美国的战略“新观念”和布什政府的对外政策趋向

US Strategic New Concepts and the Foreign Policy Tendency of the Bush Administration.

影响美国今后对外战略的“新观念”在本世纪步入最后十年、战后国际关系体制发生“迅速变化”之际,美国继苏联提出“新思维”之后,也在重新认识自己和未来的国际环境,对战后40余年的对外战略进行反思,展开辩论。从美国学术界和部分官员的言论看,正逐渐形成一套适应世局变化的战略“新观念”。

To keep abreast with the changes of the future situation, the American academic circle and some officials have put forward a set of strategic New Concepts since 1988, which include: (1) The United States can no longer dominate the world, what the future new strategy can aim at is merely to keep the US as the 'strongest pole' in a 'multipolar world'. (2) Though the Soviet Union remains America's main adversary, the military threat has been mitigated moderately; the strong economic challenge from Japan and Western Europe and the rise of big powers of the Third World also constitute the present and future threats to the US strategic interests. (3) The focus of the national strategy is to reduce military expenditure and lay stress on developing science, technology and economy. (4) It is necessary to decrease largely the US overseas commitment, so as to keep it balanced with the domestic economic strength. The above new concepts will affect the US policy orientation in the coming one or two decades. The Bush Administration can only make some changes on the basis of the foreign policy pursued by the Reagan Administration in its late term. The changes might be the following: (1) in further relaxing the relations with the Soviet Union to save more efforts and time, being able to afford to increase its comprehensive national strength and to deal with other more urgent problems. (2) actively meeting the economic challenge from Japan and Western Europe and appropriately reducing its overseas commitment, while refraining from the withdrawal of its troops in large amounts from abroad. (3) making more efforts to cope with the securitv threat from the Third World. (4) keeping the Sino-American relations developing in a relatively stable way.