正文
If the U.S. military were to hit the country, it would be on the logic that sparking a real conflict in East Asia is preferable to accepting a theoretical threat to the United States.
要是美军打算进攻朝鲜，那是因为与其让美国受到理论上的威胁，还不如在东亚掀起一场真正的战争。
On a sunny morning show on Tuesday, Lindsey Graham made an exceedingly dark calculation. North Korea’s second test of an intercontinental ballistic missile meant that Kim Jong Un is nearly capable of placing a nuclear warhead on a long-range missile and hitting the United States with it, the Republican senator noted on the Today show. And America can’t allow such a “madman” to get to that point, at whatever cost to non-Americans.
在周二的一场欢快的早间电视节目上，林赛·格雷厄姆（冬天毛注：共和党南卡罗来纳州参议员）进行了一番异常黑暗的剖析。这位共和党参议员在《今日秀》上指出，朝鲜的第二次洲际弹道导弹测试意味着金正恩几乎已经具有了用远程导弹装载核弹头打击美国的能力，而美国不能允许这样一个“疯子”走到那一步——无论非美国人要为此付出多大代价。
Donald Trump agrees, Graham added, and he knows that because he’s heard it straight from the president: Trump has “got to choose between homeland security and regional stability,” Graham argued. “Japan, South Korea, China would all be in the crosshairs of a war if we started one with North Korea. But if [North Korea gets] a missile they can hit California, maybe other parts of America.”
格雷厄姆补充说，唐纳德·特朗普赞成这一点，而他之所以会知道，是因为他是听总统本人亲口这么说的。格雷厄姆认为，特朗普“必须在美国国土安全和亚洲地区稳定间二选一”。“如果我们和朝鲜开战的话，战火将会殃及日本、韩国和中国，但如果（朝鲜）有了导弹，他们就可以打击加州，或者是美国的其他地区。”
“If there’s going to be a war to stop [Kim Jong Un], it will be over there. If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die here. And [Trump’s] told me that to my face,” Graham said. “That may be provocative, but not really. When you’re president of the United States, where does your allegiance lie? To the people of the United States.”
格雷厄姆说：“如果开战阻止（金正恩）的话，战争会在那边收场；如果有成千上万的人要死，他们会死在那边，而不是死在我们这边。（特朗普）是当着我的面这么说的。这话听着可能有些气人，但其实不然。既然你是美国总统，那么你应该忠于谁？当然是忠于美国人民。”
Graham is particularly fond of military solutions to foreign-policy problems; in his Today show appearance, he proposed “destroy[ing] … North Korea itself” to rid the country of nuclear weapons—which, whatever that means, is more aggressive than the Trump administration’s stated goals for any military operations. But Graham has expressed in blunt terms what other U.S. officials gloss over with their vague talk of “military response options” and everything remaining “on the table.”
在外交问题上，格雷厄姆尤其热衷于军事手段，在《今日秀》节目中，他提出要通过“摧毁……朝鲜本身”来剥夺其核武器——不管他说这话是什么意思，这都比特朗普政府公开宣布的军事行动目标要激进得多。但是，其他美国政府官员用“军事回应手段”和“一切仍可协商”这些含混说法掩盖的问题，被
格雷厄姆直白地表达了出来。
If the U.S. military were to strike North Korea for the reasons Graham mentioned, it would be the result of a calculation that sparking a real conflict in East Asia is preferable to accepting a theoretical threat to the United States—that it’s worth risking the actual deaths of those living in and near North Korea, including American expats and troops stationed in Japan and South Korea, to avert the potential deaths of Americans at home. When I surveyed experts this spring, they predicted that whatever form U.S. strikes against North Korea take, they could result in thousands or even millions of deaths—as the North Koreans retaliate with conventional, chemical, and perhaps nuclear weapons, and the United States and its allies respond in kind, dragging the region into a spiral of conflict. The vast range of the casualty estimates spoke to just how much unknown risk U.S. military planners would be assuming.
