來源于《圖書與藝術》版塊
書評
Cold-war summitry
冷戰峰會
Dancing on ice
冰上起舞
An Impossible Dream: Reagan, Gorbachev, and a World Without the Bomb.
《一個不可能實現的夢想:里根、戈爾巴喬夫和一個沒有原子彈的世界》
By Guillaume Serina.
此書作者：紀堯姆·瑟利納
A world without nuclear weapons still seems far-fetched. But in October 1986 it was closer than many realised. In his book, Guillaume Serina tells the tantalising story of the Reykjavik summit between the Soviet and American leaders, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, who came within a whisker of a ten-year deal to eliminate both countries’ arsenals.
一個沒有核武器的世界似乎仍然遙不可及。但在1986年10月，這一數字比許多人意識到的還要接近。紀堯姆•瑟利納在書中講述了蘇聯和美國領導人米哈伊爾•戈爾巴喬夫和羅納德•里根在雷克雅維克舉行峰會時引人入勝的故事。里根差一點就與蘇聯達成了一項為期10年的消除兩國軍火庫的協議。
Agreement was desirable yet impossible. Both sides were aware that they had far more nuclear warheads and missiles than they needed. The Soviet side also knew that the cost of maintaining nuclear weapons was crippling the economy. Less fully appreciated was the fragility of the balance of terror, which was at risk less from warmongering than from misunderstandings, glitches or accidents. On several occasions during the cold war, only thin threads of luck and good judgment averted the apocalypse. But agreement meant crossing icesheets of mistrust. And on the American side, Reagan’s fixation on the Strategic Defence Initiative, or Star Wars—space-based missile-busting lasers—proved an insuperable obstacle.
達成協議是可取的，但卻是不可能的。雙方都意識到，他們擁有的核彈頭和導彈遠遠超過了所需。蘇聯方面也知道，維持核武器的成本正在損害經濟。人們沒有充分認識到的是恐怖平衡的脆弱，這種脆弱與其說是由于戰爭煽動，不如說是由于誤解、故障或事故。在冷戰期間，只有幾次運氣和良好的判斷力才避免了這場災難。但達成協議意味著跨越不信任的冰原。而在美國方面，里根對戰略防御計劃(即“星球大戰”)的執著——即以太空為基礎的導彈摧毀激光——被證明是一個無法逾越的障礙。
The Soviets offered the United States a big concession: to let it continue with “laboratory” testing of this new scheme. The definition of that proviso could have been stretched to meet all practical requirements (33 years later, the Star Wars technology is nowhere near useful deployment). But Reagan had set his heart on a futuristic system that would make his country safe for ever, and did not want to return home seeming to have given it away. As Roald Sagdeev, a Soviet nuclear expert, puts it: “The Americans oversold the Strategic Defence Initiative, and the Russians overbought it.”
蘇聯給了美國一個很大的讓步:讓美國繼續對這個新計劃進行“實驗室”測試。這個附帶條件的定義本可以擴展到滿足所有實際需求(33年后，《星球大戰》技術還遠未得到有效的部署)。但是里根已經把注意力放在了一個未來主義的系統上，這個系統將使他的國家永遠安全，他不想回家，似乎已經放棄了它。正如蘇聯核專家羅爾德•薩迪夫所言:“美國人超售戰略防御計劃，而俄羅斯人卻買超了。”
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