Leaks expose Trump’s plan to abandon containment of China | Mark Urban

All of these different signals are leading people to question whether the US really still has the willingness to confront China. Mark, in your excellent column in the Sunday Times, you've been reflecting on President Xi's military parade last week. It was sort of quite unlike anything we've seen at least in recent times. Was it seen as a massive diplomatic success in Beijing as well? Well, I guess they're really pleased with it. I mean, generally, they don't do it that often, this type of huge national display of military might. So, yes, I guess they aren't pretty pleased with it. And I guess they're pleased with bringing in the leaders they did from Putin to Narendra Modi, Kim Jong Un, all of these people there in Beijing, very much showing that Xi Jinping is at the center of events as they would see it.

所有这些不同的信号让人们开始质疑美国是否真的还有意愿与中国对抗。马克，在你上周日泰晤士报的精彩专栏中，你对习近平主席上周的阅兵进行了反思。这次阅兵在近期至少是非常不同寻常的。在北京，这是否也被视为一次重大的外交成功呢？嗯，我想他们对此真的很满意。一般来说，他们并不会经常举行这种大规模的军事力量展示。所以，我想他们对此非常满意。我认为他们也很高兴邀请到普京、纳伦德拉·莫迪、金正恩等各国领导人齐聚北京，展现出习近平处于全球事务中心的态势。

I think something else, really interesting has been going on with China and its relationship with the US. There's quite a lot of evidence now that the US is preparing to change its big strategic idea, which for quite some time, I mean, even if you go back to President Tsubama Biden, this idea that China was the big challenge, sometimes the word threat was used, but the big generational challenge for the US has been quite central, particularly to US security and military policy. And there's been some leaks that the Trump administration is about to abandon that policy and to say that homeland defence is the prime goal of the US national security establishment.

我认为中美关系最近发生了一些非常有趣的变化。现在有相当多的证据表明，美国正在准备改变其重大战略理念。长期以来，美国一直视中国为主要挑战，有时甚至被称为威胁。这种观念在美国的安全和军事政策中占据了核心地位，特别是对于美国的国防政策。而有消息透露，特朗普政府即将放弃这一政策，转而将国土安全作为美国国家安全体系的首要目标。

Now, assuming that's true, that causes a lot of disquiet in places like Taiwan, where not only have they had to see the parade in all the new weaponry that China might under certain circumstances throw at them, but this sort of central idea in Taiwan security policy over the last decades that, well, if things got really bad, the Americans would come to their help, is now open to question far more. So that's what I was writing about on Sunday is whether Xi is now arranging things in such a way and capitalising on America's desire to actually step back from the trade war that Donald Trump initially launched, are actually creating circumstances where China could change the position of Taiwan, bring it back to unification with the people's republic without a large war.

现在，假设这是真的，这在像台湾这样的地方引起了很多不安。因为他们不仅不得不看到中国可能在某些情况下对他们展示的新武器，还面临一个问题：台湾过去几十年的安全政策核心思想，即如果情况真的很糟，美国会前来相助，现在这个想法受到了更多质疑。所以我在周日写的是，习近平是否正在安排这样一种情况，并利用美国希望从特朗普最初发动的贸易战中退缩的愿望，实际上正在创造一种环境，使得中国可以在不爆发大规模战争的情况下，改变台湾的地位，将其重新统一到人民共和国的旗帜下。

Well, I mean, you write that I mean, I hadn't been aware of the extent to which the opposition in Taiwan could be exploited to China's favour. Tell us a bit about that. Well, there's a bit of an odd paradox here. I mean, if you know a little bit about China's history in the Civil War, the people who fought the Communists were a particle, the Kwamin Tang, and they were the people under their leader, Shanghai Shek, who effectively, the last corner of China they were still had when the Communist One, the Civil War, was Taiwan. And so Shanghai Shek was the founder of the state. Now, over time, what's happened is the Kwamin Tang have become more and more Beijing friendly, and that sounds curious.

好吧，我的意思是，你提到的那个观点让我意识到，竟然能在这么大程度上利用台湾的反对力量来对中国有利。能给我们讲讲这个情况吗？这里有一个奇怪的矛盾。如果你对中国内战的历史有些了解，和共产党作战的人是国民党。他们的领袖是蒋介石，当共产党赢得内战时，他们唯一剩下的领土就是台湾。因此，蒋介石是台湾的建立者。随着时间的推移，国民党变得越来越亲近北京，这听起来有点奇怪。

They still, the party, of course, still normally supports the existence of democratic Taiwan as a separate entity, but they have become a substantial pro-Baging faction in the Taiwanese Parliament. And there's another one too. All of which means that the Democratic Party, that the president heads and was elected in 2024, is a minority government in parliamentary terms. There are opposition parties, in other words, that have more seats in parliament than his party. And there's quite a bit of concern that if push came to shove, if there was a big crisis, let's say China had surrounded Taiwan and was saying that it was going to intercept shipping and turn back flights that were coming in there as parts were ratcheting up of security pressure, that some of these parties might combine and say, look, we don't want to war with China.

他们仍然、毫无疑问地支持民主台湾作为一个独立实体的存在，但在台湾议会中，他们已经成为一个相当支持北京的派系。而且还有另一个派系。这一切意味着，总统所领导并在2024年当选的民主党在议会中是一个少数派政府。换句话说，有反对党在议会中的席位比总统的党派更多。人们相当担心，如果出现重大危机，比如中国封锁台湾，威胁拦截航运和航班，加强安全压力，这些党派可能会联合起来表示：我们不想与中国开战。

Let's stop this kind of misunderstanding and tension happening. Let's get delegation in from the people's Republic into Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, to sort of liaises and make sure things don't go wrong. That sort of scenario is the scenario now that I think many people in the region believe is possible if China chooses a moment in the next year or two to ratchet up military pressure, but short of all out war, and at the same time exploit the kind of political groundwork and information warfare that it's been doing in Taiwan for many years to bring to a head the kind of what you might call the pro-peace camp or the people who don't support, outright confrontation with China to bring about a kind of soft union of the two countries.

让我们停止这种误解和紧张局势的发生。我们希望能从中华人民共和国派出代表团到台湾的首都台北进行沟通和协调，确保不会出现问题。这样的情形是在考虑中国在未来一两年内选择某个时机逐步加大军事压力，但不发展到全面战争的情况下，人们普遍认为可能发生的。如果这种情况出现，中国可能会利用它在台湾多年来开展的政治铺垫和信息战，把支持和平或反对与中国直接对抗的群体推向前台，从而促成两国之间的某种软性统一。

I mean, this would be a real paradigm shift from America as well because when America sort of made it plain that it intended or at least wished to retreat militarily from Europe and disengage itself from Ukraine to the extent that was possible, this was generally understood as being a pivot to Asia, in order to be able to devote more resources to Asia. If they're planning on pulling out of Asia effectively as well, this is a very different sort of America, isn't it?

这将是一个真正的范式转变，对美国来说也是如此。因为当美国明确表示打算或至少希望在军事上撤出欧洲，并尽可能地减少对乌克兰的参与时，人们普遍认为这是为了将更多资源转向亚洲。如果他们计划同时有效地撤出亚洲，那么这将是一个非常不同的美国，不是吗？

Yeah, no, no, you're completely right. I mean, this is potentially a really big shift. I mean, I don't think even the people who are apparently putting this new national security strategy forward from the Pentagon believe in pulling out of Asia, but what it apparently does is relegates the competition or confrontation with China to secondary status. It would cease to be the main national security objective of US policy.

是的，不，你完全正确。我的意思是，这可能是一个非常重大的变化。我认为，即使是那些似乎在五角大楼提出这项新国家安全战略的人，也不相信会从亚洲撤出。但是，据说这项战略会让与中国的竞争或对抗降到次要地位。这不再是美国政策的主要国家安全目标。

And that certainly got some people in London. I know that there's been some discussion in the government feeling that Trump no longer has the will to confront China. And he's a bortive hiking of tariffs and then stepping back and the fact that he's pretty keen now, fairly obviously, to get a deal done with China, has meant that he's done various things to try and soothe the atmosphere.

这确实让一些伦敦的人感到关注。我知道，政府内部有一些讨论认为特朗普不再有意愿与中国进行对抗。他曾经计划提高关税，但后来又退缩了。而且，现在很明显，他很想与中国达成协议，这使得他采取了各种措施来缓和气氛。

For example, stopped a visit of the Taiwanese defense minister to Washington that was due to happen. So all of these different signals are leading people to question whether the US really still has the willingness to confront China over the Taiwan issue and coming back to the parade that you started this topic with. The idea that the US could suffer a military reverse that China might overmatch them in a confrontation very close to the Chinese mainland in which they could bring to bear all this weaponry that they were showing off.

例如，台湾国防部长原计划访问华盛顿，但被叫停。所有这些不同的信号让人们开始质疑美国是否真的有意愿在台湾问题上与中国对抗。回到你提到的话题开端——阅兵式，美国可能在距离中国大陆非常近的对抗中遭遇军事上的挫败，中国可能凭借他们展示的所有武器装备击败美国。

And they really do have deep stocks of missiles and large numbers of fighters and warships that they could bring into action around Taiwan is also, I think, causing people in the Pentagon to wonder whether it's a confrontation that they could possibly succeed in. So yeah, it's big. It's big in terms of if this is indeed right and there's been some leaks over the weekend about this, that the national security strategy will step back from rivalry with China as the main US goal or seeing off the Chinese threat.

他们确实拥有大量的导弹储备和大量的战斗机与军舰，能够在台湾周边投入行动。我认为，这也让五角大楼的人在思考，这是否是一场他们可能无法成功的对抗。所以，是的，这件事很重大。重大在于，如果这是真的，且据说在周末有些消息泄露出来，国家安全战略将不再把与中国的对抗作为美国的主要目标，也不再把应对中国的威胁作为重点。

It is really important. And I think the idea that the defense of the homeland becomes the new number one priority is consistent, of course, with what we've seen both with the immigration, the use of the armed forces to deport people and this emerging situation in the Caribbean where Trump seems to want to raise the pressure on the NARCO cartels, destroying a boat last week and putting large numbers of US Navy warships and fighter aircraft into the area.

这真的很重要。我认为，将保卫本土作为新的头号优先事项这一想法，与我们所看到的情况是一致的。首先是移民问题，以及动用武装力量驱逐移民。然后是现在在加勒比地区出现的新情况，特朗普似乎想加大对毒品集团的压力，比如上周摧毁了一艘船，同时在该地区部署大量美国海军舰艇和战斗机。

It is potentially, I think, very significant all of that. Yeah, absolutely. Look, thank you very much. That is Mark Urban. You can hear him this time every Monday. You can read him in the Sunday Times every week. I think of Venezuela as well. I'll have to talk about next week, I'm sure.

我认为，这一切可能非常重要。是的，绝对如此。非常感谢，这就是马克·厄本。每周一的这个时候，你都可以听到他的节目。你每周也可以在《星期日泰晤士报》上读到他的文章。我还想到委内瑞拉。我相信下周我们一定会谈到这个话题。

And look, if you want more Mark Urban, he's been making some special films for the Times Originals YouTube channel. The latest is called The Old World Or Is the Old World Order Dead. And if you want to know Mark's answers to that question, search Times Originals and you'll find it there along with lots more documentaries, opinion pieces and explainers.

如果你想看更多关于马克·厄本的内容，他最近为Times Originals的YouTube频道制作了一些特别的影片。最新的一部影片叫做《旧世界还是旧世界秩序已死》。如果你想了解马克对这个问题的回答，可以搜索Times Originals，你会找到这部影片以及更多纪录片、评论文章和解读。