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1、The long shadow of the 1930s欧洲危机会变得更糟吗？ Could things go bad again? I mean really bad Great Depression bad, world war bad? The kind of cataclysmic event my generation has learnt to think belongs only in the history books. 事态还会变得更糟糕吗？我指的是特别糟糕的情况像大萧条(Great Depression)或世界大战那么糟糕？按照我们这一代人所接受的教育，这种巨变只会在历史书
2、上出现。 There is certainly a sense of foreboding in Europe at the moment. The Polish foreign ministers warning in Berlin on Monday (see above) that Europe is “on the edge of a precipice” is just the latest example. President Sarkozy of France cautioned recently: “If the euro explodes, Europe would expl
3、ode. Its the guarantee of peace in a continent where there were terrible wars.” 当然，眼下的欧洲有一种不祥之感。波兰外长本周一在柏林警告称（见今天FT中文网评论栏刊登的波兰外长西科尔斯基的文章我更担心德国不作为），欧洲已“走到了悬崖边缘”，这不过是最新的一个例子。法国总统萨科齐(Sarkozy)最近也发出警告：“一旦欧元崩溃，欧洲就会崩溃。在这块曾发生过可怕战乱的大陆上，欧元是和平的保障。” European politicians have often indulged in shroud-waving abou
4、t the threat of war, to rally support for the beloved European project. In normal times, few Europeans take such talk seriously. 欧洲政客们往往喜欢以战争威胁来示警，以此为他们钟爱的欧洲项目谋求支持。正常情况下，没几个人欧洲人拿这种话当回事。 On the contrary, war talk seems inherently implausible to people raised in prosperous, peaceful western Europe. I
5、have lived my entire life in a world in which, for all its ups-and-downs, things seemed to be getting steadily better. Nazism had been defeated; dictatorships fell in Spain, Portugal and Greece; the Soviet empire collapsed; apartheid ended in South Africa. 相反，对于在和平与繁荣环境下长大的西欧人来说，战争的话题似乎注定是遥不可及的。在我所生
6、活过的年代，虽然也有过起起落落，但情况似乎一直在稳步改善。纳粹被打败了；西班牙、葡萄牙和希腊的独裁政权垮台了；苏联帝国解体了；南非则告别了种族隔离制度。 Peace and prosperity became the norm for my generation in the west. It was easy to forget that this set us apart from most of the rest of the world. Reading a book recently by Yan Xuetong, a Chinese academic I know, I was t
7、aken aback to come across this sentence: “During the cultural revolution, we often saw people being beaten to death, so you become somewhat immune to it.” 在我们这一代人看来，和平与繁荣已成为西方社会的常态。因此，这也让我们很容易忘记，世界上大部分其它地区和我们不一样。最近读到一本相熟的中国学者阎学通写的书时，我很吃惊地看到这样一句话：“文化大革命中我们看到有些人被打死,所以对生活的残酷有些习惯了。” However, over the pa
8、st 30 years, the hope for peace, prosperity and a reasonable degree of comfort has spread beyond the privileged confines of the west. The China of the cultural revolution has given way to the China of the shopping mall and the factory. The India of Mother Teresa is being partly displaced by the Indi
9、a of the IT revolution. 但在过去的30年里，对于和平、繁荣与适度舒适生活的期待，已蔓延并超越了西方所专享的范畴。文化大革命时代的中国，已让位于购物中心和工厂时代的中国。而特蕾莎修女(Mother Teresa)时代的印度，也在一定程度上被IT革命时代的印度所取代。 Globalisation made the world seem like a safer and more homogenous place as the new middle-classes of Asia and eastern Europe embraced the comforts and val
10、ues of capitalism. Global peace, which during the cold war seemed to depend on nuclear weapons, now seemed to be underpinned by international trade and a shared embrace of consumerism. 全球化让整个世界看起来像是一个更安全、同质化程度更高的地方亚洲和东欧新兴的中产阶级，欣然接受资本主义的舒适和价值观，正是这方面的体现。如今，冷战时期似乎要依赖核武器才能够保障的全球和平，似乎有了新的支柱国际贸易以及对消费主义的共同
11、信奉。 Until the global economic crisis, the words of Tony Blairs election campaign song in 1997 seemed to capture the spirit of the age “Things can only get better”. 直至全球经济危机爆发之前，1997年托尼布莱尔(Tony Blair)所选用的竞选歌曲明天只会更好(Things can only get better)似乎捕捉到了这个时代的精神。 Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 200
12、8, however, we have discovered that things can definitely get worse. The question is, how much worse? 然而，自2008年雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)倒闭以来，我们发现，事情的确有可能变得更糟。问题在于：能糟糕到何种程度？ The risk of a grave economic crisis in Europe is severe. The threats of sovereign-debt defaults and the break-up of the European si
13、ngle currency are rising and with it, the attendant threats of collapsing banks, popular panic, deep recessions and mass unemployment. That would indeed feel like a modern version of the Great Depression. 欧洲遭受严重经济危机的风险十分巨大。主权债务违约和欧洲单一货币崩盘的威胁不断加大随之加剧的，还有银行破产、普遍恐慌、深度衰退以及大规模失业的威胁。这给人的感觉像极了现代版的大萧条。 The
14、European Union, taken as a whole, is the largest economy in the world so economic chaos here inevitably has global ramifications. It would depress trade and threaten the global financial system. 作为一个整体，欧盟(EU)是全球最大的经济体，因而欧洲的经济混乱必然会带来全球性后果。这可能导致贸易萎缩，并对全球金融体系构成威胁。 The lesson of the 1930s is that a glob
15、al depression weakens democracies, leads to the rise of radical new political forces and, in the process, raises the risk of international conflict. 20世纪30年代留给我们的教训是：全球衰退会削弱民主，导致激进的新生政治力量的崛起而在此过程中，会加大国际冲突的风险。 A modern version of the 1930s would see a new generation of nationalist politicians rise to
16、 power in Europe, against a background of economic chaos and the break-up of the EU. Tensions would also rise outside Europe, as the global economic situation worsened. The balance of power in Asia would shift even faster, with a rising China facing a weakened America. In both China and America, an economic crisis would see nationalist and protectionist forces gain influence. 在上世纪30年代危机的
