全球逾70年的衝突給俄烏戰爭的啟示

Any Russian invasion of Ukraine was long expected to play out as a kind of postmodern war, defined by 21st-century weapons like media manipulation, battlefield-clouding disinformation, cyberattacks, false flag operations and unmarked fighters.

俄國對烏克蘭的任何入侵早已被認為會是一場後現代戰爭，由21世紀武器界定，如媒體操縱、戰場假消息戰、網路攻擊、栽贓行動以及無名戰士。

Such elements have featured in this war. But it is traditional 20th-century dynamics that have instead dominated: shifting battle lines of tanks and troops; urban assaults; struggles over air supremacy and over supply lines; and mass mobilization of troops and of weapons production.

這些的確是這場戰爭的特點。但主導局面的仍是20世紀的傳統動能：戰車與部隊不斷變化的戰線、城市攻防、爭奪制空權和補給線，大規模動員軍隊與生產武器。

The war’s contours, now nearly a year into the fighting, resemble not so much those of any future war but rather those of a certain sort of conflict from decades past: namely, wars fought between nations in which one does not outright conquer the other.

這場持續近一年戰爭的輪廓，不太像任何未來的戰爭，較像是數十年前的某種衝突，也就是一方未完全征服另一方的國與國戰爭。

Such conflicts have grown rarer in the period since 1945, an era often associated more with civil wars, insurgencies and American invasions that have quickly shifted to occupation.

自1945年以來，這類衝突愈來愈少，這一時代往往較常跟內戰、叛亂及美國入侵後迅速轉變成占領的有關。

But wars between nations have continued: between Israel and Arab states, Iran and Iraq, Armenia and Azerbaijan, India and Pakistan, Ethiopia and Eritrea. These are the conflicts that military historians and analysts, when asked to draw parallels with the Russian war in Ukraine, tend to cite.

但國與國間的戰爭仍繼續上演：以色列和阿拉伯國家、伊朗和伊拉克、亞美尼亞和亞塞拜然、印度和巴基斯坦、衣索比亞和厄利垂亞。當被問到能跟俄國在烏克蘭戰爭相提並論之事時，軍事史學家跟分析人士往往會引用這些衝突。

“You have these big commonalities. In Korea, for example,” said Sergey Radchenko, a Johns Hopkins University historian, referring to the Korean War. “Big conventional battles. Bombardment of infrastructure.”

約翰霍普金斯大學歷史學家拉德琴科在談到韓戰時說：「這些有很大的共同點，像是在韓國，大型傳統戰鬥、轟炸基礎設施。」

Every war is unique. But certain trends that have played out across this subset of conflicts, including in Ukraine, may help to shed light on what drives week-to-week fighting, what tends to determine victory or failure and how such wars typically end — or don’t.

每場戰爭都獨一無二，但包括烏克蘭在內的這類衝突中出現的某些趨勢，可能有助於闡明何者導致一周又一周的戰鬥，以及決定勝利或失敗的因素是什麼，還有這類戰爭通常如何結束，或是不會結束。

One after another, Radchenko said, such wars have started over fundamental territorial disputes that date back to the warring countries’ founding and are therefore baked into both sides’ very conception of their national identities. This makes the underlying conflict so difficult to resolve that fighting often recurs repeatedly over many decades.

拉德琴科表示，這樣的戰爭一場接一場，起因可追溯到交戰雙方建國時期重大領土爭端，因此已深植於雙方各自國家認同之中。這造成潛在衝突難以解決，戰爭經常在數十年間反覆發生。

Those wars have often turned, perhaps more than any other factor, on industrial attrition, as each side strains to maintain the flow of materiel like tanks and anti-aircraft munitions that keep it in the fight.

也許比其他任何因素還重要的是，這些戰爭往往轉向工業消耗，因為雙方為了繼續戰鬥下去，都在努力維持戰車和防空彈藥等物資的產出。

美「帝王最高院」擺官威 學者憂違權力分立

The conventional critique of the Supreme Court these days is that it has lurched to the right and is out of step with the public on many issues. That is true so far as it goes.

當前對美國聯邦最高法院的批評，不外乎它已向右傾，以及在諸多議題上和社會大眾脫節，在某種程度上誠然如此。

But a burst of recent legal scholarship makes a deeper point, saying the current court is distinctive in a different way: It has rapidly been accumulating power at the expense of every other part of the government.

但近來法律學術界接連有研究提出一個更深入的觀點，認為目前的最高法院，是以一種迥異於過往的方式展現其獨特性，亦即迅速的集權，代價則是政府其他每一個部門。

The phenomenon was documented last November by Mark A. Lemley, a law professor at Stanford University, in an article called “The Imperial Supreme Court” in The Harvard Law Review.

美國史丹福大學法學教授藍姆利，上月在「哈佛法律評論」發表一篇題為「帝王最高法院」的文章，記載前述現象。

“The court has not been favoring one branch of government over another, or favoring states over the federal government, or the rights of people over governments,” Lemley wrote. “Rather, it is withdrawing power from all of them at once.”

藍姆利在文中寫道，「最高法院並未獨厚政府中的哪個部門；或偏好州政府勝於聯邦政府；或偏好人民的權利勝過各級政府」，「最高法院反而正同時將權力從這些部門中抽離」。

He added, “It is a court that is consolidating its power, systematically undercutting any branch of government, federal or state, that might threaten that power, while at the same time undercutting individual rights.”

藍姆利補充說，「最高法院正鞏固一己權力，有系統地削弱可能威脅這種權力的任何政府部門，不論聯邦或州，同時還削弱了個人權利」。

The arguments last December over the role of state legislatures in setting rules for federal elections seemed to illustrate the point. The justices seemed ready to elevate their own role in the process, giving themselves the right to do something ordinarily forbidden: second-guess state courts’ interpretations of state law.

本月針對州議會就聯邦層級選舉訂定規則的論辯，似乎闡明了上述法學界觀點。最高法院大法官們似乎準備提升他們在此一程序中的角色，賦予他們權利去做一些通常被視為禁忌之事：質疑州法院對州法的解釋。

In a similar vein, Justice Elena Kagan noted the majority’s imperial impulses in a dissent from a decision in June that limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to address climate change.

以類似的態度，大法官伊蓮娜．凱根就六月最高法院一起限制美國環保署因應氣候變遷能力的判決，提出不同意見書，其中就提到多數大法官那股帝王式衝動。

“The court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency — the decision maker on climate policy,” she wrote. “I cannot think of many things more frightening.”

凱根撰文指稱，「最高法院竟委任自己為氣候政策的決策者，而非由國會或專家機構決定，我想不出還有多少事比這個更令人恐懼」。

A second study, to be published in Presidential Studies Quarterly, concentrated on cases involving the executive branch and backed up Lemley’s observations with data. Taking account of 3,660 decisions since 1937, the study found that the court led since 2005 by Chief Justice John Roberts has been “uniquely willing to check executive authority.”

另一項刊登在美國「總統研究季刊」的研究，則聚焦於涉及行政部門的判例，並藉由數據資料支持藍姆利的觀察。該研究納入自1937年以來的3660起判決，發現首席大法官羅伯茲自2005年領導最高法院以來，已「不尋常地賣力制約行政權」。

The executive branch in the Roberts court era won just 35% of the time in those cases, a rate more than 20 percentage points lower than the historical average.

在羅伯茲主持最高法院的時期，行政部門在最高法院的訴訟中只贏得35%判決，比歷史平均值低逾20個百分點。