德意志帝國與現代中國 – 理性或不理性的行為者? 以守勢現實主義角度的外交政策分析

Abstract

本文以守勢現實主義的角度去分析德意志帝國與天安門後中國外交政策的理性。守勢現實主義是一個理性政策的處方，攻勢不是。其他國際關係理論很可能是理性行為的處方，但是，他們無法解釋這個世界的現實層面並提供可行的政策建議，因為他們對理想主義的偏見。德意志帝國與當代中國的比較重要因為: 平常，對威廉德國的普遍看法是，他是一個有極大國族主義的外交政策，不理性的，完全自己一個人造就了一戰的行為者。德意志帝國與當代中國的比較很受歡迎。我們要好好的调查: 如果要做一個比較，我們到底要把中國跟什麼對象做比較。所謂的「世界政策」並沒有像在很多文獻裡註明的，造成了英國、法國、俄國之間的同盟結構。把守勢現實主義第一重要的前提視為定義理性行為的決定性因素，我陳述德國成為不理性的行為者是因為它無法適應國際體系裡面的重新權力分配結構。我的立場是，威廉德國成為不理性的行為者; 最早在1905年，幾乎可以肯定在1907年也是，並在1911年確立一定是不理性的行為者。倒是中國的部分我們可以說，它從1990年初到年代中代表著不理性的行為者，接著後十年扮演著理性行為者的角色， 卻在2008年後再度成為不理性的代表。在此兩個案例上，國族主義確實會干擾國家的現實政治外交政策。

This paper examines the rationality of Imperial Germany’s and post-Tiananmen China’s foreign policy from a defensive realist perspective, since defensive realism is a prescription for rational behavior, while offensive realism isn’t; other international relations theories might well be prescriptions for rational behavior, however, they fail to face the world as it is because of their bias towards idealism. A comparison between Imperial Germany and contemporary China matters because, comparing China to an actor – Wilhelmine Germany – which is commonly referred to as the paragon of an irrational actor, is not only unjust towards China, but also wrong, since Wilhelmine Germany wasn’t an irrational actor in the sense that it is widely conceived as. I argue that Imperial Germany was not an irrational before 1905-1907, years after first bringing up the indicative term depicting Germany as an irrational actor: “Weltpolitik”, an empty phrase which was not indicative of aggressive (enough) behavior because it wasn’t Weltpolitik which caused the formation of the Franco-Russian, Anglo-French, and Anglo-Russian alliances. Taking the number one premise of realism – state security / chances of survival – as the decisive factor to indicate rational state behavior, I argue that Germany became an irrational actor because it failed to adapt to the redistribution of capabilities in the system, first after 1904, but surely after 1907. On China’s part, we can say that it was an irrational actor from the early to mid-1990s. Starting in the late nineties, it followed a decade of representing a rational actor, resembling Bismarckian Germany so to say, only to go back to being an irrational actor again after 2008. Nationalism (rather nationalist ideology) played a role in interfering both on Germany’s and on China’s part with their Realpolitik approaches to their foreign policy.