纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英拜登批准机密核武战略重点关注中国威胁

President Biden approved in March a highly classified nuclear strategic plan for the United States that, for the first time, reorients America’s deterrent strategy to focus on China’s rapid expansion in its nuclear arsenal.

今年3月，拜登总统批准了一项高度机密的美国核战略计划，首次将美国的威慑战略重新定位，将重点放在中国迅速扩张的核武库上。

The shift comes as the Pentagon believes China’s stockpiles will rival the size and diversity of the United States’ and Russia’s over the next decade.

五角大楼认为，未来十年，中国的核武器储备将在规模和多样性方面与美国和俄罗斯匹敌，这一转变就是在这样的背景下发生的。

The White House never announced that Mr. Biden had approved the revised strategy, called the “Nuclear Employment Guidance,” which also newly seeks to prepare the United States for possible coordinated nuclear challenges from China, Russia and North Korea. The document, updated every four years or so, is so highly classified that there are no electronic copies, only a small number of hard copies distributed to a few national security officials and Pentagon commanders.

白宫从未宣布拜登已经批准了这项被称为“核部署指导”的修订战略。该战略还旨在让美国为应对中国、俄罗斯和朝鲜可能协同发起的核挑战做好准备。这份文件大约每四年更新一次，属于高度机密，没有电子版，只有少量纸质文件分发给少数国家安全官员和五角大楼指挥官。

But in recent speeches, two senior administration officials were allowed to allude to the change — in carefully constrained, single sentences — ahead of a more detailed, unclassified notification to Congress expected before Mr. Biden leaves office.

但在最近的演讲中，两名高级政府官员被允许在拜登卸任前向国会提交一份更详细的非机密通知之前，以谨慎克制的寥寥数语来暗示这一变化。

“The president recently issued updated nuclear-weapons employment guidance to account for multiple nuclear-armed adversaries,” Vipin Narang, an M.I.T. nuclear strategist who served in the Pentagon, said earlier this month before returning to academia. “And in particular,” he added, the weapons guidance accounted for “the significant increase in the size and diversity” of China’s nuclear arsenal.

“总统最近发布了最新的核武器使用指导，以应对多个拥有核武器的对手，”曾在五角大楼任职的麻省理工学院核战略家维平·纳朗本月早些时候在返回学术界之前说。“尤其是，”他还说，该武器指南考虑到了中国核武库“规模和多样性的显著增加”。

In June, the National Security Council’s senior director for arms control and nonproliferation, Pranay Vaddi, also referred to the document, the first to examine in detail whether the United States is prepared to respond to nuclear crises that break out simultaneously or sequentially, with a combination of nuclear and nonnuclear weapons.

今年6月，美国国家安全委员会负责军备控制和防扩散事务的高级主任普拉纳伊·瓦迪也提到了这份文件。该文件首次详细研究了美国是否准备好以核武器和非核武器相结合的方式，应对同时或先后爆发的核危机。

The new strategy, Mr. Vaddi said, emphasizes “the need to deter Russia, the PRC and North Korea simultaneously,” using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.

瓦迪说，新战略强调“同时威慑俄罗斯、中华人民共和国和朝鲜的必要性”。

In the past, the likelihood that American adversaries could coordinate nuclear threats to outmaneuver the American nuclear arsenal seemed remote. But the emerging partnership between Russia and China, and the conventional arms North Korea and Iran are providing to Russia for the war in Ukraine have fundamentally changed Washington’s thinking.

在过去，美国的对手通过协调核威胁来击败美国核武库的可能性似乎很渺茫。但俄中之间正在形成伙伴关系，以及朝鲜和伊朗为乌克兰战争向俄罗斯提供常规武器，这从根本上改变了华盛顿的想法。

Already, Russia and China are conducting military exercises together. Intelligence agencies are trying to determine whether Russia is aiding the North Korean and Iranian missile programs in return.

俄中已经在举行联合军事演习。情报机构正在试图确定，俄罗斯是否为朝鲜和伊朗的导弹项目提供了援助。

The new document is a stark reminder that whoever is sworn in next Jan. 20 will confront a changed and far more volatile nuclear landscape than the one that existed just three years ago. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has repeatedly threatened the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine, including during a crisis in October 2022, when Mr. Biden and his aides, looking at intercepts of conversations between senior Russian commanders, feared the likelihood of nuclear use might rise to 50 percent or even higher.

这份新文件清楚地提醒人们，无论明年1月20日是谁宣誓就职，都将面对一个与三年前相比已经发生了变化、更加动荡的核形势。俄罗斯总统普京曾多次威胁对乌克兰使用核武器，包括在2022年10月的一场危机中，当时拜登和助手在查看了截获的俄罗斯高级指挥官之间的对话内容后，担心使用核武器的可能性会上升到50%，甚至更高。

Mr. Biden, along with leaders of Germany and Britain, got China and India to make public statements that there was no role for the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and the crisis abated, at least temporarily.

拜登与德国和英国的领导人一起，促使中国和印度发表公开声明，表示不允许在乌克兰使用核武器，危机得到了缓解，至少暂时得到了缓解。

“It was an important moment,” Richard N. Haass, a former senior State Department and National Security Council official for several Republican presidents, and the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in an interview. “We are dealing with a Russia that is radicalized; the idea that nukes wouldn’t be used in a conventional conflict is not longer a safe assumption.”

“这是一个重要的时刻，”理查德·哈斯在接受采访时指出，“我们面对的是一个激进的俄罗斯；常规冲突中不会使用核武器的想法不再是一个不大会错的假设。”哈斯曾在几位共和党总统的任期内担任国务院和国家安全委员会高级官员，现在是外交关系委员会名誉主席。

The second big change arises from China’s nuclear ambitions. The country’s nuclear expansion is running at an even faster pace than American intelligence officials anticipated two years ago, driven by President Xi Jinping’s determination to scrap the decades-long strategy of maintaining a “minimum deterrent” to reach or exceed the size of Washington’s and Moscow’s arsenals. China’s nuclear complex is now the fastest growing in the world.

第二大变化来自中国的核野心。中国的核扩张速度甚至超过了美国情报官员两年前的预期，这是因为习近平主席决心废除维持了几十年的 “最低威慑力”战略，以达到或超过华盛顿和莫斯科的核武库规模。中国的核设施目前是世界上发展最快的。

Although former President Donald J. Trump confidently predicted that Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, would surrender his nuclear weapons after their three in-person meetings, the opposite happened. Mr. Kim has doubled down, and now has more than 60 weapons, officials estimate, and the fuel for many more.

尽管前总统特朗普自信地预测朝鲜领导人金正恩将在他们的第三次会面之后交出核武器，但事实恰恰相反。金正恩采取了更加坚定的立场，据官员们估计，他现在拥有60多件核武器，并拥有制造更多核武器的燃料。

That expansion has changed the nature of the North Korean challenge: When the country possessed just a handful of weapons, it could be deterred by missile defenses. But its expanded arsenal is fast approaching the size of Pakistan’s and Israel’s, and it is large enough that it could, in theory, coordinate threats with Moscow and Beijing.

这种扩张改变了朝鲜这一挑战的性质：当这个国家只拥有少量武器时，它可以被导弹防御系统吓住。但其扩大后的武器库正在迅速接近巴基斯坦和以色列的规模，而且从理论上讲，它的规模足以与莫斯科和北京协调威胁。

It was only a matter of time before a fundamentally different nuclear environment began to alter American war plans and strategy, officials say.

官员们表示，一个完全不同的核环境改变美国的战争计划和战略，只是时间问题。

“It is our responsibility to see the world as it is, not as we hoped or wished it would be,” Mr. Narang said as he was leaving the Pentagon. “It is possible that we will one day look back and see the quarter-century after the Cold War as nuclear intermission.”

“我们有责任看清世界的现状，而不是我们希望或者但愿看到的样子，”纳朗在离开五角大楼时说。“有朝一日，我们回首往事时会发现，冷战后的四分之一个世纪只是核间歇期。”

The new challenge is “the real possibility of collaboration and even collusion between our nuclear-armed adversaries,” he said.

他说，新的挑战是“我们的拥核对手之间确实有可能进行协作甚至勾结”。

So far in the presidential campaign, the new challenges to American nuclear strategy have not been a topic of debate. Mr. Biden, who spent much of his political career as an advocate of nuclear nonproliferation, has never publicly talked in any detail about how he is responding to the challenges of deterring China’s and North Korea’s expanded forces. Nor has Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic Party’s nominee.

到目前为止，在总统竞选中，美国核战略面临的新挑战还没有成为辩论的话题。拜登在其政治生涯的大部分时间里，都是核不扩散的倡导者，但他从未公开详细谈论过如何遏制中国和朝鲜军力扩张这一挑战。现任民主党候选人、副总统贺锦丽也没有谈过。

At his last news conference in July, just days before he announced he would no longer seek the Democratic nomination for a second term, Mr. Biden acknowledged that he had adopted a policy of seeking ways to interfere in the broader China-Russia partnership.

在7月的最后一次新闻发布会上，就在他宣布不再寻求民主党连任提名的几天前，拜登承认，他已经采取了一种政策，即寻求干预更广泛的中俄伙伴关系。

“Yes, I do, but I’m not prepared to talk about the detail of it in public,” Mr. Biden said. He made no reference to — and was not asked about — how that partnership was altering American nuclear strategy.

“是，有这事，但我不准备公开谈论它的细节，”拜登说。他没有提及——也没有被问及——这种伙伴关系将如何改变美国的核战略。

Since Harry Truman’s presidency, that strategy has been overwhelmingly focused on the Kremlin’s arsenal. Mr. Biden’s new guidance suggests how quickly that is shifting.

自哈里·杜鲁门担任总统以来，美国的核战略主要关注克里姆林宫的核武库。拜登的新指导意见表明，这种情况正在迅速转变。

China was mentioned in the last nuclear guidance, issued at the end of the Trump administration, according to an unclassified account provided to Congress in 2020. But that was before the scope of Mr. Xi’s ambitions was understood.

根据2020年提交给国会的一份非机密报告，在特朗普政府任期结束时发布的上一份核指导文件中提到了中国，但那是在人们意识到习近平野心之大之前。

The Biden strategy sharpens that focus to reflect the Pentagon’s estimates that China’s nuclear force would expand to 1,000 by 2030 and 1,500 by 2035, roughly the numbers that the United States and Russia now deploy. In fact, Beijing now appears ahead of that schedule, officials say, and has begun loading nuclear missiles into new silo fields that were spotted by commercial satellites three years ago.

拜登的战略强化了这一重点，反映了五角大楼的估计，即中国的核力量到2030年将扩大到1000枚，到2035年将扩大到1500枚，大致相当于美国和俄罗斯目前部署的数量。官员们表示，事实上，北京现在似乎提前完成了这一计划，并已开始将核导弹装入三年前被商业卫星发现的那些新发射井。

There is another concern about Beijing: It has now halted a short-lived conversation with the United States about improving nuclear safety and security — for example, by agreeing to warn each other of impending missile tests, or setting up hotlines or other means of communication to assure that incidents or accidents do not escalate into nuclear encounters.

关于北京的另一个担忧是：两国的那场关于提高核安全与保障的对话——例如，同意就即将进行的导弹试验相互警告，或建立热线或其他通信手段，以确保事件或事故不会升级为核冲突——进行没多久就被中方叫停。

One discussion between the two countries took place late last fall, just before Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi met in California, where they sought to repair relations between the two countries. They referred to those talks in a joint statement, but by that time the Chinese had already hinted they were not interested in further discussions, and earlier this summer said the conversations were over. They cited American arms sales to Taiwan, which were underway long before the nuclear safety conversations began.

去年秋末，就在拜登和习近平在加利福尼亚会面之前，两国之间进行了一次讨论，寻求修复关系。他们在一份联合声明中提到了这些会谈，但到那时，中国已经暗示对进一步的讨论不感兴趣，并在今年夏天早些时候表示，对话已经结束。他们说原因是美国对台军售，尽管这一军售早在核安全对话开始之前就已开始。

Mallory Stewart, the assistant secretary for arms control, deterrence and stability at the State Department, said in an interview that the Chinese government was “actively preventing us from having conversations about the risks.”

美国国务院负责军备控制、威慑和稳定事务的助理国务卿马洛里·斯图尔特在接受采访时表示，中国政府“在积极阻止我们就风险展开对话”。

Instead, she said, Beijing “seems to be taking a page out of Russia’s playbook that, until we address tensions and challenges in our bilateral relationship, they will choose not to continue our arms control, risk reduction and nonproliferation conversations.”

她说，相反，北京“似乎在借鉴俄罗斯的做法，在我们解决双边关系中的紧张和挑战之前，他们将选择不继续我们的军备控制、降低风险和不扩散对话”。

It was in China’s interest, she argued, “to prevent these risks of miscalculation and misunderstanding.”

她认为，“防止这些误判和误解的风险”符合中国的利益。