H.R. McMaster Doesn’t Think Donald Trump Is Very Good at Making Deals
NICOLAS NIARCHOS2017年，国家安全顾问H·R·麦克马斯特在白宫的一次会议上。 Tom Brenner/The New York TimesAT WAR WITH OURSELVES: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House, by H.R. McMaster《与我们自己为敌：在特朗普的白宫履行我的职责》，作者：H·R·麦克马斯特Recently on the campaign trail, Donald Trump has talked up his aggressive stance on C****, positioning himself as a tough negotiator in a brutal trade war. But a new memoir by Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, one of Trump’s national security advisers, throws that narrative, and many other stories that Trump tells about his time in office, into stark relief.在近日的竞选活动中，唐纳德·特朗普大谈自己咄咄逼人的对*姿态，将自己塑造成一个残酷贸易战中的强硬谈判者。然而在H·R·麦克马斯特中将新出版的回忆录中，这位特朗普的国家安全顾问的讲述与这一形象乃至特朗普说过的许多任内故事大相径庭。As McMaster writes in “At War With Ourselves,” the president could sometimes be kept on the straight and narrow with a clever dose of reverse psychology. But just as often, McMaster shows Trump to have been an unpredictable waffler who undermined himself to the advantage of his competitors on the world stage.麦克马斯特在《与我们自己为敌》中写道，用一点聪明的反向心理，有时候能让这位总统保持在正轨上。但同时，麦克马斯特说他也经常会变得不知所云，难以捉摸，导致在与世界上的对手打交道时处于下风。“At War With Ourselves” is intended to be a companion to “Battlegrounds,” McMaster’s 2020 assessment of U.S. foreign policy backsliding since the Cold War, but it works well as a stand-alone and serves as essential reading for anyone countenancing a potential second round of Trump as a global leader. The general shows how, despite his best efforts to help the president, the supposed master of the “art of the deal” was treated like a “chump” by a roster of the world’s top authoritarians.《与我们自己为敌》本意是应该与《战场》(Battlegrounds)配合阅读的，后者是麦克马斯特在2020年对冷战以来美国外交政策的倒退做出的评估，不过单独作为一本读物也未尝不可，对于那些想支持特朗普第二次成为领导人的人来说，则是必读。本书让我们看到，尽管麦克马斯特尽全力帮助总统，这位“交易艺术”大师还是被形形色色的大国领导人“当猴耍”。Flattery and pomp from leaders like Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Russian president Vladimir V. Putin seem to have been all that was required to get in Trump’s good graces. In 2018, McMaster found Trump in the Oval Office scrawling a cheerful note to Putin across a New York Post article reporting that the Russian president had denigrated the American political system but called Trump a good listener. Like a child with his Christmas wish list, the leader of the free world asked McMaster to send it to the Kremlin. It was especially bad timing: Evidence was coming to light that Putin had directed an assassination on British soil. McMaster did not forward the note, later explaining to an infuriated Trump that his letter would “reinforce the narrative that you are somehow in the Kremlin’s pocket.”像土耳其的埃尔多安和俄罗斯的普京这样的领导人对他百般奉承，似乎已经足以让特朗普放下一切戒心。2018年，麦克马斯特发现特朗普正在椭圆形办公室里给普京写一封热情洋溢的信，因为《纽约邮报》的一篇报道说，这位俄罗斯总统刚刚贬低了美国的政治体制，但赞扬特朗普善于倾听。于是自由世界的领袖就像攥着圣诞节心愿单的孩子一样，要麦克马斯特把信发到克里姆林宫去。时机很不凑巧：当时已经有证据表明，普京下令在英国领土上进行了一场暗杀。麦克马斯特没有把信发出，后来他跟怒不可遏的特朗普解释说，这封信会“强化你在替克里姆林宫做事的叙事”。“At War With Ourselves” is beautifully written and never dull. Its author is as concerned with the commander in chief as he is with the destructive bickering among the president’s deputies who hurled “accusations of disloyalty” in their efforts to reach Trump’s ear. In tale after tale, McMaster shows how the former president allowed his own prejudices and the petty rivalries within his administration to undermine his policy goals in what McMaster terms a “vortex of vitriol.” Trump’s “indiscipline,” he writes, “made him the antagonist in his own story.”《与我们自己为敌》的文笔优美，不会让人感到枯燥。除了三军统帅本人，作者同样也关注总统的助手们的纷争，这些助手们给别人“扣上不忠诚的帽子”，以求让特朗普能听到他们的想法。麦克马斯特通过一个又一个故事展现出这位前总统自己的偏见和政府官员们的狭隘内斗给他的政策目标构成了怎样的损害，作者形容那就是一个“尖酸刻薄的漩涡”。特朗普的“缺乏约束”，他写道，“使他在自己的故事里成了大反派”。The bookis rife with literary references to, among others, Chaucer, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius and Shakespeare. Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, is described both as Iago, the soldier villain who plays on his leader’s insecurities in “Othello,” and as one of the “weird sisters” who incite Macbeth with splenetic prophecies.书中大量使用文学典故，比如乔叟、爱比克泰德、马可·奥勒留和莎士比亚。在他的笔下，特朗普的首席策略师史蒂夫·班农是《奥赛罗》中的伊阿古，一个利用主子的疑心病搬弄是非的反派，同时又是《麦克白》中的“怪异姐妹”，用包藏祸心的预言蛊惑主人公。The Shakespearean metaphors only go so far. Does McMaster really think of Trump, like Othello, as a “noble and valiant” outsider who was sadly poisoned by the strain of his office and the selfishness of his officers? The answer is probably not: Beyond having what McMaster terms a “disruptive nature,” it is hard to see what good there was before things got worse. Perhaps McMaster, who served in the military for three and a half decades, can’t shake his basic sense of duty to the presidency — on the final page, he talks about how he hopes young people will take the lesson that there are “tremendous rewards” associated with serving “any administration.”然而莎剧的隐喻有其局限。麦克马斯特真的认为特朗普就像奥赛罗一样，是一个“高尚而英勇”的局外人，不幸被自己的地位和下属的自私所毒害？回答可能是否定的：除了麦克马斯特所说的“颠覆的本性”，即使在情况恶化之前，我们也很难看到他的身上有什么值得赞许的地方，也许，三十五年的军旅生涯让麦克马斯特无法摆脱忠于总统的本能——在全书最后一页，他说他希望年轻人能从中学到的是，无论供职于“哪一届政府”，都是会有“无与伦比的收获”的。If McMaster respects the office of the president, the Trump he depicts in the book seems to go out of his way to disrespect it. Time and again, Trump can’t seem to focus on briefings and responds to serious problems with inane suggestions. “Why don’t we just bomb the drugs?” he asks when the conversation turns to Mexico. (McMaster, in an apparent act of self-soothing, suggests that Trump “only” meant to shock his advisers with such statements, but he never seems to ask himself to what end.)如果说麦克马斯特对总统之位充满了敬意，那么他在书中描绘的那个特朗普则是在想尽办法侮辱这个位置。我们一次又一次看到，特朗普在听取汇报时无法集中注意力，总是就一些重大的问题给出毫无意义的建议。“我们为什么不干脆把毒品炸了呢？”他在谈起墨西哥的时候说道。（麦克马斯特显然是在自我安慰地说，特朗普“只是”想用这样的言论吓一吓他的顾问们，但从来没问过自己这样做是想达到什么目的。）McMaster even traces President Biden’s signature foreign policy failure, the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021, to the “atmosphere of inconsistency” promulgated by Trump. What’s more, with the 2024 presidential election in sight, McMaster questions whether the 78-year-old Trump can still “perform well the sometimes grueling job of president.” He notes that the 13-day trip to Asia “tired” him and stretched his patience — and that was seven years ago.麦克马斯特甚至提到，拜登总统的标志性外交惨败——2021年那场混乱的阿富汗撤军——祸起于特朗普散布的“反复无常的气氛”。眼看2024年总统大选即将到来，麦克马斯特还对78岁的特朗普能否“胜任有时相当繁重的总统工作”表示怀疑。他提到那次13天的亚洲之行让他“疲惫不堪”，耐心已经到了极限——而那还是七年前的事。The confusion and capriciousness that permeate the administration in “At War With Ourselves” are terrifying to consider in retrospect; even more so when one imagines them in the context of today’s world, so close to regional wars in the Middle East and the South China Sea.如今回头看，《与我们自己为敌》中特朗普政府的混乱与任性可谓骇人听闻；再将其放到今日世界的语境下，想到中东和南海的地区战争一触即发，就更是可怕。The message of the book appears to be that Trump is unsuited for another term, although McMaster, known for what the New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe once described as “strenuous expressions of humility,” never explicitly goes so far as to say so, and he even lays some blame on senior advisers like himself. He does, however, indulge in a few rounds of old-school psychoanalyzing. “Seneca emphasized the need to have control over one’s own mind,” he writes, noting that “Trump’s anxieties and insecurities rendered him vulnerable.”从本书所传达的讯息来看，特朗普无法胜任第二个任期，不过，曾被《纽约客》作家帕特里克·拉丹·基弗形容“恪守谦恭态度”的麦克马斯特没有明确说出来，甚至还表示像他这样的高级顾问也负有一定责任。不过他倒是放手给出了一些老派的心理分析。“塞内卡强调了控制自己的意志的必要性，”他写道，而“特朗普的焦虑和安全感缺失成了他的软肋”。This, as Hamlet might say, is the vicious mole of nature, the thing in Trump that Trump, let alone McMaster, could not tame or fight. In the end, the most Shakespearean character in McMaster’s tragedy might be the general himself. He gave his all to a leader he is convinced is fatally flawed, but whose tempest of energy he never stops believing he can direct toward some greater purpose — only to be summarily fired and discarded thanks to a bickering and back-stabbing cabal, and the man who yields to it.正如哈姆雷特会说的，这正是人性中的“丑陋的黑痣”，别说麦克马斯特，即使特朗普自己也无法制服或对抗它。归根结底，麦克马斯特的悲剧中最具莎剧人物特色的可能正是将军自己。他毫无保留地辅佐一个他明知存在致命缺陷的领导人，他的赤诚之心让他始终相信，他可以促成一些好的结果——到头来却被草草革职，原因只是一场争执和背刺的阴谋，而特朗普也没有做出反对。
