Sanctions against Russia
对俄制裁
They don’t trust him
他们不信任他
The sanctions legislation to be passed by Congress is humiliating for the president
国会即将通过的制裁法律是对总统的羞辱
Jul 29th 2017/ United States
MEMBERS of Congress do not agree on much, but on July 25th, after a bipartisan deal, the House of Representatives voted by 419 votes to three for a bill that toughens sanctions on Russia. This is punishment both for Russia’s meddling in the election that brought President Donald Trump to power, and for its continuing aggression in Ukraine. (The bill also includes new sanctions against Iran andNorth Korea.) AsThe Economist went to press, the Senate was expected to follow suit: senators endorsed a similar bill 98-2 in June. The aim is to get the legislation passed before the summer recess and sent to the president for his signature.
美国国会成员能想到一起的时候不多，但在7月25日，两党协议之后，众议院以419票赞成3票反对的结果通过了一份加强对俄制裁的法案。这是为了惩罚俄国干预那场让唐纳德.特朗普总统执掌大权的大选，也是为了处分其在乌克兰的持续侵略。（这份法案也包含对伊朗和朝鲜的新制裁。）本报（《经济学人》）付印的同时，预计参议院也会步其后尘：6月份参议员们背书了一份类似法案98-2。目的是为了让这次立法在国会夏季休会之前通过，并送至总统处签字。
The implications are momentous. Mr Trump had hoped to lift the existing package of sanctions on Russia at some point. Now he has been stripped of his presidential authority to do so. Since the vote was almost unanimous, he mayhave no option but to accept it with as much good grace as he can muster. He couldveto it, but presidential vetoes can be overridden by a two-thirds majority inboth chambers, which in this instance could be achieved.
这暗指含意是深刻的。之前特朗普一直希望在某个时间点解除现行的对俄制裁。现在他连这么做的总统权力都已经被剥夺了。因为这次投票几乎是全体一致通过，特朗普除了尽量有风度地接受，可能没有其它选择余地。他可以否决，但是参众两院的三分之二多数可以推翻总统否决，比如这种情况。
The bill both locks in and extends previous sanctions aimed at Russia’s energy firms and banks. It also now targets any entity that does business with Russia’s defence or intelligence sectors—a measure that could threaten buyers of Russian weapons with secondary sanctions. This is a blow to Mr Trump, who made it clear during his campaign that he wanted improved ties with Moscow.It now appears that many of the undeclared meetings that have subsequently come to light between Mr Trump’s inner circle of advisers—Michael Flynn, Jared Kushner and Donald Trump junior—and an assortment of Russians with links of various directness to the Kremlin, most notably Sergey Kislyak, the ubiquitous and gregarious former Washington ambassador, were aimed at thawing relations.
这项法案不仅锁定而且扩大了之前针对俄国能源公司和银行的制裁，现在还针对任何和俄国防卫或情报部门有交易的实体－即可用二次制裁对采购俄国武器的买家构成威胁。这对特朗普来说可谓当头一棒，他曾在竞选中清楚表明希望改善美俄关系。现在看来很多之前尚未公开、随之暴露的见面会议都是为了缓和两国关系，即特朗普核心顾问圈子（迈克尔.弗林Michael Flynn、贾里德.库什纳JaredKushner、小唐纳德.特朗普）和一帮俄国人的见面会，这些俄国人与克里姆林宫有着千丝万缕的联系，其中最有名的就是前俄国驻美大使－哪里都见得到的社交达人谢尔盖· 基斯利亚克（Sergey Kislyak）。
Vladimir Putin—who, beyond the reasonable doubt of America’s intelligence agencies (if not its president), authorised the election-hacking operation—may have had reason to believe that Mr Trump, once in the White House, would find a way to relax sanctions. American and European Union sanctions have dragged down Russia’s economy, which, already reeling fromlow energy prices, contracted sharply in 2015 and has stagnated since.
而排除美国情报机构（若不包括美总统）合理怀疑[1]、允许大选黑客行动的弗拉基米尔.普京，他也许一直有理由相信：一旦特朗普入主白宫，就能找到一条放松制裁的出路。美国和欧盟的制裁已经拖垮了俄国经济，让俄国深陷于能源低价，2015年里经济严重萎缩并一蹶不振。
By overreaching, Mr Trump and Mr Putin have made the relaxation of sanctions politically toxic.That is bad enough for Mr Trump, but his humiliation does not end there. The Republican majority in Congress has, in essence, declared that it does nottrust a president from its own party to serve the national interest when it comes to dealing with Russia. There is no other way to interpret the provision in the legislation to prevent the president from suspending sanctions by executive order, in the absence of congressional approval, as Barack Obama did in order to secure the nuclear deal with Iran.
特朗普和普京因为做过了头，让放松制裁成了政治毒药。这对特朗普来说够糟了，但是他的脸丢到这还没丢完。实质上，国会中的大多数共和党人都表明：在对俄问题上，他们不信任自己本党总统会服务于国家利益。国会不批准，无论怎么解读制裁立法规定，都不能阻止总统用行政命令中止制裁，就像巴拉克.奥巴马为了达成伊朗核协议时的做法。
To lift Ukraine-related sanctions, Mr Trump would have to certify byletter that the conditions which had led to them no longer applied—in otherwords, that Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its support for separatists inthe east had ceased. Similarly, the new sanctions brought in to punish Russiafor its cyber-attacks could be eased only if Mr Trump could show solid proof that Russiawas actively and successfully clamping downon such activities. After receiving such a letter,Congress would then have 30 days to decide whether the president had made his case convincingly. Tellingly, the same conditions do not apply to the sanctionson North Korea and Iran.
为解除乌克兰相关制裁，特朗普必须用信函确认导致制裁的条件已不再适用－换句话说，即证明俄罗斯对克里米亚的侵吞和对（乌）东部分裂分子的支持业已停止。同样地，如果特朗普能够拿出确凿证据证明俄罗斯积极并成功地打压了其网络攻击行为，那么出于惩罚该行为的新制裁也会减轻。国会收到这样的信函后，有30天的时间来决定总统是否有足够的说服力。需要注意的是，对俄制裁条件并不适用于对北韩和伊朗的制裁。
Foreign-policy practitioners, including Mr Trump’s secretary of state, RexTillerson, have warned that this creates a potentially damaging precedent. By deliberately tying this president’s hands over Russia, albeit with good reason,Congress risks undermining the ability of future administrations to conduct diplomacy, which often requires flexibilityin light of changing circumstances. The bar foreventually removing sanctions will be so high that, in effect, they become permanent.
（美国）外交政策的实践者，包括特朗普的国务卿雷克斯.蒂勒森都警告这会导致一个具有潜在危害性的先例。国会故意让美总统和俄罗斯“牵手”，即使是出于好心，也冒着破坏未来内阁外交执行力的风险，外交工作需要灵活应对不断变化的情况。而最终移除制裁的高墙也会变得十分之高，乃至事实上永久存在。
America’s European allies are worried too, both about the longer-term effects of this bill and the immediate impact of some of the new measures contained in it. The penalties that could be levied on European firms taking part in the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, which on present plans will start pumping gas from Russia to Germany in 2019, have already raised concerns in Berlin and Brussels. Those qualms are not shared by all EU countries, especially former members of the Soviet bloc, such as Poland and the Baltic states, who want to reduce their dependence on Russian energy.
美国的欧洲盟友也是忧心忡忡，忧虑的是这份制裁法案的更长远影响和其中一些新手段的直接后果。其中可能对参与北溪2号（Nord Stream 2）管道项目的欧洲公司施加的惩罚已经开始让德国和比利时两国感到不安了，这个备受争议的项目按现有计划将于2019年开始从俄罗斯向德国输入天然气。但并非所有欧盟国家都疑虑重重，尤其是前苏联集团的成员国，比如波兰和波罗的海诸国，他们反倒希望能减少自身对俄罗斯能源的依赖。
How might Mr Trump respond to such a setback to his ability to conductforeign policy on his own terms? One possibility is that it will increase hisdetermination to find a way out of the Iran nuclear deal, which, likeObamacare, he once pledged to scrap. For America’s nuclear-related sanctions onIran to remain suspended—a key condition of the 2015 agreement—the StateDepartment must inform Congress whether it believes Iran to be in fullcompliance every 90 days. So far, Mr Trump has twice reluctantly agreed tocertify and thus renew the presidential sanctions waiver. But when he did so on July 17th, it was only after kicking back hard against the recommendation of most of his senior foreign-policy and national-security team.
特朗普会怎么应对自己在外交政策执行力上的这个跟头呢？可能性之一就是他会更加坚决地想方设法脱手伊朗核协议，他曾保证将之废弃，就像保证废弃奥巴马医改一样。要想美国对伊核相关制裁保持中止状态的话－2015协议涉及一个关键条件－即美国国务院必须每隔90天就向国会报告，称相信伊朗完全遵守核协议。截至目前，特朗普已经有两次不愿意同意了，才得以继续总统制裁豁免。但在7月17日他这么做的时候，是在激烈驳回他的最高级外交和国安团队的建议之后才行。
The White House now seems to be looking for a way to get out of certifyingthe Iran deal when it comes up forrenewalin October. To that end, the president has ordered White House staffers to bypass Mr Tillerson and to come up with the evidence and arguments he needs to undo the deal that the State Department has failed toprovide. Mr Tillerson is reported to be fed up with his lot.
现在白宫似乎希望到10月份伊朗协议再确认时再想方法摆脱该协议。到那个时候，特朗普已经命令白宫官员绕过蒂勒森，拿出他需要的证据和论据撤销这份国务院拿不出的协议。据称蒂勒森已经受够了。
It is still not clear whether Mr Trump wants to kill the Iran deal or tryand renegotiate it—something that the other parties to it (Britain, France,Germany, Russia, China and the EU) have already ruled out. But on Iran, unlike Russia, Mr Trump can almost certainly rely on the support of Republicans in Congress for whatever he decides to do. After the ignominy of losing control over sanctions against Russia, the urge to appear decisive and in control maybe hard for Mr Trump to resist.
目前还不清楚特朗普究竟想不想抹杀伊朗协议，或者想不想尝试重新谈判－涉及到的其他国家（英、法、德、俄、中以及欧盟）都已经排除了这么做的可能性。但不同于俄罗斯的是，在伊朗问题上特朗普几乎可以完全仰仗国会共和党对他任何决定的支持。对特朗普来说，在丧失对俄制裁控制权这么丢脸的事之后，让自己看起来很果决、并且大权在握的这个强烈愿望是很难抵得住的。
原文链接：https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21725603-vote-republicans-bind-hands-president-their-own-party
译注：[1]“beyond a reasonable doubt”排除合理怀疑标准（法律用语），即陪审团只有在检方提出的证据能够排除所有合理的怀疑之后，才可以判定被告人有罪。换言之，如果陪审员（作为一名正常的、谨慎的人）对被告人是否犯罪仍存有合乎情理的怀疑，则陪审团会认为检察机关提供的证据还没有达到“排除合理怀疑”的标准，就会判定被告人无罪。