Things are escalating more and more rapidly between the US-centralized power structure and the few remaining nations with the will and the means to stand against its demands for total obedience, namely China, Russia, and Iran. The world is becoming increasingly split between two groups of governments who are becoming increasingly hostile toward each other, and you don't have to be a historian to know it's probably a bad sign when that happens. Especially in the age of nuclear weapons.

有着中央集权的权力结构的美国和少数几个有意愿和手段反对完全服从其要求的国家，即中国、俄罗斯和伊朗之间的局势正在迅速升级。世界正日益分裂为两个集团，而这两个集团彼此之间的敌意也越来越大，即使你不是历史学家，也知道这种情况发生时可能是个坏兆头。尤其是在核武器时代。


The US State Department''s Victoria Nuland is now saying that the US is supporting Ukrainian strikes on Crimea, drawing sharp rebukes from Moscow with a stern reminder that the peninsula is a "red line" for the Kremlin which will result in escalations in the conflict if crossed. On Friday, Ukraine''s President Zelensky told the press that Kyiv is preparing a large offensive for the "de-occupation" of Crimea, which Moscow has considered a part of the Russian Federation since its annexation in 2014.

美国国务院的维多利亚.纽兰现在表示，美国支持乌克兰对克里米亚的打击，这引起了莫斯科的强烈谴责，并严厉提醒美国，克里米亚半岛是克里姆林宫的“红线”，如果越过这条红线，将导致冲突升级。周五，乌克兰总统泽连斯基对媒体说，基辅正在准备对克里米亚发动大规模攻势，以“解除俄罗斯对克里米亚的占领”。自2014年吞并克里米亚以来，莫斯科一直认为克里米亚是俄罗斯联邦的一部分。

As Anatol Lieven explained for Jacobin earlier this month, this exact scenario is currently the one most likely to lead to a sequence of escalations ending in nuclear war. In light of the aforementioned recent revelations, the opening paragraph of Lieven's article is even more chilling to read now than it was when it came out a couple of weeks ago:

正如阿纳托尔.列文本月早些时候为雅各宾杂志解释的那样，目前这种情况有可能导致一系列升级，最终导致核战争。鉴于上述最近的爆料，利芬文章的开头一段读起来比几周前更让人不寒而栗:

The greatest threat of nuclear catastrophe that humanity has ever faced is now centered on the Crimean peninsula. In recent months, the Ukrainian government and army have repeatedly vowed to reconquer this territory, which Russia seized and annexed in 2014. The Russian establishment, and most ordinary Russians, for their part believe that holding Crimea is vital to Russian identity and Russia’s position as a great power. As a Russian liberal acquaintance (and no admirer of Putin) told me, “In the last resort, America would use nuclear weapons to save Hawaii and Pearl Harbor, and if we have to, we should use them to save Crimea.”

人类有史以来面临的最大核威胁现在集中在克里米亚半岛。最近几个月，乌克兰政府和军队多次誓言要重新征服这片2014年被俄罗斯占领并吞并的领土。俄罗斯当权派和大多数普通俄罗斯人都认为，拥有克里米亚对俄罗斯的身份认同和俄罗斯的大国地位至关重要。正如一位俄罗斯自由派人士(并非普京的仰慕者)告诉我的那样，“在万不得已的情况下，美国将使用核武器来拯救夏威夷和珍珠港，如果迫不得已，我们也应该用它们来拯救克里米亚。”
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


Whether the Ukraine war brings on a global catastrophe will hinge in large part on whether Washington decides to back a Ukrainian effort to retake the Crimean peninsula.

乌克兰战争是否会带来一场全球灾难，在很大程度上取决于华盛顿是否决定支持乌克兰夺回克里米亚半岛。

And that's just Russia. The war in Ukraine is being used to escalate against all powers not aligned with the US-centralized alliance, with recent developments including drone attacks on an Iranian weapons factory which reportedly arms Russian soldiers in Ukraine, and Chinese companies being sanctioned for “backfill activities in support of Russia’s defence sector” following US accusations that the Chinese government is preparing to arm Russia in the war.

这还只是俄罗斯面临的情况。乌克兰战争正被升级，用来针对所有不与美国为中心的联盟结盟的国家，最近的事态发展包括无人机袭击了伊朗一家武器工厂，据报道该工厂为乌克兰战争中的俄罗斯士兵提供了武器，以及中国企业因所谓的“支持俄罗斯国防部门的回填活动”而受到制裁，此前美国指责中国正准备在这场战争中武装俄罗斯。

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly been holding multiple meetings with top military officials regarding potential future attacks on Iran to neutralize the alleged threat of Iran developing a nuclear arsenal, a "threat" that Netanyahu has personally been lying about for years.

据报道，以色列总理本雅明.内塔尼亚胡与高级军事官员举行了多次会议，讨论未来可能对伊朗发动的袭击，以消除伊朗发展核武库的所谓威胁，内塔尼亚胡个人多年来一直在撒谎。

If you've been reading Antiwar.com you've been seeing new articles about the latest imperial escalations against China on a near-daily basis now. Sometimes they come out multiple times per day; this past Thursday Dave DeCamp put out two completely separate news stories titled "US Plans to Expand Military Presence in Taiwan, a Move That Risks Provoking China" and "Philippines in Talks With US, Australia on Joint South China Sea Patrols". Taiwan and the South China Sea are two powderkeg flashpoints where war could quickly erupt at any time in a number of different ways.

如果你一直在看Antiwar.com，你现在几乎每天都能看到关于帝国主义对中国的矛盾升级的新文章。有时他们一天会发好几篇;上周四，Dave DeCamp发布了两篇完全不同的新闻，标题是《美国计划扩大在台湾地区的军事力量，此举可能会激怒中国》和《菲律宾与美国、澳大利亚就南海联合巡逻进行谈判》。台湾地区和南海是两个火药桶，战争随时可能以多种不同的方式迅速爆发。

If you know where to look for good upxes on the behavior of the US-centralized empire and you follow them from day to day, it's clear that things are accelerating toward a global conflict of unimaginable horror. As bad as things look right now, the future our current trajectory has us pointed toward is much, much, much worse.

如果你知道在哪里可以找到关于美国帝国主义行为的最新动态，并且你每天都在关注它们，很明显就会发现，事情正在加速走向一场难以想象的恐怖全球冲突。虽然现在的情况看起来很糟糕，但我们目前的轨迹为我们指明的未来可能会更糟糕。

Empire apologists will frx this trajectory toward global disaster as an entirely one-sided affair, with bloody-fanged tyrants trying to take over the world because they are evil and hate freedom, and the US-centralized alliance either cast in the role of poor widdle victim or heroic defender of the weak and helpless depending on which generates more sympathy on that day.

美帝国的辩护者会将这种走向全球灾难的轨迹描述为完全由一方的错误行为导致的，某个长着血牙的暴君正试图接管世界，因为他们是邪恶的，他们憎恨自由。以美国为中心的联盟要么扮演可怜的无助受害者的角色，要么扮演弱者和无助者的英雄捍卫者，这取决于哪一种身份能在那天获得民众更多的支持。

These people are lying. Any intellectually honest research into the west's aggressions and provocations against both Russia and China will show you that Russia and China are reacting defensively to the empire's campaign to secure US unipolar planetary hegemony; you might not agree with those reactions, but you cannot deny that they are reactions to a clear and deliberate aggressor.

这些人在撒谎。任何关于西方对俄罗斯和中国的侵略和挑衅的理性诚实的研究都会告诉你，俄罗斯和中国正在对美帝国确保单极星球霸权的运动做出防御性反应;你可能不同意这些反应，但你不能否认它们是对一个明确而蓄意的侵略者的反应。

This is important to understand, because whenever you say that something must be done to try and avert an Atomic Age world war, you'll get empire apologists saying "Well go protest in Moscow and Beijing then," as though the US power alliance is some kind of passive witness to all this. Which is of course complete bullshit; if World War III does indeed befall us, it will be because of choices that were made by the drivers of the western empire while ignoring off-ramp after off-ramp.

理解这一点很重要，因为每当你说必须做些什么来避免核武器时代的世界大战时，你就会听到美帝国的辩护者说“那就去莫斯科和北京抗议吧”，就好像美国的大国联盟只是这一切的某种被动见证者。这当然完全是扯淡;如果第三次世界大战真的降临到我们头上，那将是因为西方帝国的司机们所做的错误选择导致的，他们无视了一个又一个可能让事件转向的出口。

This tendency to flip reality and frx the western imperial power structure as the reactive force for peace against malevolent warmongers serves to help quash the emergence of a robust anti-war movement in the west, because if your own government is virtuous and innocent in a conflict then there's no good reason to go protesting it. But that's exactly what urgently needs to happen, because these people are driving us to our doom.

这种颠倒黑白、将西方帝国结构美化为对抗恶意战争贩子的正义力量的倾向，会压制西方正在蓬勃兴起的反战运动，因为如果你自己的政府在冲突中是善良无辜的，那么就没有理由去抗议它。但这正是我们迫切需要做的事情，因为这些人正在把我们推向毁灭。

In fact, it is fair to say that there has never in history been a time when the need to forcefully oppose the warmongering of our own western governments was more urgent. The attacks on Vietnam and Iraq were horrific atrocities which unleashed unfathomable suffering upon our world, but they did not pose any major existential threat to the world as a whole. The wars in Vietnam and Iraq killed millions; we're talking about a conflict that can kill billions.

事实上，可以公平地说，历史上从来没有哪个时候比现在更迫切地需要有力地反对我们西方政府的好战行为。对越南和伊拉克的袭击是可怕的暴行，给我们的世界带来了无法估量的痛苦，但它们并没有对整个世界构成任何重大的生存威胁。越南战争和伊拉克战争造成数百万人死亡;但我们谈论的是一场可以杀死数十亿人的冲突。

Each of the World Wars was in turn the worst single thing that happened to our species as a whole up until that point in history. World War I was the worst thing that ever happened until World War II happened, and if World War III happens it will almost certainly make World War II look like a schoolyard tussle. This is because all of the major players in that conflict would be armed with nuclear weapons, and at some point some of them are going to be faced with strong incentives to use them. Once that happens, Mutually Assured Destruction ceases to protect us from armageddon, and the "Mutual" and "Destruction" components come in to play.

每一次世界大战都是历史上发生在整个人类身上的最糟糕的事情。第一次世界大战是在第二次世界大战之前发生的最糟糕的事情，如果第三次世界大战发生，它几乎肯定会让第二次世界大战看起来像一场校园斗殴。这是因为这场冲突中的所有主要参与者都配有核武器，在某个时候，其中一些国家将面临必须使用核武器的绝境。一旦发生这种情况，“共同毁灭保证”就不再能保护我们免受世界末日的影响，“共同”和“毁灭”组件就开始发挥作用了。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


None of this needs to happen. There is nothing written in adamantine which says the US must rule the world with an iron fist no matter the cost and no matter the risk. There is nothing inscribed upon the fabric of reality which says nations can't simply coexist peacefully and collaborate toward the common good of all beings, can't turn away from our primitive impulses of domination and control, can't do anything but drift passively toward nuclear annihilation all because a few imperialists in Washington convinced everyone to buy into the doctrine of unipolarism.

这些本不需要发生。没有什么坚不可摧的文字规定必须让美国以铁腕统治世界，而不顾任何代价和风险。没有什么文字规定在现实的结构上，国家之间不能简单地和平共处，为所有人的共同利益合作；不能放弃我们原始的统治和控制的欲望；不能做任何事情，只能被动地走向核毁灭，这一切都是因为华盛顿的几个帝国主义者说服每个人都接受他们单极主义的教义。

But we're not going to turn away from this trajectory unless the masses start using the power of our numbers to force a change from warmongering, militarism and continual escalation toward diplomacy, de-escalation and detente. We need to start organizing against those who would steer our species into extinction, and working to pry their hands away from the steering wheel if they refuse to turn away. We need to resist all efforts to cast inertia on this most sacred of all priorities, and we need to start moving now. We're all on a southbound bus, and it's showing no signs of stopping.

我们无法离开这一轨道，除非我们开始利用我们人数的力量，迫使战争贩子、军国主义的局势持续升级向外交和局势缓和方向转变。我们需要开始把那些反对将我们的物种引向灭绝的人组织起来，如果战争贩子们拒绝转向，我们就要努力把他们的手从方向盘上撬开。我们需要抵制一切在这一最神圣的优先事项上的懒惰行为，我们需要现在就开始行动。因为我们目前都在一辆向南行驶的巴士上，而且丝毫没有停止的迹象。