外刊| 经济学人 特朗普正式被捕
Leaders
社论
An American first
美国优先
The Trump Show
特朗普秀
What America’s friends should make of the latest drama
美国盟友应该如何看待这部最新的闹剧
YOU HAVE to hand it to The Trump Show. Just when you thought it had little left to offer, back it comes with a blockbuster episode. This week it offered a sensational courtroom drama, as Donald Trump became the first former American president to face criminal charges—34 of them in all. Those charges, which stem from three sets of hush money, including one to a former porn star, allegedly involved falsifying business records and the violation of campaign-finance laws. They are familiar, but lurid enough to grip an audience. Mr Trump has denied them all. America is, as ever, bitterly divided in its reactions, but united in being glued to the spectacle. What should the rest of the world make of it? Two contrasting reactions are in order.
你得把希望交给《特朗普秀》。就在你认为它再没什么可提供的时候，它又带来了一部轰动一时的剧集。本周，随着唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)成为第一位面临刑事指控的美国前总统——总共34项——上演了一场轰动的法庭大戏。这些指控来自三份封口费，其中一份是给一位前色情影星的，涉及伪造商业记录和违反竞选财务法律。这些新闻见怪不怪，但足够耸人听闻，能够抓住观众。特朗普否认了所有这些指控。美国一如既往地在事情反应上存在严重分歧，但在对这一奇观的关注上团结一致。世界其他地方应该如何看待这件事？有两种截然不同的反应。
One is to be relatively relaxed. All this may be a first for America, but not for other democracies, where taking former leaders to court is pretty common. From France (think of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy) to Italy (Bettino Craxi, Silvio Berlusconi) and Israel (Moshe Katsav, Ehud Olmert and now Binyamin Netanyahu), the list of prosecuted former presidents and prime ministers is long. Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is back in office after a 580-day stint in prison. This week a former president of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci, pleaded not-guilty to war crimes and crimes against humanity at a special tribunal in The Hague. Though Mr Trump calls his legal reckoning “AN ATTACK ON OUR COUNTRY THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE”, elsewhere such things have not obviously been a disaster for democracy. Often, it is quite the reverse.
一种要相对轻松。所有这些对美国来说可能是第一次，但对其他民主国家来说不是，在这些国家，将前领导人送上法庭是很常见的。从法国(想想雅克·希拉克和尼古拉·萨科齐)到意大利(贝蒂诺·克拉克西、西尔维奥·贝鲁斯科尼)和以色列(摩西·卡察夫、埃胡德·奥尔默特和现在的本雅明·内塔尼亚胡)，被起诉的前总统和前总理的名单很长。巴西总统路易斯·伊纳西奥·卢拉·达席尔瓦在狱中度过580天之后，重新上任。本周，科索沃前总统哈希姆·特哈契在海牙特别法庭上对战争罪和反人类罪进行了无罪辩护。尽管特朗普称他的法律清算是“对我们国家前所未有的攻击”，但在其他地方，这种事情显然不是民主的灾难。通常，情况恰恰相反。
True, Mr Trump’s opponents have tried and failed to take him down by means of the political system. The House of Representatives impeached him twice; twice the Senate could not muster the two-thirds vote needed to convict him. America’s constitution deliberately makes the impeachment process hard. Mr Trump survived the made-for-TV hearings of the House’s January 6th committee. Now the effort to punish him through the courts is starting with what appears to be the flimsiest and most convoluted of the various legal cases threatening him. For that reason, the indictment in New York looks like a mistake. But prosecuting a former president at least affirms a core principle of democracy, that no one is above the law.
没错，特朗普的对手曾试图通过政治制度将他拉下马，但没有成功。众议院两次弹劾他；参议院两次未能获得定罪所需的三分之二票数。美国宪法故意让弹劾程序变得困难。特朗普挺过了众议院1月6日委员会的电视听证会。现在，法院开始开始努力审查各种法律案件中最脆弱和最复杂的部分。出于这个原因，在纽约起诉看起来是一个错误。但起诉一位前总统至少肯定了民主的一个核心原则，即任何人都不能凌驾于法律之上。
Serious soap
严肃的肥皂剧
On another level, however, America’s friends should be alarmed. Many have spent the past two years in blessed relief that Mr Trump is no longer in power, desperate to believe that, surely, given his misconduct after the election in 2020 and his many troubles (from legal jeopardy to electoral setbacks and the rise of rivals), he cannot return to the White House. Such insouciance, always naive, now seems reckless, too. The latest attack has strengthened Mr Trump’s status as the Republican front-runner, with a hard but plausible path back to the presidency. That will start to influence countries’ calculations.
然而，在另一个层面上，美国的朋友们应该警惕了。过去两年，许多人都庆幸特朗普不再掌权，他们绝望地相信，鉴于他在2020年大选后的不当行为和他的许多麻烦(从法律风险到选举挫折和竞争对手的崛起)，他肯定无法重返白宫。这种总是天真的漫不经心，现在看来也是鲁莽的。最近针对特朗普攻击加强了他作为共和党领跑者的地位，这是一条艰难但似乎可行的重返总统宝座的道路。这将开始影响各国的预测。
Take Ukraine. Its leaders will conclude that the possibility of Mr Trump’s return to power makes it all the more vital to achieve military gains sooner rather than later. In Moscow Vladimir Putin will draw the opposite conclusion, that he should hold out for a time when Ukraine’s main Western backer might have a commander-in-chief who scorns the country and says Russia will eventually conquer all of it. Or take NATO. Many have feared a second-term Trump would abandon it. Fortunately, Russia’s aggression has strengthened the alliance and expanded it. On the day Mr Trump appeared in court, Finland formally became NATO’s 31st member. All of them now have a greater interest in fortifying the alliance to withstand another Trump shock.
以乌克兰为例。它的领导人得出结论，特朗普重新掌权可能使乌克兰尽早取得军事胜利的局面变得更加重要。在莫斯科，弗拉基米尔·普京将得出相反的结论，他应该坚持一段时间，因为乌克兰的主要西方支持者可能会有一个蔑视乌克兰的总司令，并表示俄罗斯最终将攻下乌克兰。或者以北约为例。许多人担心在第二次当选后总统后，特朗普会放弃它。幸运的是，俄罗斯的进攻加强了联盟，并扩大了它。特朗普出庭的当天，芬兰正式成为北约第31个成员国。他们所有人现在都更有兴趣加强北约，以抵御特朗普的另一次冲击。
Of course, a lot could happen to prevent a new White House series of The Trump Show. Now that the Manhattan case has created an American precedent for indicting a former president, it becomes more likely that other, stronger cases will follow—on election interference in Georgia, for example, or on his mishandling of classified documents. Legal imbroglios could yet overwhelm Mr Trump. Even if he wins his party’s nomination, thanks to his strength with the Republican base, the broader electorate may punish him in a rematch with Joe Biden. More twists in the soap opera are guaranteed. But America’s friends should remember the awful truth: it is reality, not a show.
当然，可能会发生很多事情来阻止特朗普秀的新白宫系列。既然曼哈顿案件开创了美国起诉前总统的先例，其他更强有力的案件可能会接踵而至——例如，对格鲁吉亚选举的干预，或者他对机密文件的不当处理。法律纠纷可能会让特朗普不知所措。即使他赢得了党内提名，由于他在共和党基础上的优势，更广泛的选民可能会在与乔·拜登的复赛中惩罚他。这部肥皂剧肯定会有更多曲折。但是美国的朋友们应该记住这个可怕的事实:这是现实，不是表演。
