美若仍軍事優先 恐步蘇聯後塵

accessed February 6, 2018

林中斌

名人堂稿件

日期：20180206 本文字數：1100 目標字數:1100

背負沉重國債的美國，若花大錢對付中國軍事威脅，可能步前蘇聯後塵。冷戰末期莫斯科憂心「美國軍事威脅」，尤其是雷根總統宣稱的「星戰」計畫，不顧國內經濟困難，花錢堆積核武飛彈，結果一個都沒用，卻把自己搞垮了。

二月一日，美總統川普「國情咨文」中表示針對「流氓國家、恐怖組織、及中俄的威脅」美國將擴軍包括增加核子武器。專家估計，單算核武更新就要遠超過歐巴馬任內已通過的卅年花費一點二兆美元。

似乎，川普政府忘卻了二○一○年美國參謀聯席會主席麥可˙穆倫上將所說的：「我們最大的安全威脅是國債。」

去年十一月廿二日，美國艦載C-2運輸機墜落沖繩海域，是第七艦隊年初以來第六次非戰鬥事故。兩天後，CNN 報導美國參議院軍事委員會主席麥肯對此類事故歸咎於訓練不足、人員短缺、主要是經費限縮。

廿一世紀的中國，以超軍事手段(經濟、外交、文化、旅遊、傳媒等)打前鋒，以快速提升的軍力為後盾，目標為「不戰而主東亞」，甚至「不戰而主歐亞」。善於「鬥而不破」,軍事衝突盡量避免。北京進行「超軍事手段優先」大戰略，「攻城掠地」般的擴展全球影響力。美國卻長期誤判，全力以軍事圍堵中國。遲至今日，部分美國人始驚覺，警告中方經濟文化戰略的犀利。

此情形有如，一方部署重兵在西面，不料對方由東面進攻，如入無人之境。

八○年鄧小平啟動改革開放。廿一年後，中國GDP開始每年十趴以上成長。中國雖崛起，比窮困的當年，卻愈不願意打仗。

四九年建國至八九年，卅年中北京對外發動五次戰爭：金門戰役、金馬砲戰、韓戰、中印戰爭、中越戰爭。

八九至一八年，四十年中北京對外戰爭，除八八年中越赤瓜礁衝突之外，無！同一時期，華府對外七次用兵(Lebanon、Granada、Panama、Somalia、Kosovo、Afghanistan、Iraq)包括兩次佔領他國；莫斯科對外五次用兵(Afghanistan、Georgia、Chechnia、Ukraine、Syria)，三次佔領他國。對比何其強烈。

無怪乎，去年十二月廿二日，美國歐巴馬總統時主導國安會的Susan Rice博士在《紐約時報》上寫：「中國從未非法佔領過它的鄰居。」

中美戰略思維根本不同，來源久遠。兩千多年前，中國兵聖孫子說：「不戰而屈人之兵，善之善也。」要獲得勝利，暴力最好不用。兩百年前，西方兵聖克勞賽維茲卻說：「戰爭是暴力推展到極致。」要獲得勝利，暴力越多越有效果。

中國歷史上經典的戰役決勝的關鍵常不是刀、兵、浴血純軍事手段，而是超軍事手段如水淹(濰水之戰)、火攻(赤壁之戰)、塵擾(城濮之戰)、插旗(井陘之戰)、用間 (淝水之戰)等。西方名將許多以持續猛攻致勝，如凱撒大帝和美國內戰獲勝的格蘭特將軍，巧戰而勝的屬於非主流。

○六年，北京人民出版社秉承上意出版《大國崛起》，歸納過去五百年九個大國的興衰。過度用兵是衰落一致的原因。

中國崛起反而慎戰，美國內虛反而好戰。歷史的演變何其戲劇化！

作者為前華府喬治大學外交學院講座教授，曾任國防部副部長，甫發表新書《撥雲見日：破解台美中三方困局》

Could This Be It?

accessed February 1, 2018

Time February 5, 2018 p.22.

這是時代雜誌這期的一句話。

Louis XIV ruled from 1643 to 1715 for 72 years 3 months 18 days, the longest ruling monarch on record.

美國霸權時代就此在72年後結束了嗎?

林中斌 2018.2.1

China Wins Its Fight Over Flights With Rival Taiwan

accessed January 29, 2018

這是一篇登載於Forbes 雜誌有關M503航線兩岸鬥法的分析。作者來信謝謝在下提供的淺見。他說此篇點閱已超過一萬，並被編輯選為推薦報導。

林中斌 2018.1.29

"The hard prong had already reached a point of saturation,” says Lin Chong-pin, a retired strategic studies professor, referring to acts such as military maneuvers. “There’s no point in going further.”

Hi Mr. Lin,

Thanks for your quotes last week. This story topped 10,000 views and received an "editor's pick" mention on Forbes

Ralph Jennings

Chong-Pin Lin January 29, 2018

China Wins Its Fight Over Flights With Rival Taiwan

China and Taiwan have been fighting over civilian aviation most of this month. China opened four aircraft routes in the 160-kilometer-wide ocean strait between them January 4, angering Taiwan because it wasn’t consulted. One route, code-named M503, connects Shanghai to Hong Kong. Letting planes fly the new routes so close to a yours-and-mine median line in endangers flights in and around Taiwan, Taiwan's Civil Aeronautics Administration says in a Chinese-language statement here.

China has essentially won this battle. First, here’s how it started:

Cross-straight relations are a little icy

Leaders in Beijing authorized the flight paths, over Taiwan’s complaints, for political reasons, scholars and legislators in Taipei say. The action “pushes Taiwan into a corner” and follows a series of other moves aimed at the government in Taipei, ruling party lawmaker Lo Chih-cheng said in an interview for this post. China sees self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory.

China wants eventual unification with Taiwan, citing unfinished business from the Chinese civil war of the 1940s. But in 2008 China and Taiwan agreed to open direct flights as the start to building stronger economic relations.

Since Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen took office in 2016, relations have deteriorated because Chinese officials resent Tsai for rejecting their idea that both sides belong to one country. During her term to date, Beijing has also passed military aircraft near Taiwan, cut back on tourism and let two Taiwanese diplomatic allies switch allegiance. Usually Taiwan just complains. But after the air routes opened, Taiwan answered by freezing an application from two of the other side’s airlines, China Eastern and Xiamen Air, to add a combined 176 flights next month for the Lunar New Year holiday hat both sides celebrate.

How the battle was won

China didn’t openly re-retaliate against the freeze in approving extra flights, but it essentially won the battle.

It had a massive advantage. The two airlines stuck on hold have plenty of business elsewhere, both domestic and offshore. China’s new flight routes include the full opening of a third major path, called M503, between the crowded skies around Shanghai and those over Hong Kong. That means shorter waits before takeoff on either side, for any airline, says Eric Lin, aviation analyst with the investment bank UBS in Hong Kong. Airport delays have become a notorious problem in China due to gluts of traffic, he says.

China as a member of the U.N. International Civil Aviation Administration has already gained formal, international approval for the routes. Taiwan is not a U.N. member.

Open hard-fisted retaliation against Taiwan’s freezing of the extra holiday flights would risk angering the island’s public, pushing voters in turn to elect leaders who take a harder line toward Beijing than Tsai does. "The hard prong had already reached a point of saturation,” says Lin Chong-pin, a retired strategic studies professor, referring to acts such as military maneuvers. “There’s no point in going further.”

No need, either. The freezing of holiday flights sort of backfired on its own. A Chinese government-linked association of Taiwanese business people, the Association of Taiwan Investment Enterprises on the Mainland on Saturday accused Taiwan's move of "trampling on the rights of Taiwanese business people," per this news report by a mainstream Taiwan newspaper.

Beijing’s deflection of the flight issue to the business association suggests it wants Taiwanese to blame their own government for any trouble getting home for the holiday, which starts February 16. If the estimated 1 million Taiwanese investors and their family members in China can’t get home smoothly for lack of extra flights, who would they blame, the pioneer of new air routes or the freezer of additional flights? Ditto for tourists in China wondering whether to travel in Taiwan for the same holiday. At least that's how China might frame things.

"It's Tsai's first act of retaliation, but given cross-Strait traffic, it hurts travelers more, rather than China," says Joanna Lei, chief executive officer of the Chunghua 21st Century think tank in Taiwan.

習近平對台兩手策略

accessed January 25, 2018

●以下是 經濟學人(Economist)"榕樹" (Banyan)專欄記者 Dominic Ziegler 2018年1月16日電話訪問之後於1月18日所發表的英文文字，以及1月23日ETtoday新聞雲所摘譯發表之中文報導。中文報導在前，英文專欄文字隨後。

●所附圖一為經濟學人(Economist)"榕樹" (Banyan)專欄。

●所附圖二為1月17日在下於Assurex 主題演講中圖片之一(習對台之軟硬兩手策略：Xi's Two-pronged Taiwan Tactics)，曾事先寄給記者參考。

敬請卓參指教。

林中斌 2018.1.25

經濟學人：陸對台青年釋利多　新招「軟硬兼施」改變看法

ETtoday新聞雲 2018年01月23日 17:17

https://www.ettoday.net/news/20180123/1098694.htm 下載2018.1.25

國際中心／綜合報導

最新一期《經濟學人》（The Economist）雜誌撰文評論，認為中方對台灣採取軟硬兼施的態度，雖然一方面對外資企業施壓，又片面啟用M503航線，但另一方面，又願意給予台灣年輕人高薪、創業基金，甚至是住房補助，扭轉了不少年輕人對中國大陸的看法。

文中首先指出，中方近來對台動作頻頻，像是要求有航班飛往中國大陸的航空公司「更正」將台灣列為國家的網頁，甚至關閉全球最大的連鎖飯店集團之一的萬豪酒店的中文網站，作為萬豪酒店在問卷中將台灣列為國家的懲戒。

除了害怕影響生意，這些外資企業更怕觸犯中國大陸的網路與國家安全法規。萬豪酒店多次公開道歉，連CEO也寫信致歉，「我們絕不支持任何損害中國主權和領土完整的任何分裂組織」達美航空公司則為了傷害人民感情道歉，ZARA甚至承諾願意「自我審查」。

文章也寫道，中方的做法是要壓縮台灣的外交空間，同時對台施加心理壓力。雖然台灣總統蔡英文上台時，做出不會破壞兩岸關係的承諾，但對中方而言還不夠，並對蔡英文不承認九二共識感到不滿。

習近平雖然沒在十九大上展現對台更強硬的政策，但對台毫不妥協的言論，也讓他贏得比起其他議題更長的掌聲。文中指出，中方將會持續施壓，在外交方面，自從巴拿馬去年跟台灣斷交後，邦交國只剩下20個，可能會繼續減少，宏都拉斯、帛琉和聖露西亞都有可能是下一個。在國防方面也有動作，除了啟用M503航道，2016年起中方軍機也開始「繞台」巡邏，先前在朱日和的閱兵，還出現與台灣總統府相似的建築物。

然而這些都不是新招，經濟學人認為，習近平的創新之處在於對台灣年輕人釋出利多，像是為大學教授提供比在台灣更高的薪資、各省成立研究中心鎖定招攬台灣年輕人，甚至在南部的東莞市，台灣科技企業家可免費獲得創業資金及免費的辦公室。

文末引用了前國防部副部長林中斌（Chong-Pin Lin）的話指出，這是習近平「軟硬兼施」的做法，在某些方面似乎正在改變台灣人對中國大陸的看法。文中也提到，蔡英文曾承諾要給年輕人更多的機會，但一直沒有太多進展，「台灣的經濟持續低迷，年輕人認為老一輩佔走了資源，在兩岸關係上，蔡英文得到的指責比習近平還多。」最近一個民調甚至顯示，台灣人民對習近平的好感度高於蔡英文，雖然他們並不欣賞對岸的政治文化，但中方正在馴化台灣年輕人，讓他們未來不會反咬自己一口。

Banyan

China is getting tougher on Taiwan

It is also luring its people

Economist Jan 18th 2018

https://www.economist.com/…/21735075-it-also-luring-its-peo…

accessed January 25, 2018

WHEN is a country with its own territory, laws, elected government and army not a country? Answer: when China deems it so. In recent days Chinese officials have ordered foreign businesses, including airlines operating flights to China, to “correct” websites that list Taiwan as a country, as well as remove images of the island-state’s flag. Censors even shut down the Chinese website of Marriott, one of the world’s biggest hotel chains, for a week as punishment for categorising Taiwan as a country in a customer questionnaire (the firm caused additional offence by putting Hong Kong, Macau and Tibet in the same category, which—to be fair to China—they are not).

China’s rabidly nationalist netizens have even called for a boycott of Marriott. But more than losing business, foreign operators in China fear running foul of sweeping new cyber- and national-security laws. Among much else, these prohibit anything deemed to “damage national unity”. The apologies issued by some operators were party-speak. Marriott said, “We absolutely will not support any separatist organisation that will undermine China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Delta airlines apologised for hurting the feelings of the Chinese people. Zara, a European fashion chain, even promised a “self-examination”.

For Taiwanese, it is more proof that China is out to squeeze them until the pips squeak. The Communist Party has never ruled Taiwan, but considers it a sacred mission to bring the island under its control. China threatens force should Taiwan formally declare that it will remain independent for ever. The party views even “peaceful separation” as an abomination.

China mixes bullying with blandishments. The bullying, of which the move against foreign websites is part, is meant to shrink Taiwan’s diplomatic space and exert psychological pressure. Since Tsai Ing-wen became the island’s president in May 2016, China has shut down high-level contacts across the Taiwan Strait that had burgeoned under her predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou. Unlike his Kuomintang (KMT) party, with its historical roots in China, Ms Tsai’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party aspires in its charter to formal independence. The president herself, a pragmatist, has made plain her goodwill, by promising from the start that she will not rock the cross-strait boat. The independence clause lies dormant. She blocked attempts to expand a new referendum law to allow plebiscites on matters of sovereignty, including on Taiwan’s official name (the Republic of China).

But for China none of this is good enough. It views the referendum law as a step towards a vote on independence. It has even attacked laudable new legislation aimed at redressing human-rights abuses that occurred during the years of KMT dictatorship. China sees the bill as an attempt to erase all sense of a Chinese identity among Taiwanese: in those days, the KMT was proud of its Chinese nationalism, even though it hated the Communists. Above all, China is furious with Ms Tsai for refusing to acknowledge the “1992 consensus” between the two sides: that both Taiwan and the mainland belong to a single China, and that they agree to disagree what exactly China means.

So Taiwan is in the doghouse. Some policymakers were relieved that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, did not suggest he would get even tougher with it when he spoke at a big party gathering in October. Even so, his uncompromising remarks about Taiwan drew the longest applause of anything he said. Soon after that meeting, he told President Donald Trump that Taiwan (not North Korea’s nukes) was the most critical issue in Sino-American relations. Mr Xi talks of China’s “great rejuvenation” by 2049. That surely implies the return of Taiwan to the fold by that date.

The pressure continues, then. On the diplomatic front, the 20-strong band of countries that recognise Taiwan is bound to be whittled down further, following Panama’s switch to China last year—Honduras, Palau and St Lucia could be next. Earlier this month China reneged on an agreement with Taiwan by announcing four new commercial air routes that run either close to the median line dividing the Taiwan Strait or close to Taiwan’s main offshore islands. Taiwan described this unilateral move as a threat to air safety and to the island’s security. But it is powerless. Taiwan is not a member of the International Civil Aviation Organisation, whose Chinese head previously ran the civil-aviation authority that declared the opening of the air corridors.

China has been flexing military muscle, too. Since 2016 its warplanes have carried out “island-encircling” patrols. China’s state media have published images of these, with Taiwan’s mountains in the background. A recent exercise in northern China involved storming a full-sized mock-up of Taiwan’s presidential palace.

Come on over sometime

All this is out of the old playbook. Mr Xi’s innovation is to single out young Taiwanese and to pile on the blandishments. Colleges offer Taiwanese teachers better pay than they could get in Taiwan. Chinese provinces are opening research centres aimed at young Taiwanese. In the southern city of Dongguan, Taiwanese tech entrepreneurs can get free startup-money and subsidised flats. Over 400,000 Taiwanese now work in China. The young in particular are crossing the strait in droves.

Lin Chong-pin, a Taiwanese scholar and former senior official, calls this Mr Xi’s “soft prong”. In some respects it seems to be reshaping attitudes towards China. It does not help Ms Tsai that she has failed to make much progress on her promise to create more opportunities for the young. Taiwan’s economy remains sluggish. The young think older generations get the better deal. But she gets the blame for tricky cross-strait relations more than Mr Xi does. A recent poll even shows Taiwanese feeling more warmly towards Mr Xi than to Ms Tsai. They do not admire China’s political culture. But Mr Xi may be nurturing a reluctance among young Taiwanese to bite the hand that feeds them.

This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline "Hard prong, soft prong"

歡喜的重要

Joy is the most basic requirement of spiritual pursuit.

accessed January 24, 2018

●菩薩有十種行為。第一行是歡喜行。

「此菩薩…凡所有物悉能惠施，其心平等無有悔吝，不望果報，不求名稱…」

這是功德林菩薩在華嚴經裡所說的。(卷十九，十行品第廿一之一)

●菩薩有十種智慧的境界，或十智地。第一地是歡喜地。

「…念能令眾生得利益，故生歡喜…以慚愧莊嚴，勤修自利利他之道」(其他有關歡喜地的內容共13頁，從略)

這是金剛藏菩薩在華嚴經裡所說的。(卷卅四，十地品第廿六之一)

●如此看來「歡喜」是修行入門最基本的狀態。

●如果有人說法傳道，狀非歡喜，或許其進行方向尚可再斟酌。

●達賴喇嘛經常流露歡喜之情，幾乎狀若兒童。原來這是正道。

小小心得，敬請賜教。

林中斌 2018.1.24

真愛決勝

accessed February 5, 2018

39歲前法國經濟部長在選總統，得助于他60多歲的長腿金髮前高中老師，也是他現在的夫人。他們已結婚10年，之前相戀12年。

破格的愛情不必老男少女。真愛就是真愛。

民調顯示：他可能擊敗川普型的女強人Marine Le Pen，免除法國淪陷於仇外的民粹主義潮流。

林中斌 2017.2.5

Sex and the French Elections

PARIS — The cover of Paris Match magazine late last year featured a handsome, 30-something man strolling arm in arm with an attractive blond woman in her 60s. The same couple were on the cover of a summer issue, holding hands at the beach, and on a spring edition dressed up for a state dinner.

As France gears up for presidential elections in April (and probably a runoff in May), this unusual pair could help prevent it from becoming the next country to succumb to xenophobic populism. He’s the upstart presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron, and she’s his former high school French teacher, Brigitte Trogneux, now his close adviser and wife.

Mr. Macron, the 39-year-old former economy minister, is now in second place in the polls. He surged past the conservative François Fillon this week thanks to “Penelope-gate” — an investigation into whether Mr. Fillon’s Welsh-born wife held a well-paid government job but didn’t actually work, and other allegations.

Mr. Macron still lags the front-runner, Marine Le Pen, who wants France to slash immigration and leave the European Union. Mr. Macron is adamantly pro-Europe and quickly opposed President Trump’s barring of refugees. Polls show that Mr. Macron would easily defeat Ms. Le Pen in a runoff.

He’s benefiting from a global election season in which voters want to break with conventions. On one hand Mr. Macron is an énarque — a graduate of ENA, France’s elite finishing school for future presidents and ministers — and worked as an investment banker before quickly rising in the Socialist Party. But last year he broke away from the ruling (and ailing) Socialists to form his own centrist party, which he claims is neither left nor right. His youth adds to his novelty.

And his unconventional personal story keeps him from seeming like just another ambitious énarque. Mr. Macron and his wife met when he was a 15-year-old 10th grader at a Jesuit high school in Amiens, and Ms. Trogneux was a 40-year-old married mother of three children, one of whom was in Mr. Macron’s class. Then known by her married name, Auzière, she taught French literature and ran the theater club.

By all accounts Mr. Macron was precocious: an accomplished pianist who excelled academically and starred in the school play, which Ms. Trogneux directed. (While minister, he recited Molière from memory on French TV.) “Resolutely, he wasn’t like the others. He was always with the teachers,” Ms. Trogneux said in the French documentary “Emmanuel Macron: The Meteor Strategy.” “He wasn’t an ado” — an adolescent — she added.

Their relationship turned romantic when Mr. Macron, then in 11th grade, persuaded her to write a play with him. “Writing brought us together every Friday and it unleashed an incredible closeness,” she told Paris Match.

At the insistence of either his alarmed parents or the frazzled Ms. Trogneux, Mr. Macron left to spend his senior year in Paris at the prestigious Lycée Henri-IV. Before leaving home, he reportedly promised his teacher: “You won’t get rid of me. I will return and I will marry you.”

Over long phone calls from Paris, “little by little, he vanquished my resistance,” she said. Ms. Trogneux eventually divorced her husband and took a teaching job in Paris. “I told myself: I’m going to miss out on my life if I don’t do this.”

At their 2007 wedding, Mr. Macron thanked Ms. Trogneux’s children for accepting him and said the pair are “not at all a normal couple — though I don’t like that adjective much — but we’re a couple that exists.”

Its existence has caused some flack. A radio humorist recently called the long-legged Ms. Trogneux a “menopausal Barbie.” Critics call Mr. Macron a “chouchou” — a kind of teacher’s pet — who’s jumping the line for the presidency and flaunting his personal life to win votes.

But the French press is frequently admiring of their relationship. Magazines call her a fashion icon and run pictures of the youthful Mr. Macron giving a baby bottle to one of his seven step-grandchildren.

It helps that — although their romance began when Mr. Macron was scandalously young — once students reach university, student-teacher flings are practically expected. The twist, in Mr. Macron’s case, is that they’re still together decades later.

And true love excuses many breaches of convention here. Last fall’s main literary event was “Letters to Anne,” a 1,276-page book of romantic letters that former President François Mitterrand sent to his longtime mistress, Anne Pingeot. They met when she was 19 and he was 45. (“I feel that I’ve been making love to you without stopping since August 15, 1963!” Mr. Mitterrand declared in a letter dated seven years later.)

The French also pride themselves on not moralizing. Politicians’ private lives don’t have to follow a script, and no one even expects them to discuss it. Marine Le Pen has two ex-husbands and took years to acknowledge her current relationship with another party official.

But don’t confuse a lack of moralizing with a lack of interest. One sign that President François Hollande’s career was kaput was that no one cared anymore about whom he was sleeping with. The Socialists are running Mr. Hollande’s former education minister for president instead; he’s currently in distant fourth place in the polls.

The one requirement is that a politician’s love life should be sincere, especially if it’s part of his public persona. Mr. Macron went on TV in November to deny a persistent rumor that he’s secretly gay and living a “double life.” At issue isn’t his sexuality; it’s his authenticity. The implication is that if his love story isn’t real, his plans for the country lack substance, too.

For the future of France, let’s hope it is.

Pamela Druckerman is the author of “Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting” and a contributing opinion writer.

川普可能連任

accessed January 4, 2018

川普可能連任
林中斌
名人堂稿件
日期：20180104 本文字數：1100 目標字數:1100

川普總統就任以來，爭議不斷。反對的民調去年三月中之後，超過五十趴，後接近六十趴，居高不下(RealClearPolitics民調平均值，以下同)。儘管如此，他卻可能連任。原因如下：
●經濟亮麗：美國上月年終零售狂賣，破七年來紀錄。花錢者自高薪族下移至中低薪族。家庭收入兩年來持續升高，連最低廿趴收入的族群亦然(去年九月十四日國家統計局)。失業率從二○一○年十趴持續下滑至去年十月四點一趴。至去年十一月止，消費者信心指數達十七年來最高。以上或可歸功於○八年就任的歐巴馬總統。然而，有些亮點純屬川普表現。GDP成長，去年第二及第三季度，皆突破三趴，遠高於前年一點六趴。至去年十一月底，川普已增加一百七十萬工作。川普上任後，股市一年內打破歷史新高紀錄至少五十次，為廿年來首見。民主國家選舉得票主要靠經濟。川普行情看好。然而，大選還有三年，如何保證經濟不衰？
●減稅達陣：去年十二月廿日，美國會兩院通過卅年來最大的稅改法案。川普前年十月對選民的許諾落實了。公司稅由卅五趴降到廿一趴。美國歷史上，每次減稅國庫歲入都增加，包括一九廿年代、甘迺迪及雷根總統時期。例如前者，減稅由七十趴到廿五趴，國家收入由廿一年至廿八年增加六十一趴。三年後大選時，美國經濟看好。
●鐵票穩固： 去年一月廿日川普就任，支持度只卅九趴，打破歷任就職總統支持度最低紀錄。而他前年十一月當選時，所得全國票數少於希拉蕊三百萬。川普勝出，得利於美國「選舉人」制度。去年十二月十三日川普支持度為全年最低，也不過卅七趴，至卅一日，升至四十趴。換言之，川普基本票不多，卻穩固，現已上揚。三年後，只會多不會少。
●對手乏人：美國民主黨在野一年，只會批評川普，卻無有力主張。而且，黨的政見—自由貿易、健保、外交、華爾街--嚴重分裂。國會裡有希望三年後競選總統的民主黨人物，都將七十多歲。放眼望去，不見上升新星。
●堵外得利：川普去年三月發佈限八伊斯蘭國人民入美的禁令，違反美國由移民建國的精神，一片譁然。因地方法院反對，禁令無法實行。但一波三折後，十二月四日最高法院通過裁決。禁令於是實施。同時，去年九月結算，美國墨西哥邊逮捕試圖非法入境的人數一年來下降廿四趴，達四十六年來最低。川普限制移民的政策大勝。執政有成，聲勢上漲。
●通俄門疲：有跡象顯示，川普當選受益於俄羅斯駭客侵入希拉蕊電腦獲取不利後者資料，而為川普陣營所用。所謂「通俄門」爭議，已進入法律調查程序，可能導致彈劾總統的後果。但是，過程拖長，證據圍繞但無法套中川普。漸不耐煩的選民認為這是民主黨對川普的政治鬥爭，反而激發支持川普的情緒。

川普就任一年，彈劾可能持續下降，有利情勢持續上升。穩住權位的弱勢領袖，他不僅會完成四年任期，很可能成為兩任總統。

作者為前華府喬治大學外交學院講座教授，曾任國防部副部長，甫發表新書《撥雲見日：破解台美中三方困局》

公視《即將到來的對華戰爭（下）》

●2018年1月12日晚10-11時
公視蔡詩萍節目將播放
及與學者的討論。
 

●另位是傑出學者 林泉忠教授。東京大學博士，哈佛大學研究，沖繩大學任教10年，被中研院挖角聘回台灣。
在下部分，敬請賜教。

https://viewpoint.pts.org.tw/…/%E5%8D%B3%E5%B0%87%E5%88%B0…/

林中斌 2018.1.11

過去幾年，中國已成為世界第二大經濟強國，並且被美國領導階層視為「威脅」美國主宰地位的危機。中菲之間的南海主權爭議，最終成為中美關係的引爆點。核戰不是天方夜譚，而是美國國防部口中的「可能性」。而被緊緊包圍的中國，則宣布已將核武警戒層級調高的消息。

美國作為世界第一軍事強權，雖無帝國之名，卻有帝國之實，美國本土便有四千座基地，另有將近一千座基地遍佈各大洲，這個「島群帝國」遍布全球。目前共有約400座美軍基地將中國團團包圍，飛彈、轟炸機、戰艦與核武一應俱全。這些基地南起澳洲北境，一路在太平洋地區串連延伸至日韓等國，一直到阿富汗與印度等歐亞地區才終止。美國一位戰略專家說，這些基地形成一個「完美的鎖鏈」。

日本沖繩島上共有32座美軍建設，此刻他們的首要目標是中國。在韓國最南端的濟州島上，一座類美軍基地也剛竣工，此地距離上海只有四百英哩，未來將會有核子潛艇停泊此處，最新的神盾飛彈驅逐艦也會進駐。

然而，「完美的鎖鏈」纏縛下，卻有許多人選擇以和平的力量，抵抗這些以毀滅作為目標的軍事基地——沖繩當地居民這幾年來積極組織，以和平的方式對抗美國這個軍事巨人，他們以努力向大家證明，一般人民也有能力阻擋這種壓迫性的佔領行動，而且他們已經開始取得勝利。無獨有偶，近10年來，韓國濟州島上的抗爭與抗議，也風雨無阻地發聲，天主教的神父每天在基地大門外舉辦兩次彌撒，身後則是有全亞洲及全世界的人與他同在。這些聲音，讓廣島核爆與比基尼群島所遺留的教訓，顯得更加迫切。沖繩當地反抗行動的領袖，現年87歲的島袋女士說：「我們讓大家選擇，沉默或活下來」。

一百年前，帝國主義引發了第一次世界大戰；一百年後，現代世界仍以相似的邏輯在處理問題：船堅砲利、文攻武嚇，差別只是現在我們還多了核子武器。在這個毀滅性武器威力登峰造極的全球化時代，一場核子互射的意外，就可能帶來世界末日般的危機。這將是一場牽涉到所有人的戰爭，沒有人可以置身事外。

導演約翰・皮爾格以宏觀視角，拉出以核武危機為中心的兩個對張關係，一個是地緣政治上關於美利堅帝國與初崛起的中國間的權力遊戲；另一個對張關係，則關於我們每個人：一端是馬紹爾群島的核試爆歷史的受害者，而另一端則是沖繩、濟州島反對美國軍事基地的抵抗運動。歷史向前走，人民也可以不只是逆來順受的犧牲者，被動接受；更可以是擁有超級力量的行動者，積極改變。

公視《即將到來的對華戰爭（上）》

●2018年1月5日夜10時至11時，公視將播出由蔡詩萍主持的紀錄片
即將到來的對華戰爭（上） The Coming War on China
John Pilger / 90 / 2016

●紀錄片開始前及後有蔡詩萍對在下之訪問。
敬請賜教。

林中斌 2018.1.4

●另，公視也提供網路免費收看7天服務（從週六凌晨開始，因版權限制，僅限於台灣地區收看），在公視OTT影音平台，網址為https://www.ptsplus.tv/，在首頁最新上架欄位，或點選左方「紀錄片」，進入後拉到網頁最下方找到「主題之夜」。必須註冊為會員或以fb帳號登入才能觀看

《即將到來的對華戰爭》上集網址
http://viewpoint.pts.org.tw/…/%E5%8D%B3%E5%B0%87%E5%88%B0%…/

本片導演約翰・皮爾格（John Pilger）是一位優秀的戰地記者、作家與導演，自1962年開始從事調查報導以及紀錄片製作，迄今已有55年時間，其作品囊括各方主題，報導真相並倡導人權，經常點出主流媒體遺忘或刻意忽略的議題。本片《即將到來的對華戰爭》是他的第60部片，片中橫跨廣大地域範圍與長遠歷史縱深，重新檢討了西方主流媒體對於中美角力的觀點，呼籲各界對於核子戰爭一觸即發的警覺與審慎思考。

不過，本片故事的第一章，卻是從太平洋上，一個遙遠小島罕為人知的遭遇開始——馬紹爾群島位在美國與亞洲之間，二戰時，美國從日本手上奪走，長久以來是美國的戰略機密，是通往亞洲和中國的踏腳石。島上人民數千年來自給自足，有豐盛的漁產、麵包果與椰子，他們是航海高手，以星星導航。曾經，馬紹爾群島有著「最後的天堂」之美名。

這一切都在1946年改變了，美國占領馬紹爾群島，作為託管領地，並肩負保護當地居民健康與福祉的義務。惡夢開始，小島變成測試核武的實驗區，居民則成為實驗品。1954年，美國在比基尼環礁測試氫彈「喝采」，把整座島炸得灰飛煙滅，在浩瀚的海洋上留下一個大黑洞。比基尼島的居民從此沒有再回到島上。在那些塵封已久的舊紀錄影片中，記錄下當時經歷核彈試爆的倖存者，他們被稱為「順從的野蠻人」。其中大多數人後來都被診斷出甲狀腺癌或其他惡性腫瘤，卻幾乎沒有獲得任何賠償。

從馬紹爾群島的秘密，故事來到中國崛起，核子武器微妙牽起兩者間的關聯。馬紹爾群島只是核武試驗場，而最後經測試具有強大毀滅威力的核武成品，則得找個地方派上用場。21世紀的大國競技，是一種「永久戰爭」，美國每年挹注六千億美元的軍事開銷，對獨霸全球的美國軍工業來說，是一筆大生意。而投入數兆美元所發展的這些核武庫與太空作戰能力，必得有「用武之地」——這些錢需要一個敵人。

剛剛崛起的中國，正是完美的敵人。

Assurex Keynote

● I am honored to be the keynote speaker at the Assurex Asia-Pacific Regional Conference Wednesday morning at 9, Mandarin Oriental. Thanks to seasoned diplomat and art connoisseur Mr. 李文琦's recommendation.

● My speech is entitled " China's Atypical Rise: Dominating East Asia without War".

Chong-Pin Lin January 12, 2018

電影《最黑暗的時刻》"Darkest Hour"

●極力推薦!!.在這瀰漫負能量的時節，看一場充滿正能量的電影吧!!
"Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It's the courage to continue that counts" (Winston Churchill)
「成功不是最後的結果。失敗不是要命的結果。重要的是持續奮鬥的勇氣。」

林中斌 試譯邱吉爾名言 2018.1.8
(請注意邱翁"頭韻"的使用: 1.final,failure,fatal. 2.courage, continue, counts)

●Arresting and moving. What an inspirational film to watch in this age of platitude and bad faith. Gary Oldman may win more awards than the Golden Globe, even an Oscar for the best actor should not be totally surprising.

Chong-Pin Lin January 8, 2018

《最黑暗的時刻》（英語：Darkest Hour）
https://zh.wikipedia.org/…/%E6%9C%80%E9%BB%91%E6%9A%97%E7%9… 
《最黑暗的時刻》（英語：Darkest Hour）是一部於2017年上映的英國戰爭電影，由喬·萊特執導，安東尼·麥卡騰編劇。主演蓋瑞·歐德曼飾演溫斯頓·邱吉爾，而其他演員還包含班·曼德森、克莉絲汀·史考特·湯瑪斯、莉莉·詹姆士、史蒂芬·迪蘭與羅蘭·匹克等人。該片主要講述英國首相溫斯頓·邱吉爾的事蹟。
該片的發展始於2015年2月5日，當時Working Title Films買下了由安東尼·麥卡騰撰寫、描寫第二次世界大戰早期的溫斯頓·邱吉爾的待售劇本《最黑暗的時刻》。主要攝影於2016年10月下旬開始，並於2017年1月殺青。
《最黑暗的時刻》於2017年11月29日在英國發行，而美國則提早在11月22日上映。此外，該片的首映禮在2017年多倫多國際影展上舉行。該片在上映後收穫普遍影評人的積極評價，主演歐德曼的演出尤其廣受讚譽，被外界認為是奧斯卡金像獎最佳男主角獎的有力競爭者。

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkest_Hour_(film)
Darkest Hour is a 2017 British war drama film directed by Joe Wright and written by Anthony McCarten. It stars Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill, and follows his early days as Prime Minister, as Hitler closes in on Britain during World War II. The film also stars Ben Mendelsohn, Kristin Scott Thomas, Lily James, Stephen Dillane, and Ronald Pickup.
The film had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on 1 September 2017,[4] and also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival.[5] It began a limited release in the United States on 22 November 2017, followed by general release on 22 December, and will be released on 12 January 2018 in the United Kingdom.[6] The film has grossed $35 million worldwide and was well-received by critics. Oldman's performance received positive reviews, with many critics noting it as one of the best of his career; he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama and was nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role for his work.[7]

紅害不運動，續當東亞病夫

    ● 記得在華府喬治城大學教書時，很好奇: 為何功課好的學生，不分男女，運動都好，課外活動都忙?

        When I was teaching at Georgetown University, nicknamed "Harvard by the Potomac ", it intrigued me why good students were at the same time athletically and socially active. Here, statistics around the world  have indicated the Intetesting correlations.

Chong-Pin Lin January 8, 2018

林中斌 2018.1.8

“Are We Alone in the Universe?” Winston Churchill’s Lost Extraterrestrial Essay Says No

 Brian Handwerk SMITHSONIAN.COM, FEBRUARY 16, 2017

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/winston-churchill-question-alien-life-180962198/

accessed January 8, 2018

● 邱吉爾即將出任首相之前，寫了一篇科學探討的文章，但死後才被發現，發表。天文學家高度肯定他嚴謹的思路。他認為有外星人。

Winston Churchill, British prime minister and one of history’s most influential statesmen, was undoubtedly a man with weighty questions on his mind. How best to save the British Empire? he must have mused. What will the postwar world look like? he surely wondered. But the legendary leader also focused his prodigious mind on less pragmatic questions. For instance: Is there life on other planets?

In fact, in 1939, Churchill penned a lengthy essay on this very topic, which was never published. Besides displaying a strong grasp of contemporary astrophysics and a scientific mind, he came to a breathtaking conclusion: We are probably not alone in the universe. The long-lost piece of Churchilliana has just floated up to the surface again, thanks to an article written by astrophysicist Mario Livio in this week’s edition of the journal Nature analyzing Churchill’s work. 

“With hundreds of thousands of nebulae, each containing thousands of millions of suns, the odds are enormous that there must be immense numbers which possess planets whose circumstances would not render life impossible,” Churchill concluded in his essay. He wrote these words on the eve of World War II—more than half a century before exoplanets were discovered.  

Until last year, Churchill’s thoughts on the problem of alien life had been all but lost to history. The reason: His 11-page typed draft was never published. Sometime in the late 1950s, Churchill revised the essay while visiting the seaside villa of publisher Emery Reves, but the text still didn’t see the light of day. It appears to have languished in the Reves house until Emery’s wife Wendy gave it to the U.S. National Churchill Museum during the 1980s.

Last year, the museum’s new director, Timothy Riley, unearthed the essay in the museum’s archives. When astrophysicist Mario Livio happened to visit the museum, Riley “thrust [the] typewritten essay” into his hands, Livio writes in Nature. Riley was eager to hear the perspective of an astrophysicist. And Livio, for his part, was floored. “Imagine my thrill that I may be the first scientist to examine this essay,” he writes in Nature.

Churchill did his homework, Livio reports. Though he probably didn’t pore over peer-reviewed scientific literature, the statesman seems to have read enough, and spoke with enough top scientists—including the physicist Frederick Lindemann, his friend and later his official scientific adviser—to have had a strong grasp of the major theories and ideas of his time. But that wasn’t what left the deepest impression on Livio.

“To me the most impressive part of the essay—other than the fact that he was interested in it at all, which is pretty remarkable—is really the way that he thinks,” Livio says. “He approached the problem just as a scientist today would. To answer his question ‘Are we alone in the universe?’ he started by defining life. Then he said, ‘OK, what does life require? What are the necessary conditions for life to exist?’”

Churchill identified liquid water, for example, as a primary requirement. While he acknowledged the possibility that forms of life could exist dependent on some other liquid, he concluded that “nothing in our present knowledge entitles us to make such an assumption.”  

“This is exactly what we still do today: Try to find life by following the water,” Livio says. “But next, Churchill asked ‘What does it take for liquid water to be there?’ And so he identified this thing that today we call the habitable zone.”

By breaking down the challenge into its component parts, Churchill ended up delving into the factors necessary to create what is now known as the “Goldilocks zone” around a star: that elusive region in which a life-sustaining planet could theoretically exist. In our own solar system, he concluded, only Mars and Venus could possibly harbor life outside of Earth. The other planets don’t have the right temperatures, Churchill noted, while the Moon and asteroids lack sufficient gravity to trap gasses and sustain atmospheres.

Turning his gaze beyond our own solar system raised even more possibilities for life, at least in Churchill’s mind. “The sun is merely one star in our galaxy, which contains several thousand millions of others,” he wrote. Planetary formation would be rather rare around those stars, he admitted, drawing on a then-popular theory of noted physicist and astronomer James Jeans. But what if that theory turned out to be incorrect? (In fact, it has now been disproven.)

“That’s what I find really fascinating,” Livio notes. “The healthy skepticism that he displayed is remarkable.”

Churchill suggested that different planetary formation theories may mean that many such planets may exist which “will be the right size to keep on their surface water and possibly an atmosphere of some sort.” Of that group, some may also be “at the proper distance from their parent sun to maintain a suitable temperature.”

The statesman even expected that some day, “possibly even in the not very distant future,” visitors might see for themselves whether there is life on the moon, or even Mars.

But what was Winston Churchill doing penning a lengthy essay on the probability of alien life in the first place? After all, it was the eve of a war that would decide the fate of the free world, and Churchill was about to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Such an undertaking was actually quite typical for Churchill, notes Andrew Nahum, Keeper Emeritus at the Science Museum, London, because it reflects both his scientific curiosity and his recurring need to write for money. It was skill with the pen that often supported Churchill and his family’s lavish lifestyle (recall that he won the 1953 Nobel Prize for Literature, with a monetary award of 175,293 Swedish Kroner worth about $275,000 today).

“One recent biography is entitled No More Champagne: Churchill And His Money,” Nahum says. “That was a phrase he put into a note to his wife about austerity measures. But he didn’t know much about austerity. He liked luxury so he wrote like crazy, both books and articles that his agent circulated widely.”  

That’s not to say that Churchill was simply slinging copy about aliens for a paycheck. “He was profoundly interested in the sciences and he read very widely,” notes Nahum, who curated the 2015 Science Museum exhibition “Churchill’s Scientists.” Nahum relates the tale of how as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Churchill was once sent a book on quantum physics, and later admitted that it had occupied him for the better part of a day that should have been spent balancing the British budget.

He not only read scientific content voraciously, but wrote on the topic as well. In a 1924 issue of Nash’s Pall Mall Magazine, Churchill anticipated the power of atomic weapons. “Might not a bomb no bigger than an orange be found to possess secret power to destroy a whole block of buildings nay, to blast a township at a stroke?” he warned. In 1932, he anticipated the rise of test-tube meat in the magazine Popular Mechanics: “Fifty years hence, we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or the wing, by growing these parts separately in a suitable medium,” he wrote.

In 1939 he authored three essays, tackling not just extraterrestrial life but the evolution of life on Earth and the popular biology of the human body. Two were published during 1942 by the Sunday Dispatch, Nahum discovered when reading Churchill’s papers at the University of Cambridge. It remains a mystery why his thoughts on alien life went unpublished.

In the rediscovered essay, Churchill admits that, because of the great distances between us and other planet-harboring stars, we may never know if his hunch that life is scattered among the vastness of the cosmos is correct. Yet even without proof, Churchill seems to have convinced himself that such a possibility was likely—perhaps by swapping his scientific mind for one more finely attuned to the human condition during the troubled 20th century.

“I, for one, am not so immensely impressed by the success we are making of our civilization here that I am prepared to think we are the only spot in this immense universe which contains living, thinking creatures,” he wrote, “or that we are the highest type of mental and physical development which has ever appeared in the vast compass of space and time.”

Seventy-five years after Churchill’s bold speculations, there’s still no proof that life exists on other worlds. But, as was often the case, his analysis of our own still seems prescient.

川普改變了美國70年來的全球政策

TRUMP, THE INSURGENT,BREAKS WITH 70 YEARS OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

 MARK LANDLER New York Times, DEC. 28, 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/us/politics/trump-world-diplomacy.html

accessed January 5, 2018

● "Trump ...attacks allies the U.S. has nurtured since WWII... ''
川普批罵美國自二次大戰以來培養的盟友

● "He has assiduously cultivated President Xi Jinping of China and avoided criticizing President Vladimir Putin of Russia -- leaders of the two countries that his own national security strategy calls the greatest geopolitical threats to America.''
川普努力培養他和中國國家主席習近平的友誼，也儘量避免批評俄羅斯總統普丁。而這兩國正是他自己國安報告裡所說的美國面臨最大哼的地緣政治威脅。

● "..another hallmark of Mr. Trump's foreign policy: how much it is driven by domestic politics."
另一個川普外交政策特色是內政決定外交。

● "...his bark is worse than his bite ..." 
歐洲評論家認為川普的特點是叫狗不咬。

林中斌試摘譯 2018.1.5

WASHINGTON — President Trump was already revved up when he emerged from his limousine to visit NATO’s new headquarters in Brussels last May. He had just met France’s recently elected president, Emmanuel Macron, whom he greeted with a white-knuckle handshake and a complaint that Europeans do not pay their fair share of the alliance’s costs.

On the long walk through the NATO building’s cathedral-like atrium, the president’s anger grew. He looked at the polished floors and shimmering glass walls with a property developer’s eye. (“It’s all glass,” he said later. “One bomb could take it out.”) By the time he reached an outdoor plaza where he was to speak to the other NATO leaders, Mr. Trump was fuming, according to two aides who were with him that day.

He was there to dedicate the building, but instead he took a shot at it.

“I never asked once what the new NATO headquarters cost,” Mr. Trump told the leaders, his voice thick with sarcasm. “I refuse to do that. But it is beautiful.” His visceral reaction to the $1.2 billion building, more than anything else, colored his first encounter with the alliance, aides said.

Nearly a year into his presidency, Mr. Trump remains an erratic, idiosyncratic leader on the global stage, an insurgent who attacks allies the United States has nurtured since World War II and who can seem more at home with America’s adversaries. His Twitter posts, delivered without warning or consultation, often make a mockery of his administration’s policies and subvert the messages his emissaries are trying to deliver abroad.

Mr. Trump has pulled out of trade and climate change agreements and denounced the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. He has broken with decades of American policy in the Middle East by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. And he has taunted Kim Jong-un of North Korea as “short and fat,” fanning fears of war on the peninsula.

He has assiduously cultivated President Xi Jinping of China and avoided criticizing President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — leaders of the two countries that his own national security strategy calls the greatest geopolitical threats to America.

Above all, Mr. Trump has transformed the world’s view of the United States from a reliable anchor of the liberal, rules-based international order into something more inward-looking and unpredictable. That is a seminal change from the role the country has played for 70 years, under presidents from both parties, and it has lasting implications for how other countries chart their futures.

Mr. Trump’s unorthodox approach “has moved a lot of us out of our comfort zone, me included,” the national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, said in an interview. A three-star Army general who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and wrote a well-regarded book about the White House’s strategic failure in Vietnam, General McMaster defined Trump foreign policy as “pragmatic realism” rather than isolationism.

“The consensus view has been that engagement overseas is an unmitigated good, regardless of the circumstances,” General McMaster said. “But there are problems that are maybe both intractable and of marginal interest to the American people, that do not justify investments of blood and treasure.”

Mr. Trump’s advisers argue that he has blown the cobwebs off decades of foreign policy doctrine and, as he approaches his first anniversary, that he has learned the realities of the world in which the United States must operate.

They point to gains in the Middle East, where Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is transforming Saudi Arabia; in Asia, where China is doing more to pressure a nuclear-armed North Korea; and even in Europe, where Mr. Trump’s criticism has prodded NATO members to ante up more for their defense.

The president takes credit for eradicating the caliphate built by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, though he mainly accelerated a battle plan developed by President Barack Obama. His aides say he has reversed Mr. Obama’s passive approach to Iran, in part by disavowing the nuclear deal.

While Mr. Trump has held more than 130 meetings and phone calls with foreign leaders since taking office, he has left the rest of the world still puzzling over how to handle an American president unlike any other. Foreign leaders have tested a variety of techniques to deal with him, from shameless pandering to keeping a studied distance.

“Most foreign leaders are still trying to get a handle on him,” said Richard N. Haass, a top State Department official in the George W. Bush administration who is now the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. “Everywhere I go, I’m still getting asked, ‘Help us understand this president, help us navigate this situation.’

“We’re beginning to see countries take matters into their own hands. They’re hedging against America’s unreliability.”

Difficulties With Merkel

Few countries have struggled more to adapt to Mr. Trump than Germany, and few leaders seem less personally in sync with him than its leader, Chancellor Angela Merkel, the physicist turned politician. After she won a fourth term, their relationship took on weighty symbolism: the great disrupter versus the last defender of the liberal world order.

In one of their first phone calls, the chancellor explained to the president why Ukraine was a vital part of the trans-Atlantic relationship. Mr. Trump, officials recalled, had little idea of Ukraine’s importance, its history of being bullied by Russia or what the United States and its allies had done to try to push back Mr. Putin.

German officials were alarmed by Mr. Trump’s lack of knowledge, but they got even more rattled when White House aides called to complain afterward that Ms. Merkel had been condescending toward the new president. The Germans were determined not to repeat that diplomatic gaffe when Ms. Merkel met Mr. Trump at the White House in March.

At first, things again went badly. Mr. Trump did not shake Ms. Merkel’s hand in the Oval Office, despite the requests of the assembled photographers. (The president said he did not hear them.)

Later, he told Ms. Merkel that he wanted to negotiate a new bilateral trade agreement with Germany. The problem with this idea was that Germany, as a member of the European Union, could not negotiate its own agreement with the United States.

Rather than exposing Mr. Trump’s ignorance, Ms. Merkel said the United States could, of course, negotiate a bilateral agreement, but that it would have to be with Germany and the other 27 members of the union because Brussels conducted such negotiations on behalf of its members.

“So it could be bilateral?” Mr. Trump asked Ms. Merkel, according to several people in the room. The chancellor nodded.

“That’s great,” Mr. Trump replied before turning to his commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, and telling him, “Wilbur, we’ll negotiate a bilateral trade deal with Europe.”

Afterward, German officials expressed relief among themselves that Ms. Merkel had managed to get through the exchange without embarrassing the president or appearing to lecture him. Some White House officials, however, said they found the episode humiliating.

For Ms. Merkel and many other Germans, something elemental has changed across the Atlantic. “We Europeans must really take our destiny into our own hands,” she said in May. “The times in which we can fully count on others — they are somewhat over.”

Concerns on Statecraft

Mr. Trump gets along better with Mr. Macron, a 40-year-old former investment banker and fellow political insurgent who ran for the French presidency as the anti-Trump. Despite disagreeing with him on trade, immigration and climate change, Mr. Macron figured out early how to appeal to the president: He invited him to a military parade.

But Mr. Macron has discovered that being buddies with Mr. Trump can also be complicated. During the Bastille Day visit, officials recalled, Mr. Trump told Mr. Macron he was rethinking his decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord.

That prompted French diplomats to make a flurry of excited calls to the White House for clarification the following week, only to find out that American policy had not changed. White House officials say that Mr. Trump was merely reiterating that the United States would be open to rejoining the pact on more advantageous terms.

But the exchange captures Mr. Trump’s lack of nuance or detail, which leaves him open to being misunderstood in complex international talks.

There have been fewer misunderstandings with autocrats. Mr. Xi of China and King Salman of Saudi Arabia both won over Mr. Trump by giving him a lavish welcome when he visited. The Saudi monarch projected his image on the side of a hotel; Mr. Xi reopened a long-dormant theater inside the Forbidden City to present Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, an evening of Chinese opera.

“Did you see the show?” Mr. Trump asked reporters on Air Force One after he left Beijing in November. “They say in the history of people coming to China, there’s been nothing like that. And I believe it.”

Later, chatting with his aides, Mr. Trump continued to marvel at the respect Mr. Xi had shown him. It was a show of respect for the American people, not just for the president, one adviser replied gently.

Then, of course, there is the strange case of Mr. Putin. The president spoke of his warm telephone calls with the Russian president, even as he introduced a national security strategy that acknowledged Russia’s efforts to weaken democracies by meddling in their elections.

Mr. Trump has had a bumpier time with friends. He told off Prime Minister Theresa May on Twitter, after she objected to his exploitation of anti-Muslim propaganda from a far-right group in Britain.

“Statecraft has been singularly absent from the treatment of some of his allies, particularly the U.K.,” said Peter Westmacott, a former British ambassador to the United States.

Mr. Trump’s feuds with Ms. May and other British officials have left him in a strange position: feted in Beijing and Riyadh but barely welcome in London, which Mr. Trump is expected to visit early next year, despite warnings that he will face angry protesters.

Aides to Mr. Trump argue that his outreach to autocrats has been vindicated. When Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited the White House in March, the president lavished attention on him. Since then, they say, Saudi Arabia has reopened cinemas and allowed women to drive.

But critics say Mr. Trump gives more than he gets. By backing the 32-year-old crown prince so wholeheartedly, the president cemented his status as heir to the House of Saud. The crown prince has since jailed his rivals as Saudi Arabia pursued a deadly intervention in Yemen’s civil war.

Mr. Trump granted an enormous concession to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he announced this month that the United States would formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. But he did not ask anything of Mr. Netanyahu in return.

That showed another hallmark of Mr. Trump’s foreign policy: how much it is driven by domestic politics. In this case, he was fulfilling a campaign promise to move the American Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. While evangelicals and some hard-line, pro-Israel American Jews exulted, the Palestinians seethed — leaving Mr. Trump’s dreams of brokering a peace accord between them and the Israelis in tatters.

With China, Mr. Trump’s cultivation of Mr. Xi probably persuaded him to put more economic pressure on its neighbor North Korea over its provocative behavior. But even the president has acknowledged, as recently as Thursday, that it is not enough. And in return for Mr. Xi’s efforts, Mr. Trump has largely shelved his trade agenda vis-à-vis Beijing.

“It was a big mistake to draw that linkage,” said Robert B. Zoellick, who served as United States trade representative under Mr. Bush. “The Chinese are playing him, and it’s not just the Chinese. The world sees his narcissism and strokes his ego, diverting him from applying disciplined pressure.”

Mr. Trump’s protectionist instincts could prove the most damaging in the long term, Mr. Zoellick said. Trade, unlike security, springs from deeply rooted convictions. Mr. Trump believes that multilateral accords — like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, from which he pulled out in his first week in office — are stacked against America.

“He views trade as zero-sum, win-lose,” Mr. Zoellick said.

Globalist vs. Nationalist

For some of Mr. Trump’s advisers, the key to understanding his statecraft is not how he deals with Mr. Xi or Ms. Merkel, but the ideological contest over America’s role that plays out daily between the West Wing and agencies like the State Department and the Pentagon.

“There’s a chasm that can’t be bridged between the globalists and the nationalists,” said Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist and the leader of the nationalist wing, who has kept Mr. Trump’s ear since leaving the White House last summer.

On the globalist side of the debate stand General McMaster; Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis; Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson; and Mr. Trump’s chief economic adviser, Gary D. Cohn. On the nationalist side, in addition to Mr. Bannon, stand Stephen Miller, the president’s top domestic adviser, and Robert Lighthizer, the chief trade negotiator. On many days, the nationalist group includes the commander in chief himself.

The globalists have curbed some of Mr. Trump’s most radical impulses. He has yet to rip up the Iran nuclear deal, though he has refused to recertify it. He has reaffirmed the United States’ support for NATO, despite his objections about those members he believes are freeloading. And he has ordered thousands of additional American troops into Afghanistan, even after promising during the campaign to stay away from nation-building.

This has prompted a few Europeans to hope that “his bark is worse than his bite,” in the words of Mr. Westmacott.

Mr. Trump acknowledges that being in office has changed him. “My original instinct was to pull out,” he said of Afghanistan, “and, historically, I like following my instincts. But all my life I’ve heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office.”

Yet some things have not changed. Mr. Trump’s advisers have utterly failed to curb his Twitter posts, for example. Some gamely suggest that they create diplomatic openings. Others say they roll with the punches when he labels Mr. Kim of North Korea “Little Rocket Man.” For Mr. Tillerson, however, the tweets have severely tarnished his credibility in foreign capitals.

“All of them know they still can’t control the thunderbolt from on high,” said John D. Negroponte, who served as the director of national intelligence for Mr. Bush.

The tweets highlight that Mr. Trump still holds a radically different view of the United States’ role in the world than most of his predecessors. His advisers point to a revealing meeting at the Pentagon on July 20, when Mr. Mattis, Mr. Tillerson and Mr. Cohn walked the president through the country’s trade and security obligations around the world.

The group convened in the secure conference room of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a storied inner sanctum known as the tank. Mr. Mattis led off the session by declaring that “the greatest thing the ‘greatest generation’ left us was the rules-based postwar international order,” according to a person who was in the room.

After listening for about 50 minutes, this person said, Mr. Trump had heard enough. He began peppering Mr. Mattis and Mr. Tillerson with questions about who pays for NATO and the terms of the free trade agreements with South Korea and other countries.

The postwar international order, the president of the United States declared, is “not working at all.”

What Japan can teach us about the future of nationalism

Robert Hellyer and David Leheny, Jan 3, 2018

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/01/03/what-japan-can-teach-us-about-the-future-of-the-nationalism/?sw_bypass=true&utm_term=.5d77f56571b1

accessed January 4, 2018

●今年是明治維新150週年。但是如何紀念，如何說明要紀念，日本人拿不定主意。
●這篇由兩位歷史教授所寫的回顧，冷靜的剖析主流說法下的另類史實。非常推薦。

林中斌 2018.1.4

On Jan. 3, 1868, a cadre of samurai staged a coup at the Imperial Palace in Kyoto, setting Japan on a course to become Asia’s first nation-state. Japanese are not widely commemorating the event today, even though the coup, which began the dramatic transformation of the Meiji Restoration, should rank in global history alongside Bastille Day or July Fourth as a point of national origin.

Stopping to consider this anniversary’s uncelebrated relevance highlights not only the remarkable course of national creation in Japan but also, more importantly, the tenacity of the modernizing nation-state, and its accompanying zealous commitments to sovereignty, as a global political form that continues to influence geopolitics today.

The samurai who staged the coup that day toppled the nearly three-century-old Tokugawa regime. Their alliance of feudal domains from western Japan then went on to defeat an ill-organized resistance in a brief civil war. Upon their victory, they led a new government with the young Emperor Meiji at its head.

Initially, this government formed around a ruling oligarchy that “restored” the emperor’s political role, ultimately signaling a desire to govern by reviving imperial political structures employed in an ideal, ancient past.

But they soon changed course, sensing the need for even bolder change, given the rising tide of European imperialism that many feared might make Japan a European colony. A group of leaders embarked on a nearly two-year diplomatic mission to Europe and the United States to learn firsthand about the ascendant West. Seeing the industrial and military power contained in the modern nation-state, they returned keen to implement that model at home.

With breathtaking speed, the oligarchs initiated reforms that dismantled the politically diffuse feudal state in which samurai lords ruled over semi-independent domains and pledged personal loyalty to the Tokugawa shogun. Drawing inspiration from Western political structures, the leaders eliminated the domains, reorganizing Japan into regional administrative units headed by governors appointed by the new central government. They also eliminated the samurai class, who had served as the administrators of the domain governments, and instead developed an extensive central bureaucracy that acted in the name of Meiji, whose portrait was placed in schools.

自由時報登載中國進步新聞

●自由時報2017.12.29台灣獨家登載此項中國進步的新聞。同時，那一國際版面涵蓋台灣各報中最多的國際新聞內容。

林中斌 2018.1.3

U.S. No Longer a Global Force for Good

Susan Rice New York Times, December 20, 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/opinion/susan-rice-america-global-strategy.html

accessed December 21, 2017

美國前國家安全顧問(相當於台灣國家安全會秘書長)Susan Rice在紐約時報投書寫道:

●中國沒有非法佔領它的鄰居。它是美國的競爭者(Competitor)，不是美國的對手(Opponent)。

●俄羅斯是美國的對手。它佔領過喬治亞和烏克蘭。

  President Trump’s National Security Strategy marks a dramatic departure from the plans of his Republican and Democratic predecessors, painting a dark, almost dystopian portrait of an “extraordinarily dangerous” world characterized by hostile states and lurking threats. There is scant mention of America’s unrivaled political, military, technological and economic strength, or the opportunities to expand prosperity, freedom and security through principled leadership — the foundation of American foreign policy since World War II.

  In Mr. Trump’s estimation, we live in a world where America wins only at others’ expense. There is no common good, no international community, no universal values, only American values. America is no longer “a global force for good,” as in President Obama’s last strategy, or a “shining city on a hill,” as in President Reagan’s vision. The new strategy enshrines a zero-sum mentality: “Protecting American interests requires that we compete continuously within and across these contests, which are being played out in regions around the world.” This is the hallmark of Mr. Trump’s nationalistic, black-and-white “America First” strategy.

  But the world is actually gray, and Mr. Trump’s strategy struggles to draw nuanced distinctions. Throughout, China and Russia are conflated and equated as parallel adversaries. In fact, China is a competitor, not an avowed opponent, and has not illegally occupied its neighbors. Russia, as the strategy allows, aggressively opposes NATO, the European Union, Western values and American global leadership. It brazenly seized Georgian and Ukrainian territory and killed thousands of innocents to save a dictator in Syria. Russia is our adversary, yet Mr. Trump’s strategy stubbornly refuses to acknowledge its most hostile act: directly interfering in the 2016 presidential election to advantage Mr. Trump himself.

  On China and Russia, I suspect the White House realists, to escape the embarrassment of a strategy that ignored Russia’s hostile behavior, agreed to lump China with Russia and almost always mention China first, to placate their nationalist colleagues who hate China but admire Russia. The result is a flawed analysis that may actually drive Russia and China closer together.

  In several respects, including nuclear weapons and arms control, weapons of mass destruction, counterterrorism, intelligence, cyberthreats, space policy, unfair trade practices and theft of intellectual property, the strategy falls within the bipartisan mainstream of United States national security policy, differing little from that of a more traditional Republican president. In other areas, it helpfully corrects this administration’s wavering course, as in its unequivocal embrace of United States allies and partners and reaffirmation of our Article V commitment to defend NATO. The strategy recognizes the threat from pandemics and biohazards and the importance of strengthening global health security. And it maintains at least a nominal commitment to women’s empowerment and providing generous humanitarian assistance.

  But the nationalists around him succeeded in enshrining Mr. Trump’s harsh anti-immigration policies, from the border wall to ending family preferences and limiting refugee admissions. They reprised their paean to bilateral over multi-nation trade agreements and trumpeted the abrogation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would help check China’s economic and strategic expansionism in Asia. The result is an insular, ideological treatment of our complex world, substantially unimpaired by facts and dismissive of United States interests.

  The plan also glaringly omits many traditional American priorities. It fails to mention the words “human rights” or “extreme poverty”; there is no talk of higher education, combating H.I.V.-AIDS or seeking a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Absent, too, is any discussion of people under 30 (who make up over 50 percent of the world’s population), of civil society or of the value of promoting democracy and universal rights. Gone is “climate change” and its threat to American national security. Neither is there any expression of concern for the rights of the oppressed, especially L.G.B.T. people. These omissions undercut global perceptions of American leadership; worse, they hinder our ability to rally the world to our cause when we blithely dismiss the aspirations of others.

  The plan also contains some true howlers. It heralds diplomacy, yet Mr. Trump and his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, have starved the State Department of resources, talent and relevance. The strategy lauds the “free press,” yet Mr. Trump routinely trashes our most respected news outlets as “fake news,” threatening their personnel and operations. And it claims the United States “rejects bigotry and oppression and seeks a future built on our values as one American people”; yet the president has denigrated women, used race-baiting language and been hesitant to criticize anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi extremists. One wonders how seriously to take a document that so starkly diverges from the president’s own words and deeds.

  These contradictions matter, as does the administration’s enthusiastic embrace of a self-serving, confrontational vision of the world. National security strategies do not always leave an enduring legacy, but they are important articulations of an administration’s priorities — signposts to a world that cares deeply about America’s ambitions and interests.

  The United States’s strength has long rested not only on our unmatched military and economy, but also on the power of our ideals. Relinquishing the nation’s moral authority in these difficult times will only embolden rivals and weaken ourselves. It will make a mockery of the very idea of America first.

Some People Want Nothing to Do with Retirement

Claudia Dreifus New York Times, December 16, 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/business/asked-about-retiring-they-have-a-simple-answer-why.html

accessed December 21, 2017

●Jack Weinstein 5:30起床運動。

●7點，汽車接他去紐約市布魯克林Cadman Plaza。他和同僚喝咖非閒話生活。

●9點，他審理案件，判決被告。

●下午，他審判案件。

●他這一切無什特別。只是，他今年96歲。

林中斌摘譯 2017.12.29

  On most mornings, Jack B. Weinstein rises at 5:30 to exercise.

  At 7, a car takes him from his home in Great Neck to Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn, where he is a senior Federal District Court judge for the Eastern District of New York.

  Once at the courthouse, Judge Weinstein has coffee and gossips with colleagues. By 9, he’s at work hearing motions, reviewing filings, sentencing defendants. In the afternoon, he tries cases.

  None of that is so unusual. But Judge Weinstein is 96 — decades past the age when most Americans choose to stop working.

  “Retire? I’ve never thought of retiring,” he declares. Judge Weinstein was first appointed to the bench more than 50 years ago and is still in the thick of hot-button issues in the courts. “I’m a better judge, in some respects, than when I was younger. I don’t remember names. But I listen more. And I’m more compassionate. I see things from more angles. If you are doing interesting work, you want to continue.”

  Judge Weinstein is one of the more than 1.5 million Americans over the age of 75, who are still in the paid work force, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

  While the study does not list their specific jobs, many work at occupations in which skill and brainpower count more than brawn and endurance. Some are self-employed and aren’t subject to mandatory retirement rules. Others are stars in their fields — no one has ever suggested that Warren Buffett, 87, quit investing. And there are others, a growing cohort, who remain at their posts because of financial necessity.

  “The crash of 2008, debt burdens, decreasing income replacement rates and the demise of employer pensions are a few of the trends” that have pushed the number of non-retirees to record levels, said Susan K. Weinstock, vice president for financial resilience at AARP.

  Ms. Weinstock said she expected that this trend would continue into the next decade. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the labor force participation rate for those 75 and older rose from 6.4 percent in 2006 to 8.4 percent in 2016 and is likely to reach 10.8 percent by 2026.

  For Adolfo Calovini, 82, a New York City high school teacher, the need to earn income is part of his motivation.

  Mr. Calovini married late in life and has a son, 14, and a daughter, 20. The approximately $110,000 annual salary he earns as an English as a Second Language instructor at Park West High School in Manhattan is a necessity. For additional income, he teaches in the summer.

  His job isn’t easy — nor is his daily commute from New Hyde Park on Long Island. At school, his assignment is to instruct teenagers from countries including Haiti and Mexico in English literature and composition and prepare them for college. Each day, he teaches four classes — and then spends two hours on individual coaching.

  As a self-taught linguist who can converse in six languages, Mr. Calovini has skills that make him an asset to his school. When an immigrant teen registers at Park West, Mr. Calovini is usually able to connect with the student in his or her native tongue.

  “I’m an immigrant myself,” the Italian-born teacher said. “In class, I try to make them understand that they are as good as anyone else and have a good life if they’ll improve their English. I say, ‘If I can teach myself all these languages, you can learn English and get into college!’”

  Occasionally, one of Mr. Calovini’s younger colleagues will ask if he’s ready to retire.

  He shakes his head. “To me, teaching is about life. This is what I do. I can’t see a time when I wouldn’t.”

  The Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel agrees — he works for the sheer joy of it.

  At 88, Dr. Kandel heads his own research laboratory at Columbia University. “I like what I do,” he said. “Keeping engaged keeps you intellectually alive. I wouldn’t be surprised if it enhanced longevity.”

  Every day, Dr. Kandel interacts with much younger scientists, supervising their investigations, teaching and mentoring them. At the laboratory, he says, “people don’t ever speak to me about my age. I think they are surprised that I am 88.”

  As Dr. Kandel has grown older, his research has focused on the neuroscience of aging.

  In one project, he’s been trying to determine if aged-related memory loss might be an early sign of Alzheimer’s disease. “We have very compelling evidence that it is an independent entity,” he said.

  Dr. Kandel, a trained psychiatrist, offers this advice to other non-retirees: “If you are healthy and enjoy your work, continue. At the very least, it gives you additional income. Even if you don’t need it, the money can be for your kids and grandchildren.”

  Dr. Laura Popper, 71, a Manhattan pediatrician, works because her profession is central to her identity.

  “I wanted to be a doctor since I was 4 — why would I give that up?” she said. “If you’re a surgeon and you reach a certain age, you have to stop. With pediatricians, as long as you have your marbles, there’s no reason to.”

  In fact, there’s something about Dr. Popper’s specialization — tending to the health of children — that invigorates her.

  “The wonderful thing about pediatrics,” she said, “is that it’s always about renewal and the future. I hang out with babies, toddlers, young parents and they are always looking forward. Getting old is about a shrinking future, but I don’t spend my days thinking about that because I’m in a different place.”

  Dr. Popper has been able to continue well beyond the age when most of her peers have retired, partly because she’s self-employed. Dr. Popper is the co-owner of her medical practice, and owns her office space. That autonomy gives her the freedom to adjust her working conditions when necessary.

  Over time she’s allowed her patient load to contract. Instead of examining 35 patients in a day, she now sees somewhere between 10 and 20. Her practice partner, who is 25 years younger, has taken up the slack.

  Still, even with the lighter load, Popper puts in a full week, phoning patients in the evenings and being on call for emergencies one weekend a month.

  All of that earns her about $200,000 a year, which, she said, was “less than what it used to be. But my kids are grown. I don’t need as much.”

  Dr. Popper’s husband of 46 years, Edward Shain, 73, retired from his sales and marketing consultancy three years ago. He spends joyful hours exercising their Doberman pinscher, Elizabeth Bennett, in Central Park and blogging. She claims he’d like her to join him.

  However, whenever he raises the subject, “I tell him, ‘You’d have to take me to a psychiatric hospital the next day.’ There’s no part of me that wants to retire. If you have something you love, there’s nothing else.”

Dalai Lama: Our Future Is Very Much in Our Hands

●When we’re angry, our judgment is one-sided, as we aren’t able to take all aspects of the situation into account. With a calm mind, we can reach a fuller view of whatever circumstances we face.

憤怒讓我們誤判。因為憤怒下 ，我們看不到所有相關方面。

●Compassion enhances our calm and self-confidence, allowing our marvelous human intelligence to function unhindered. Empathy is hard-wired in our genes — studies have shown that babies as young as 4 months experience it.

不關心別人，我們不會快樂。因為我們基因裡已有關心他人的遺傳。科學家證明4個月的嬰兒已經呈現如此特質。

林中斌試簡譯文句 2017.12.13

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/opinion/dalai-lama-despair-future.html?referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com.tw%2F

  This is an article from Turning Points, a magazine that explores what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead.

  A crack in a floating ice shelf in Antarctica reached its breaking point and calved a huge iceberg, setting it afloat in the seas. It’s a fitting image for a world that feels under pressure and on the verge of, well, everything — ready to break off and set itself free. The global political temperature is on the rise, the future of truth is under debate and the specter of nuclear conflict hovers. We asked His Holiness the Dalai Lama for his thoughts on how to cope.

  We are facing a time of great uncertainty and upheaval in many corners of our planet. When it comes to making the world a better place, concern for others is tantamount.

  Our future is very much in our hands. Within each of us exists the potential to contribute positively to society. Although one individual among so many on this planet may seem too insignificant to have much of an effect on the course of humanity, it is our personal efforts that will determine the direction our society is heading.

  Wherever I go, I consider myself just one of 7 billion human beings alive today. We share a fundamental wish: We all want to live a happy life, and that is our birthright. There is no formality when we’re born, and none when we die. In between, we should treat each other as brother and sister because we share this commonality — a desire for peace and contentment.

  TENZIN CHOEJOR / OFFICE OF HIS HOLINESS THE DALAI LAMA

  Sadly, we face all sorts of problems, many of them of our own making. Why? Because we are swayed by emotions like selfishness, anger and fear.

  One of the most effective remedies for dealing with such destructive patterns of thought is to cultivate “loving-kindness” by thinking about the oneness of all the world’s 7 billion humans. If we consider the ways in which we are all the same, the barriers between us will diminish.

  Compassion enhances our calm and self-confidence, allowing our marvelous human intelligence to function unhindered. Empathy is hard-wired in our genes — studies have shown that babies as young as 4 months experience it. Research has shown again and again that compassion leads to a successful and fulfilling life. Why, then, do we not focus more on cultivating it into adulthood? When we’re angry, our judgment is one-sided, as we aren’t able to take all aspects of the situation into account. With a calm mind, we can reach a fuller view of whatever circumstances we face.

  Humanity is rich in the diversity that naturally arose from the wide expanse of our world, from the variety of languages and ways of writing to our different societal norms and customs. However, when we overemphasize race, nationality, faith, or income or education level, we forget our many similarities. We want a roof over our heads and food in our bellies, to feel safe and secure, and for our children to grow and be strong. As we seek to preserve our own culture and identity, we must also remember that we are one in being human, and work to maintain our warmheartedness toward all.

  In the last century, the inclination to solve problems through the use of force was invariably destructive and perpetuated conflict. If we are to make this century a period of peace, we must resolve problems through dialogue and diplomacy. Since our lives are so intertwined, the interests of others are also our own. I believe that adopting divisive attitudes runs counter to those interests.

  Our interdependence comes with advantages and pitfalls. Although we benefit from a global economy and an ability to communicate and know what is happening worldwide instantaneously, we also face problems that threaten us all. Climate change in particular is a challenge that calls us more than ever to make a common effort to defend the common good.

  For those who feel helpless in the face of insurmountable suffering, we are still in the early years of the 21st century. There is time for us to create a better, happier world, but we can’t sit back and expect a miracle. We each have actions we must take, by living our lives meaningfully and in service to our fellow human beings — helping others whenever we can and making every effort to do them no harm.

  Tackling destructive emotions and practicing loving-kindness isn’t something we should be doing with the next life, heaven or nirvana in mind, but how we should live in the here and now. I am convinced we can become happier individuals, happier communities and a happier humanity by cultivating a warm heart, allowing our better selves to prevail.

  The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is the spiritual leader of Tibet and a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Since 1959 he has lived in exile in Dharamsala, in northern India.

兩岸破冰的往例

accessed November 22, 2017

兩岸破冰的往例
林中斌
名人堂稿件
日期：20171118 本文字數：1100 目標字數:1100

「九二…歷史事實」。

中共十九大習近平政治報告選擇了這六字與去年五二○蔡英文總統就職演說重疊，似乎為兩岸「開展對話」撬開一縫空隙。然而習提「共識」，蔡提「諒解」。大多認為阻礙「蔡習會」的文字鴻溝不可跨越。難道「共識」與「諒解」的差異如此深廣嗎？歷史或可點亮目前困境下的昏暗。

一九九五年六月九日，我李前總統登輝赴美母校康乃爾講演，提「中華民國」十七次。北京認為我方搞「兩個中國」，極度不滿。

九五年六月十六日，北京海協會來函我方海基會中止兩岸協商及全面兩岸政府互動。我方持續呼籲恢復對話，超過兩年半，無效。北京堅持我方必須正式公開承認「一個中國」。

九八年二月廿日，當時行政院蕭萬長院長在立法院第三屆第五會期施政報告中說：「只要有助於海峽兩岸和平發展以及國家民主統一的議題，均可以一步步提出來展開溝通和對話…」

他並沒有提到「一個中國」。但四天後，似乎迫不及待，北京海協會來函我方海基會，文情並茂：同意兩岸恢復政治談判，兩會恢復交流，歡迎我方代表海基會董事長辜振甫「來訪」。兩岸超過兩年半冰封的僵局溶解了。九八年十月，辜先生赴上海與對口海協會董事長汪道涵共續九三年四月新加坡首度見面之前緣。

九八年二月廿日，我方並未如北京堅持的擁抱「一個中國」，而北京同意兩岸中止僵局。原因為何？對今日兩岸僵局的意涵為何？

●江澤民固權：九四年九月，中共第十四屆三中全會。鄧小平決定趁在世時讓江澤民成為實質第三代領導人，以避免毛澤東至死才放手引發的政權動盪。九五年，江權威備受內部黨軍挑戰。九五年一月，江大膽丟出「江八點」，對兩岸有所憧憬，引發內部異議。九七年二月，鄧小平過世。十月，中共十五大，江澤民權威上升，風光訪美，已非吳下阿蒙。

●北京新考量：九七年十一月台灣縣市長選舉，民進黨大勝。綠色人口首度超過全國總人口的七十趴。北京內部認為兩年多來杯葛兩岸互動使台灣人民與「祖國」漸行漸遠，不利「統一大業」。此兩岸冷凍政策應予調整。

●台北持重謹慎：九五/九六年兩岸飛彈危機之後，台北的大陸政策穩重。九六年二月新任命的陸委會主委張京育富國際視野力主「趨吉避凶」，持續呼籲兩岸恢復協商。台北政府對改善兩岸關係，上下口徑一致。

●華府穿梭：九八年一月，美前國防部長裴利率團赴北京見江澤民，關心兩岸何時復談。江說： 「去問汪道涵。」裴利一行南赴杭州見汪。汪說：「願復談。」裴利率團來台北見有關官員及總統，傳遞對岸願復談之訊息。這鋪陳了二月廿日蕭院長發言及廿四日海協會回應的有利背景。

以上往例對破解今日兩岸僵局的意涵有四：
●文字非障礙，雙方意願是關鍵。

●北京領導固權，有助開啟兩岸新局。

●台北政府兩岸立場，謹慎一致，亦然。

●有效高層管道實屬必要。

作者為前華府喬治大學外交學院講座教授，曾任國防部副部長，甫發表新書《撥雲見日：破解台美中三方困局》