Still in Books and Arts; Book Review;Foreign interventions;When to hold and when to fold;
文艺；书评；来自外国的干扰；来自外国的干扰究竟该如何进退；
Can Intervention Work? By Rory Stewart and Gerald Knaus.
《干预有用吗？》Rory Steward, Gerald Knaus合著。
Can we intervene in foreign countries and do good? Can we stop wars and genocides and get rid of evil dictators? Can we then build modern, democratic states that thrive in our wake? The answer depends on who you ask. An anti-Qaddafi Libyan will have nice things to say about NATO's role there right now. But you will get very different views from an Afghan, an Iraqi, a Bosnian or a Kosovar.
我们有权干预外国吗？我们的干预真的有利吗？我们能够阻止战争和屠杀吗？我们能够消灭掉那些邪恶的独裁者吗？我们能够激发他们的斗志，促使他们建造一个现代的民主国家吗？这些答案因人而异。谈起北约在推翻其政权中起到的重要作用，一个反对利比亚卡扎菲政权的人立即就滔滔不绝。但是如果你问一个阿富汗人，伊拉克人，波斯尼亚或是科索沃人，得到的答案就会大不相同。

Rory Stewart and Gerald Knaus are well placed to pose and answer these questions. Before Mr Stewart became a Conservative MP, he was a deputy governor of two Iraqi provinces. He also walked across Afghanistan and wrote a bestseller about the experience. Mr Knaus, a political economist, runs the European Stability Initiative, a Berlin-based think-tank founded in Sarajevo in 1999, which has been particularly influential in the Balkans.
Rory Stewart 和 Gerald Knaus根据自身的经历，给出了合宜的答案。在Stewart成为一个保守党议员之前，他曾担任过伊拉克两个省的省长。他还曾横穿阿富汗，将自己的经历写成了书，并成为了畅销书。Knaus则是一名政治经济学家，他管理一家位于柏林的智库，叫作欧洲稳定计划。其于1999年创建于萨拉热窝，在巴尔干半岛各国特别有影响力。

The book is structured as two essays with a lengthy joint introduction. Mr Stewart has written a colourful account of his time in Afghanistan and his failed attempts to stop what he sees as a self- defeating build-up of ambitions, troops and plans. He skewers gobbledygook notions of bringing Afghans accountable governance and Western-style rule of law. It is not that he is against such things, but that he doubts the ability of foreigners to impose it all. He cites a pragmatic admonition from English Mountain Rescue: “Be prepared to turn back if conditions turn against you.”
本书由2片论文及一篇很长的合序构成。Stewart描绘了他在阿富汗时多姿多彩的生活，也写了他对阿富汗一系列的雄心壮志，军队的建立以及计划的制定的看法，认为这都是自拆台脚，他想要阻止却未能成功。他竭力讥讽那些官腔，说什么建立一个可信赖的阿富汗政府，引进西方式法治。他并不是反对这些做法，而是质疑外国人的执行力。他在此引用了英国高山救援队的一条朴实的警告；“如情况不利，请准备回程。”

Writing about Bosnia, Mr Knaus deploys heavy artillery in arguments that he has made before. Intervention there has been a stunning success, he says, given the state of Bosnia at the end of its devastating war in 1995. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have returned, not a single intervening soldier was killed (after the war), and today's problems are of the conventional political sort, not the kind that herald another war. Not only does Bosnia enjoy free and fair elections, but also it has relatively little crime. Mr Knaus argues that the only missteps came from assumptions held by those like Lord Ashdown, when he was de facto governor of Bosnia, that well-meaning envoys could behave like imperial viceroys, sacking elected yet obstructive leaders at will.
谈到波斯尼亚时，Knaus大量引用了他之前发表的观点，火力十足。鉴于那场1995年波斯尼亚发生的残酷的战争的结局，干预确实取得了惊人的成功，他说。成百上千的难民都回归故土，且没有一个外来士兵死于战后重建工作中。但是今天的问题是常规政治，并非预示着另一场战争的那种。不仅波斯尼亚有了公平自由的选举，而且犯罪也相对减少。Knaus认为，唯一的错处在于阿什当勋爵等人的错误假设。阿什当勋爵为波西尼亚实际领导人时，满怀善意的使者却能像帝国总督那样，任意将选举出来却碍手碍脚的领导人撤职。

From rather successful interventions, defined as Bosnia and Kosovo, the authors convey an important lesson: that is, the experience garnered in one place is generally not much use elsewhere. Bosnia was a success because the intervention came as part of the 1995 Dayton peace agreement, which ended the war and which all the exhausted sides committed themselves to. In Kosovo the vast majority of its people—ethnic Albanians, nearly all of them Muslims—were very grateful for what they saw as their America-led liberation from the Serbs. Mr Knaus also argues that the United Nations war-crimes tribunal was vital as a form of closure and for removing from the political scene characters such as Ratko Mladic, a Bosnian Serb general now on trial for genocide in The Hague.
从波斯尼亚、科索沃等干预的成功案例中，作者得出了一个重要的结论，那就是，从一处获得的经验多数时候在其他地方并不管用。波斯尼亚干预的成功是因对其干预是作为1995年代顿和平协议中的一部分提出的，协议旨在结束战争，而精疲力竭的双方也都愿意遵守。而在科索沃，大多数国民为阿尔巴尼亚人，几乎所有人都是穆斯林，他们十分感激美国领导他们从塞尔维亚人手中解放。Knaus还谈到，联合国军事法庭对于消灭拉特科·穆拉迪克这样的人至关重要。Ratko Mladic是波斯尼亚的塞尔维亚将军，如今因涉嫌种族灭绝而在海牙国家法庭受审。

So, does intervention work? As any Bosnian peasant may tell you, “maybe yes, maybe no.” It depends on the circumstances and requires modest ambitions. Muddle through with a sense of purpose, says Mr Knaus. Do what you can, where you can and no more, agrees Mr Stewart. In policy terms that sounds a bit like “yes” to Libya, “no” to Syria and so on.
那么，干预究竟是否有用呢？随便哪个波斯尼亚的农民都会这样告诉你，“可能有用吧，也可能没用。”它取决于现实情况，并且人们的目标也要合理。有目标地混日子，Knaus如是说道。你想做就做，能做就做，没别的了，Stewart以此表示赞成。从政策的角度来看，这似乎是在对利比亚称好，对叙利亚摇头之类的。