假想敌与美国海军建设

Imaginary Enemy and the Building of the United States Navy

假想敌是美国海军崛起至关重要的推动因素,但是它对美国海军崛起的影响存在显著的阶段性差异。既有研究认为,假想敌主要刺激美国海军制订战争计划,有针对性地准备战争。然而,这并没有充分揭示不同假想敌使美国海军建设出现差异性效果的现实情形。在假想敌如何影响美国海军建设效果方面,假想敌作用于双重文官领导的美国海军建设政策制定过程,促使海军军官、行政领导和立法领导围绕海军建设资源投入安排进行密切互动;他们对海军建设的态度有显著差别,这种差别塑造了美国海军建设的不同历史效果。1890—1922年,美国先后将英国、德国和日本预设为主要假想敌。美国在美西战争前加速海军建设,参加第一次世界大战前急剧建设海军,在一战后却中止了海军建设。这三个历史案例说明在稳定的军政关系结构下,美国总是以首要假想敌为目标进行海军建设,其针对次要假想敌的海军建设则服从和让位于对付首要假想敌的需要,也展现了美国海军军政精英预设假想敌、制订战争计划和争取海军建设资源的具体情形。

Imaginary enemy is a vital factor to drive the rise of the United States Navy( USN),but the influences of imaginary enemy on boosting the construction of the USN differ at various historical stages. Existing studies suggest that imaginary enemies mainly stimulate the USN to make war plans and prepare for wars accordingly. Nevertheless,they have not revealed the real situation of different imaginary enemies causing different results of the American naval building. Focusing on the question of how imaginary enemies impact the construction of the USN,the author finds that the concept of imaginary enemy acts on the dual-civilian-led policy-making process of the U. S. naval building. That concept urges naval officers,executive and legislative leaders closely interact on resource distribution on naval building,while they have notably different attitudes towards naval building. These differences shape various historical results of the USN. The U.S. successively set Britain,Germany and Japan as primary imaginary enemies in the period of 1890-1922. The United States accelerated naval building before the Spanish-American War and sharply raised the speed of naval building before the World War I,but paused naval building after the World War I. These three historical cases well prove the main argument of the paper: The United States always aims at primary imaginary enemy to build USN under stable structure of civil-military relations,while its naval building on countering the secondary imaginary enemy yields to the former.Moreover,this paper demonstrates the process that the elites of the USN set imaginary enemies,made war plan and strived for resources for the naval building.