly comes down to the size of their air wing). The United States has both the world’s largest air force (the United States Air Force) and the world’s second largest air force (the U.S. Navy).16 While American military equipment is not always the best (although it frequently is), the arsenal of the United States is in the top tier of essentially every class, while frequent military interventions have established a consistent track record of high performance from the men and women of the US armed forces (albeit a much more disappointing record from the decision and policy-makers of the US government).

人们都知道，美国一向拥有着全球最强大的军队。尽管自90年代以来，美国在军力上的优势有所削弱，可美国绝对庞大的军费开支仍然维持着美军无比强大的军事力量。美国拥有世上一半的现役航空母舰，前11的航母编队都为美国所有，还有着全球最大的空军（美国空军）和第二大的空军（美国海军）。诚然，美军的装备并非永远都是最棒的（但常常是），可美国的军用储备在每一层都处于顶尖水平，而频繁的军事干预行为也让美军得以一直书写下高效作战的记录（不过美国政府的决策者们留下的记录就令人失望得多了）。

Moreover, the sort of comparisons that get made counting tanks or soldiers often undersell the gap in capabilities, especially when it comes to power projection. France required US logistics and airlift support in order to operate in Mali and the broader Sahel (about 2,000 miles from Paris); Russian logistics was unable to cover the trip to Kyiv (about 450 miles); the United States, by contrast, has conducted major military operations in Kuwait (1991, 6,500 miles from Washington, D.C.), Iraq (2003-2017, roughly the same distance) and Afghanistan (2001-2021, c. 6,900 miles). No other country today is capable of global power projection on remotely the same scale, at least for now.

不仅如此，那种计算坦克和士兵数量的比较往往低估了性能差距，尤其是在力量投射这方面。法国需要美国的后勤和空运支持才能在马里和更广阔的萨赫勒地区（距巴黎约 2,000 英里）开展行动；俄罗斯的后勤也无法覆盖前往基辅的行程（约 450 英里）。相比之下，美国在科威特（1991 年，距华盛顿特区 6,500 英里）、伊拉克（2003-2017 年，距离大致相同）和阿富汗（2001-2021 年，约 6,900 英里）都进行了重大军事行动。时至今日，没有其他国家能够以同样的规模进行全球力量投射，至少目前来说是这样。
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But raw military power (‘hard power’) isn’t the only kind of power. Fortunately for the United States, it also leads in every other kind of power. Normally due to balancing behavior, we’d expect a large coalition of allies to oppose U.S. interests, but instead the opposite is true: the United States leads the largest collection of peacetime allies in human history. The United States has essentially constructed a web of interlocking alliances with the USA at the center; NATO alone makes up a simple majority of global military spending before one even considers other treaty allies of the United States like Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and at least notionally most of South America. Of the ten largest economies in the world, the United States has mutual defense arrangements with seven of them (not counting itself, so eight of the ten are all on one side) and one more (India) is a ‘major defense partner’ but not a treaty ally. It is an alliance system so expansive that effective global diplomatic balancing becomes impractical; countries whose interests oppose the United States can contest American interests locally, but struggle to put together any kind of coherent anti-US bloc outside of symbolic votes in the UN.

诚然，力量并不只有“硬实力”而已。对美国来说，幸运的是它在实力的每一个方面都处于领先地位。通常来说，出于平衡考虑，人们大概会假设世界上会出现一个大型联盟来与美国分庭抗礼，可现实是，美国领导着人类历史上最大的和平时期盟友。美国基本上已经构建了一张以美国为核心，紧密联系的盟友网，仅北约就占据了全球军费开支的大部分，甚至还没有算上美国的其他条约盟友，比如日本、韩国、澳大利亚、新西兰，以及至少名义上是美国盟友的南美大部分地区。在世界上最大的十个经济体中，美国与其中七个有共同防御条约（这还没算美国自己，所以十中有八都在一边），还有一个印度也是“重要国防伙伴”，但不是条约盟友。这是一个如此庞大的联盟体系，以至于令国际外交平衡变得不切实际。其自身利益与美国相悖的国家自然可以在本土与美国的利益做抵抗，但他们很难在联合国的象征性投票之外组建任何类型的、团结一致的反美集团。

That diplomatic ‘soft’ power has in turn enabled the United States to consolidate tremendous amounts of institutional power. The UN of course has its headquarters in New York and the United States and its close allies France and the United Kingdom collectively have a simple majority of the permanent members of the UN Security Council .17 The World Bank is headquartered in Washington D.C. and the United States has the largest voting share in its governance (followed closely by US allies Japan, Germany, France and the UK); the IMF is likewise headquartered in D.C. and every single one of its first deputy managing directors has been an American, without exception (but Stanley Fischer had dual citizenship), while the managing directorship rotates. While the WTO is notionally more neutral, once again the interests of the United States and its close allies dominate. The ironic success of all of this is that the United States created a bunch of international institutions – these are only some of them – for its own interests and then successfully convinced a critical mass of the rest of the world that these were true international institutions (a task in which the wide diffusion of American culture and thus America’s own positive self-image, played a major part).

这种外交“软”实力反过来又帮助美国巩固了对自身强大实力的制度化运用。在此情境下，联合国的总部自然要设在纽约，美国及其亲密盟友法国和英国也自然拥有联合国安理会常任理事国的简单多数。（作者注：而这又令他们能迫使中俄不得不投出自我保护性质的、尴尬的否决票）世界银行的总部也在华盛顿特区，且美国在其管理中拥有最大的投票权（紧随其后的是美国的盟友日本、德国、法国和英国）；国际货币基金组织的总部同样设在华盛顿特区，其每一任第一副总裁都是美国人，无一例外（不过斯坦利·菲舍尔有双重国籍），而总裁则轮流担任。虽然世贸组织在名义上更加中立，但美国及其亲密盟友的利益再次占据了主导地位。这一切成功背后的讽刺意味在于：美国为了自己的利益创建了一大堆国际机构——上述这些只是其中的一部分——然后成功地使世界其他地区的相当一部分人相信这些都是真正的国际机构（对于这一效果，美国文化的广泛传播以及美国自身积极的形象发挥了重要作用）。

The result is an international system where, without declaring war or instituting a blockade, the United States can, almost casually, organize a large coalition of countries to do things like banishing the world’s 11th largest economy from global financial markets, forcing that country into default in just four months. Likewise the United States has spent the last fifteen years demonstrating with some vividness the power that the United States can exert over Iran’s economy (13th largest by GDP), crippling it almost at a whim.

由此带来的是一个国际体系，在这个体系中，美国可以在不宣战或实施封锁的情况下，近乎随心所欲地组织起一个庞大的国家联盟，来做一些类似“将世界第 11 大经济体逐出全球金融市场，迫使该国在短短四个月内违约”这样的事。同样的，美国在过去 15 年里生动地展现了美国对伊朗经济（GDP 排全球第13）的影响力，仅凭几乎一时的兴起便将其瘫痪。
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The result of all of this is the bizarre situation that the world’s foremost land power is also the world’s foremost naval power, which is also the world’s foremost diplomatic power, which is also the world’s foremost economic power, entrenched in the high ground of most of the world’s international institutions. One may of course argue that this situation is changing, albeit slowly, but at the moment the contrast is startling: the sphere of Russian influence does quite reach Kyiv (about 150 miles from the Russian border) and the sphere of Chinese influence does not quite reach Taipei (about the same distance, but over water), but American influence evidently reaches both despite the former being 4,300 miles and the latter 6,500 miles away from American shores.

以上这一切铸就了当世第一陆权大国、第一海权大国、第一外交大国，同时也是世界第一经济强国——集多项第一于一身的美国稳居于众多国际机构之首的局面。当然，人们或许会说如今形式也在变了，尽管速度很慢……但目前来说力量差异仍然颇为悬殊：俄罗斯的势力范围确实达到了基辅（距俄罗斯边境约 150 英里），而中国的势力范围则还没有完全达到台北（距离大致相同，只不过是水路）。可美国的影响力显然已经触及到了中俄，尽管前者距离美国海岸 4,300 英里，而后者距离美国海岸 6,500 英里。

That has never happened before; it may well never happen again. We have seen regional hegemons similarly dominant in their local neighborhoods (the Roman Empire, the Han Dynasty, Achaemenid Persia, etc.) and to lack peers locally, but the United States is the first and only country to have done this on a global scale and to lack true peer competitors anywhere. Even as the ‘monopolar moment’ seems to be coming to an end, the United States’ position as ‘first among equals’ among the ‘great powers’ is historically unparalleled; no state has ever been so clearly without peers influence and power except for maybe – wait for it – the Mongols.

这样的情形在史上从未出现过，恐怕在未来也不会重现了。历史上确有一些区域霸权曾在他们邻国之间占据主导地位（如罗马帝国、汉朝和阿契美尼德波斯等等），并且没有同体量的对手，可美国是第一个也是唯一一个在全球范围内做到这一点的国家，在世界范围内无人能与之相比。尽管“单极时刻”似乎行将结束，可美国“一超多强”的地位仍是前所未有的，没有哪个国家能在影响力和实力上如此一骑绝尘，除了……哦等等……蒙古人。

Now one may well argue that countries shouldn’t aspire to this sort of greatness, that this kind of power-building is an old, outdated way of thinking. And that’s a fair argument! I push my own students on this point, asking them what does ‘greatness’ mean if Alexander of Macedon was ‘great’ and if they are comfortable with that definition of greatness. But it also seems inarguable that this definition of greatness, rooted in a country’s ability to project various forms of power abroad, is by far the most common definition of greatness applied to a country and that in this oldest and most common definition of greatness the United States has succeeded and succeeded like no other state before it. And it goes without saying that being the only ever global hegemon, the United States is exceptional.

现在可能有人会反驳我说，一个国家不应该渴望这种伟大，如此构建权力的方式是一种老套、过时的想法。这话倒也不错！在这个问题上，我曾经问过我的学生，如果马其顿的亚历山大大帝是个伟人，那么“伟大”究竟为何意？他们是否对这种“伟大”的定义而感到满意？纵使如此，这种对伟大的定义，即“一个国家将自身力量以各种形式投射到国外的能力”，仍然是迄今为止最被普遍接受的的定义方式。而在它最古老也最普遍的含义之中，美国无疑成功做到了“伟大”，且伟大得空前绝后。作为唯一的全球霸主，美国自然是例外的。

Conclusions

结论

Now at the end of this you might be ready to argue (who am I kidding, no doubt at least someone stopped reading many paragraphs ago to angrily post this comment) that while yes the United States does excel by these measures, there are all sorts of other measures by which the United States does not. And you’re right! And that should hardly be surprising: most things are tradeoffs where scarce resources can be directed to some things and thus not others. This is why we are not debating what the ‘best’ country is: for someone who prefers the things that the United States traded away to get these exceptional outcomes, the United States must look like quite a terrible country.

现在，在本文即将结束时，您可能已经准备好反驳我了（不妨开个玩笑，我觉得肯定有些人早就看不下去，开始愤怒的敲评论了吧）。的确，美国在一些方面表现出色，在一些方面则表现欠佳。反正你说的都对！但有一点我觉得大家不难想到：世上大多数事情都得权衡取舍，稀缺的资源一旦用到某些事项上，就不能用到别的事情上了。这就是为什么我们所探讨的并非什么是“最好的”国家：对于那些更喜欢美国为获得这些成功而放弃的东西的人来说，美国看起来一定是个非常糟糕的国家。
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And if I may editorialize for a moment, I think one can notice a pattern in these tradeoffs that unite many of the ways that the United States is unusual: a heady, devil-take-the-hindmost rush to the frontiers of possibility, a comfort with an ethos of (to borrow Facebook’s old motto), “Move fast and break things.” Individual liberty, expansive power (military and cultural), technological development, and economic growth end up prioritized in the United States above communal safety, domestic services or egalitarian educational or economic outcomes. To put it simply then, the United States might be typified by an emphasis on achieving greatness (as traditionally defined) above almost everything else.18 The very bigness is the goal, driving forward towards larger profits, newer technology, more clicks and views, greater military power, more allies19, damn the consequences. That’s not the only thing at the heart of America, but it is one of the things.

请允许我在此发表一下个人观点：从美国权衡利弊的各种做法中，不难看出它遵循一种不同寻常的模式：那是一种一往无前，不顾一切向前冲的劲头，一种（在此借用脸书名言）会为“快速行动，打破常规（Move fast and break things）”而感到振奋的精神。在美国，个人自由、广泛的权力（军事与文化方面）、科技发展和经济增长被置于公共安全、家庭服务、平等主义教育和经济成果之上。简而言之，美国的特征就是强调实现（传统意义上的）伟大更甚于其他任何东西。大就是好，为此需要更大的利润、更新的技术、更多的点击量和浏览量、更强大的军事力量、更多的盟友，结果什么的去TM的。美国精神的核心当然不止于此，但它确实是其中之一。

And on those terms it is hard not to conclude that the United States is a success, indeed, it is a country that has succeeded on those terms like no other country has ever succeeded. It has resulted in a country which is not merely exceptional, but exceptionally exceptional – that is, the United States is highly unusual in an unusually high number of ways. And, as I noted at the beginning, it is unusual in fairly obvious ways, evident enough that one has to accomplish some serious mental contortions not to notice what a strange, expansive and powerful country the United States is.

根据以上条件，不难得出一个结论：美国确实成功了。事实上，美国还是史上第一个以如此程度做到以上条件的国家。作为一个国家，“例外”不足以形容它，该说是“例外中的例外”，毕竟美国在那多得离谱的领域里都强得异乎寻常。而就像我在一开头就说过的，美国的不凡是如此一目了然，大概某些人非得有严重的心理扭曲才能无视摆在眼前的证据，无视美国是一个多么奇特的、幅员辽阔而又强大的国家。

The interesting question then is not if the United States is a great country but if it will be a good country, if all of that vastness in wealth, technology, influence and power will be put towards some worthy aim, both judged against our ideals20 and against the historical behavior of other great powers.21 It’s a question that only Americans can really answer, in our doing. I strive and hope that we answer well.

那么有趣的问题就来了：美国是否是一个伟大的国家已经无需讨论，但它能否成为一个好国家呢？它能否将它巨大的财富、技术、影响力和军事力量都用于某个有价值的目标，并接受我们的理想的审视检定（这是个比较高的要求），接受与历史上其他强国的行径进行横向对比（这么低的门槛就小意思啦）的要求？这是一个只有美国人才能以实际行动真正回答的问题。我衷心希望我们能回答好。

Happy (belated) Fourth of July everyone. Next week we’re back to regular programming – we’re going to be looking at the nuts and bolts of keeping an army fed and moving on the march.

最后，给大家送上迟来的七月四日独立日祝福。下周我们将继续进行之前的系列——我们将继续探究在行军中如何能让军队吃饱并继续前进的各种操作细节。

Dr. Bret C. Devereaux is an ancient and military historian who currently teaches as a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has his PhD in ancient history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his MA in classical civilizations from Florida State University.

作者介绍：
布雷特·德弗罗（Bret C. Devereaux）博士是一名古代军事历史学家，目前在北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校历史系担任客座讲师。他在北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校获得古代历史博士学位，在佛罗里达州立大学获得古典文明硕士学位。

Bret is a historian of the broader ancient Mediterranean in general and of ancient Rome in particular. His primary research interests sit at the intersections of the Roman economy and the Roman military, examining the ways that the lives of ordinary people in the ancient world were shaped by the structures of power, violence and wealth under which they lived and the ways in which they in turn shaped the military capacity of the states in which they lived (which is simply a fancy way of saying he is interested in how the big picture of wars, economic shifts and politics impacted the ‘little’ folks and vice versa). More broadly he is interested in many of the nuts-and-bolts of everyday life in the ancient world, things like the production of textiles, the economics of small farming households, and the burden of military service.

布雷特是泛古地中海历史学家，尤其擅长古罗马历史。他主攻的方向是通过研究古代世界中普通人的生活是如何受到权力、暴力和财富结构的影响，以及人们如何反过来塑造了他们所居住的国家的军事能力来探究古罗马经济和军事的交集（用直白点的话说，就是他对战争、经济转型和政治变迁如何影响“小人物”感兴趣，反之亦然）。更广泛地讲，他对古代世界日常生活中的许多细节都感兴趣，比如纺织品生产、小农经济和服兵役的负担等等。

He is also – as even a cursory read of this blog will show – a lifetime fan of fantasy, science fiction and speculative fiction more generally. Bret enjoys good music, bad jokes and writing about himself in the third person. He is also required, by law and ancient custom, to inform absolutely everyone that he has, in fact, beaten Dark Souls.

此外，如果稍微浏览一下这个博客就不难看出，他还是个奇幻、科幻和推理小说的粉丝。布雷特喜爱美妙的音乐、冷笑话，还喜欢用第三人称描述自己。并且，根据法律与古代风俗的要求，他须得告知所有人——他已经打通了黑暗之魂。