For some, it will always be 1939. We are forever telling ourselves how, in the 1930s, the US and Britain underestimated the threat from Germany and Japan, how Winston Churchill alone among western leaders saw the danger and summoned his country to a defence of democracy against the Nazis. The 70 years of American leadership following the second world war were a catalogue of Churchillian moments, from the Berlin airlift to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
對某些人來說,世界永遠(yuǎn)停留在1939年。我們不停地告訴自己,上世紀(jì)30年代時,美英是怎樣低估了德國和日本的威脅,西方領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人中唯獨(dú)溫斯頓?邱吉爾(Winston Churchill)一人看出危險,并號召他的國人捍衛(wèi)民主,抗擊納粹(Nazis)。美國在二戰(zhàn)后持續(xù)70年的領(lǐng)頭,不乏這樣的“丘吉爾時刻”——從柏林空運(yùn)(1948年第一次柏林危機(jī)期間美國借助大規(guī)模空運(yùn)挫敗蘇聯(lián)對西柏林的封鎖——譯者注)到柏林墻的倒塌。