书评 | Russia’s Military Revival（俄罗斯的军事复兴）

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本期国际化部为大家带来了《俄罗斯的军事复兴》的书评编译。

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PART
一

书评作者

MATTHEW J. SCHMIDT，University of New Haven文理学院副教授。他是一位美国军事、俄罗斯、普京和美国对朝鲜外交政策等问题上的专家。他也是国家安全改革课题的一位核心成员。本篇书评摘自Political Science Quarterly2019年第3期。

PART
二

书评译文

A book on this topic is long overdue. The rise of post‐Soviet Russia under Vladimir Putin cannot adequately be told without the story of the military revival that is the focus of this detailed study. To her credit (and first chapter coauthor Hanna Smith), Bettina Renz is concerned with tempering any expectations the reader may have that what follows is a recounting of Putin’s military adventures. Rather, it is the “nexus between military power and foreign policy,” not the brute use of arms, that is the focus of the book (p. 19). 

探讨这个话题的书早该出现了。只有了解了俄罗斯军事复兴的过程，才能充分理解普京治下后苏联时代俄罗斯的崛起。军事复兴就是这本详尽的著作的核心。读者可能觉得自己将读到有关普京军事冒险的平铺直叙。值得赞赏的是，Bettina Renz 打破了这种预期（第一章是与Hanna Smith 合著的）。与读者想象的相反，本书聚焦的是“军事力量和外交政策的相互交织”，而非单纯的武力使用（第19页）。

The aim is to contextualize the revival of Russia’s military within the full toolkit of its foreign policy, domestic politics, and ideological and historical sense of self. Militaries are valuable even if they do not fight; they have utility as symbols in domestic politics and as tools of disruption or harassment to incite an adversary to overreact, even if force, per se, is never used. Choosing Igor Orlov’s definition as the best, Renz intends to situate the revival of the military in terms of the historical quest by Moscow for derzhavnost, the power and greatness of the state to “influence and apply pressure” in the world (p. 23). 

这本书致力于把俄罗斯的军事复兴放在一个全面的大背景下来探讨。这个大背景包括俄罗斯的外交政策、内政，以及意识形态和该国长期以来的自我认知。即使不打仗，军队也有价值；它们既是内政的象征，也能不动一兵一卒地挑起事端，让敌对势力过度反应。Igor Orlov 对军事复兴的定义最接近Renz的看法，她借Orlov的定义，将军事复兴定义成莫斯科长期以来对绝对霸权[1]的追求。所谓绝对霸权就是一国在世界上“施加影响力和压力”的权力和地位（第23页）。

This secular religion of Russia’s great‐power destiny is what Putin stoked as a means to rise to power during the Chechen Wars of the 1990s. But this same period is a curious omission in the book given how central the war in Chechnya is to Putin’s view of force. The upward curve of Russian military expenditures and the first glimmers of military reform begin with Putin’s takeover of the war in 1998–99. The brutal style of so‐called hybrid political/ military warfare that contemporary Russia has become known for in Syria, or with the assassination operations in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, were first adopted in the post‐Soviet era in Chechnya. Further, Putin’s first attempt at military revitalization began as an urgent attempt to professionalize the conscript force he sent into Chechnya and Dagestan. As Renz notes, this is an ongoing project still not completed after nearly 20 years (p. 196). As context to Russia’s military revival, the wars of the 1990s and early 2000s serve as pivotal case studies of how Putin views military force and of the historical and ideological issues around which the book is structured. 

俄罗斯对霸权的追求就是该国世俗版本的宗教。在上世纪90年代的车臣战争期间，普京通过放大这种霸权情结来上位掌权。车臣战争对于塑造普京的军事观念有着至关重要的作用，但是这段岁月在本书中被省略了，令人匪夷所思。普京在1998-99年接棒指挥车臣战争，俄罗斯军费的增长和首次军事改革开始于此。在叙利亚，在英国及其他地方的暗杀行动中，俄罗斯使用了残忍的所谓政治-军事混合斗争方式，从而扬名，这种斗争方式最早是在后苏联时代对车臣使用的。另外，普京曾迫切地试图对派往车臣和达吉斯坦的雇佣兵进行专业化改造，这就是他对军事复兴的首次尝试。如Renz所言，将近20年过去了，军事复兴仍是俄罗斯一项未竟的工程（第196页）。发生于上世纪90年代和本世纪初的那些战争构成了俄罗斯军事复兴的背景，它们是研究普京如何看待军事力量、研究本书聚焦的历史和意识形态话题的关键案例。

But if the move to professionalize Russian troops has been slow in coming, Renz details how Russian military equipment has continued to advance. The Strategic Rocket Force, the military branch in charge of the nuclear missile force, has managed to rapidly modernize. This befits Renz’s focus on the political and historical context of things. In what is an oft‐ repeated phrase, the success of modernization in missiles, aircraft, vehicles, radar, and so on “should not be overstated.” That the strategic rocket forces were the first and best case of revival is as much about the weakness of reform in the other branches as about Russia’s great‐power status. 

在俄罗斯军队专业化进展缓慢的情况下，Renz 还是详细展示了俄罗斯军事装备的发展。战略火箭力量是主管核导弹的军事部门，它已经迅速实现了现代化。这件事与Renz 对政治历史背景的关注相得益彰。有句老生常谈，说导弹、飞机、汽车和雷达之类装备的成功现代化“不应该被夸大”。战略火箭力量成为复兴的最佳例证在反映俄罗斯霸权地位的同时，恰恰也能反映其他部门改革的薄弱。

Renz is at her best in contextualizing military reform in Russia. Its nuclear force, after all, is really the only thing that gives Putin global stature, politically or militarily. Whatever the successes of reform in the broader military, Renz repeatedly pulls readers back, to remind them of the long history Russia has of “punching above its weight” (p. 197). 

Renz 全方位地考量俄罗斯的军事改革。毕竟，不论在政治上还是在军事上，俄罗斯的核力量确实是唯一在全球范围内赋予普京地位的因素。不论军事改革有多成功，Renz 反复给读者浇凉水，提醒他们注意俄罗斯一直都“没看上去的那么厉害”（第197页）。

William Odom’s The Collapse of the Soviet Military is the other half of what, along with Renz, should become the twin gospels of Russian military studies in the West. At the end of his book, Odom writes an extended essay on Russian political history; like Renz, he focuses on setting the broader context of military reform. He ends with a prediction that the new Russian state of the 1990s would stay on the path of law and democracy only so long as the role of Russian military does not become the “foundation of Russia’s sovereignty and stability” (Odom, The Collapse of the Soviet Military [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998], 404). It is an issue that remains key, as Renz clearly appreciates in her well‐researched and clearly articulated study. The military academies of the West would do well to put this book in their libraries. 

William Odom 的The Collapse of the Soviet Military 和Renz所著的本书是西方俄罗斯军事研究领域的两本权威。在Odom那本书的末尾，他写了一篇关于俄罗斯政治史的长文；和Renz一样，Odom也关注俄罗斯军事改革的大背景。在那篇长文的末尾，他预测上世纪90年代的新生俄罗斯只有在军队不变成“俄罗斯主权与稳定之基石”的前提下，才可以走在法治和民主的道路上（Odom, The Collapse of the Soviet Military [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998], 404）。这一点仍是关键，在Renz 擘肌分理的研究中，她也这么认为。西方的军事院校最好都把Renz 这本书纳入馆藏。

注释：

1.“derzhavnost”一词是俄语，此处译为“绝对霸权”，它没有直接对应的英文和中文释义。其大致意思和英文“hegemony”最接近，指“成为公认的霸权”，详见Seva Gunitsky, “One Word to Improve U.S. Russia Policy,” The New Republic, April 27, 2018, https://newrepublic.com/article/148140/one-word-fix-us-russia-policy.，译者注。

编  译：夏夕钦

审  校：王汉林

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