为什么普京比西方棋高一着？

redchina

As Mr. Putin demonstrated in his speech Monday, the Russian president is still in the driver’s seat, and it is his decisions, not ours, that will shape the next stage of the confrontation. Russia, a power that Western leaders mocked and derided for decades (“a gas station masquerading as a country,” as Sen. John McCain once put it), has seized the diplomatic and military initiative in Europe, and the West is, so far, powerless to do anything about it. We wring our hands, offer Mr. Putin off-ramps, and hope that our carefully hedged descriptions of the sanctions we are prepared to impose will change his mind.

坐在主驾驶位置的是普京。普京的而不是西方的决定，将决定这一对抗在未来的进程。西方领导人在过去几十年中一直嘲笑和讥讽这个国家，然而，俄罗斯现在夺取了欧洲外交和军事的主动权。到目前为止，西方完全无能为力。

redchina

As Western leaders struggle to respond to Vladimir Putin’s unexpectedly dramatic challenge to the post-Cold War order in Europe, the record so far is mixed. The West has assembled something approaching a united stance on the limits of the concessions it is prepared to make and on the nature of the sanctions it is willing to impose should Mr. Putin choose war. Neither hyperactive grandstanding in Paris nor phlegmatic passivity from Berlin has prevented the emergence of a common Western position. This is an accomplishment for which the Biden administration deserves credit. Yet this is a defensive accomplishment, not a decisive one.

无论是巴黎的高贵姿态还是柏林的拖拖拉拉到最后都没有阻止西方以一个统一的姿态出现。拜登政府对此可以引以为荣。不过，这不过是防御性的成就。