小 i 导 读
12月17日，著名国际关系学者、哈佛大学教授格雷厄姆·艾利森（Prof. Graham Allison）接受了中国人民外交学会微信公众号编辑部专访，就中美关系、人工智能等问题阐述了他的最新看法。
2023年11月，在中美元首会晤当天，在北京大学中外人文交流研究基地的特别支持下，凤凰卫视《风云对话》联合凤凰网《与世界对话》专访了北京大学国际关系学院教授、中外人文交流研究基地主任贾庆国，美国前助理国防部长、哈佛大学肯尼迪政府学院创始院长格雷厄姆·艾利森，探讨中美关注议题、双边关系进展、会谈实质性成果等话题（点击链接了解详情）。
艾利森教授是哈佛大学肯尼迪政府学院贝尔福科学与国际事务中心主任、肯尼迪政府学院道格拉斯·狄龙政治学教授，也是肯尼迪政府学院的创始院长。他曾担任里根政府国防部长特别顾问、克林顿政府助理国防部长等职。艾利森教授于2012年提出“修昔底德陷阱”概念，即一个新崛起的大国必然要挑战现存大国，而现存大国也必然会回应这种威胁，这样战争变得不可避免，引发关于美中两国能否跨越“修昔底德陷阱”的思考。
采访详情如下：
编辑：近年来您频繁访问中国，拜会了多位中方领导，今年3月，您还作为美国工商界和战略学术界代表参加了习近平主席集体会见。您在华期间也参加了不少论坛研讨，并到多所大学讲学交流。这是否让您对大国关系、国际格局等形成了一些新的思考？其中最重要的是什么？
艾利森：我十分荣幸有机会直接与习近平主席会面。在那次会见中，我被邀请就美中关系发表5分钟的评论。我表达了对习近平主席与拜登总统在旧金山会晤所取得成就的赞赏，认为这次会晤为发展一个稳定和建设性的美中关系奠定了坚实基础。此外，我还就习主席在去年十月与美国联邦参议员查克·舒默会面时使用的一个隐喻进行了提问。在那次会见中，习主席说：“‘修昔底德陷阱’并非必然，宽广的地球完全容得下中美各自发展、共同繁荣。”他接着用一个有趣的隐喻来描述美中关系：“你中有我，我中有你”。
事实上，一方面，在技术、贸易、工业、军事和全球影响力等几乎所有领域，美中两国注定是历史上竞争最激烈的修昔底德式对手。另一方面，美中两国就像是不可分割的连体双胞胎，任何一方的生存都离不开与另一方的合作，美中爆发战争对两国来说都无异于自杀性行为。我认为，这就是我们两个大国面临的挑战的本质。
因此，里根总统在冷战时期说出的至理名言仍然适用于今天：“核战争打不赢，因此永远打不得”。我们生活在同一个星球上，所有国家在气候变化等挑战面前都命运与共，需要通过合作来避免灾难的发生。我们在全球金融体系中相互依赖，2008年，如果美中两国没有共同采取协调一致的刺激性措施，华尔街引发的大萧条可能演变成一场全球性的经济衰退。我们就像中国古代的吴国和越国——“吴越同舟”，只有合作才能避免沉没。
编辑：基辛格博士为中美关系破冰发展作出了历史性贡献，为增进两国相互了解发挥了不可替代的作用。您是他的学生，也是他的好友，深得他思想的精髓。您认为，在当前形势下中美如何构建并强化正确的战略认知？
艾利森：在21世纪，包括美中在内的所有国家都依赖于彼此合作以应对共同的生存挑战（核“相互确保摧毁”、气候变化、全球流行病等）。这要求美中两国领导人来定义亨利·基辛格所说的新“战略概念”，以满足同时开展竞争与合作的矛盾要求。
习主席和拜登总统去年11月的旧金山会晤为两国制定了一个可行的战略概念框架，使双方能够在避免战争的情况下实现各自的长期目标。我认为，激烈竞争、持续坦诚的小范围沟通以及密切合作（特别是事关每个国家生存所需的合作）这三大支柱是我见过的最可行的战略框架。我们这些在远处旁观的人不知道两位领导人在四小时没有媒体在场的小范围、坦诚讨论中对彼此说了什么。但自旧金山会晤以来，我们可以观察到的是，美中关系的一些趋势已急剧变化，现在正朝着更好的方向发展。
两国领导人都认识到，避免战争需要他们自己、他们信任的助手和他们的政府之间进行认真、坦诚的对话，以防止误解、误判以及突发事件或第三方因素将他们拖入两国都不希望发生的战争。通过建立以三大支柱（竞争、沟通和合作）为支撑的美中关系基础，他们接受了这样一个战略概念框架，可以使两国在未来几十年内进行长期但和平的竞争，而不会陷入修昔底德式竞争对手经常会陷入的意外战争陷阱。
当选总统特朗普向我们展示的一些线索和迹象表明，他将在此基础上再接再厉，但有更大的抱负。正如他本周在取得大选压倒性胜利后的第一次新闻发布会上所说，“中美联手可以解决世界上所有问题”。
编辑：人工智能是引领未来的战略性技术。中美作为全球人工智能发展的重要力量，就人工智能发展和治理进行对话与合作具有重要意义。请问您对两国在人工智能领域开展对话与合作有何建议？
艾利森：简而言之，我的建议是以史为鉴。正如美国和前苏联都竭尽全力争夺核优势一样，美国和中国现在也在争夺人工智能的至高无上地位——无论这意味着什么。正如基辛格所说：“历史上从未有一个大国因为担心竞争对手可能应用一项新技术来威胁自身生存和安全，就放弃自己发展这项技术。”
但美国和中国是否也应该探索人工智能军控的可能性呢？许多美国人认为，在人工智能发展的初期，当美国战略家们还在努力理解这一挑战时，试图与唯一的另一个人工智能超级大国——中国——对话，希望找到共识，这是徒劳的。
相比之下，正如基辛格和我在《外交事务》杂志上发表的文章《通往人工智能军控之路》中所写的，美中应该以史为鉴。这篇文章是基辛格去世前发表的最后一篇文章。美国和前苏联曾是世所罕见的最致命的对手之一。在美苏看来，对方的野心是对自身生存的致命威胁。尽管如此，当一项前所未有的技术以双方都不能理解的方式快速发展时，双方进行对话之初，就发现了许多存在共同利益的领域。例如，尽管双方都更愿意成为唯一的拥核大国，但他们的次优选择是成为仅有的两个拥核大国，再次才是一般的拥核国。因此，美苏在防止最危险技术的扩散方面找到了共同目标，并通过单方面的行动和双方的协作创造了后来的核不扩散体制。
目前，只有两个人工智能超级大国：美国和中国是仅有的两个拥有训练最复杂人工智能模型所需人才、研究机构和大规模算力的国家。这为两国提供了一个狭窄的机会窗口，来制定指导方针，防止人工智能最危险的进展和应用。即将上任的特朗普政府应继续推进拜登与中国在人工智能带来的风险、为防止灾难性风险的应用所做的工作以及为确保各自国内公司不对外输出风险采取的措施等问题上进行的讨论。美国和中国在人工智能方面的工作应该从国家层面的努力开始，以防止那些最危险、最具灾难性的后果。这些举措应该与从事人工智能大模型开发的科学家之间的对话相辅相成。正式的政府谈判应该寻求建立一个国际框架，以及一个类似于国际原子能机构的国际机构。
无论人工智能所带来的风险多么令人恐惧，也无论当前关于如何应对这些风险的对话多么令人困惑，我们都可以从前人的想法和做法中汲取经验。我们能够在一生中不经历第三次世界大战，不在战争中使用核武器，也不生活在一个核战争成为常态的核混乱中，这是一个没有被广泛认识到却不可思议的成就。因此，在我们今天面对人工智能带来的挑战时，核时代的历史以及那些思考如何限制和利用变革性新技术力量的政治家们的思想，不仅可以成为洞察的源泉，也可以成为灵感的源泉。
编辑：中国人民外交学会是周恩来总理倡导成立并长期担任名誉会长的新中国第一家人民外交机构。今年是外交学会成立75周年。自成立起，外交学会致力于促进中外人民相互理解、增进友谊。您是哈佛大学肯尼迪政府学院的创始院长，曾多次应外交学会邀请访华，今年和王超会长还进行了两次长谈。您如何看待中美双方开展学生、智库交流的意义，未来有何期待？
艾利森：我相信人民外交。我相信，通过建立中美两国领导者之间的关系，我们可以最大限度地减少误解误判，这些误解误判历史上经常导致国家间进行不必要的战争。哈佛大学及其肯尼迪政府学院很荣幸能在这项伟大的努力中发挥作用，很荣幸每年都能欢迎许多来自中国的杰出学生。外交学会及包括王超会长在内的领导层，在促进美中同行开展坦诚对话方面所做的工作，为实现周恩来总理的愿望作出了巨大贡献。
美国和中国面临的决定性挑战是找到一种摆脱“修昔底德陷阱”的方法。两国的学生和学者都应该仔细研究历史，并认识到，从19世纪80年代到1914年战争爆发前，德国和英国互为最重要贸易伙伴和最主要的外国投资来源地，都在对方国家进行了大量投资；双方都有很多学生在另一个国家接受教育；他们的领导人是在节日时聚到一起庆祝的亲戚；德英关系为两国带来了巨大利益。尽管如此，当一个迅速崛起的大国严重挑战一个占据统治地位的大国时，你会发现一种自从雅典崛起并挑战斯巴达以来历史上反复出现的综合征，大多数修昔底德式的对抗以战争告终。
我担心会重蹈历史覆辙。但如果没有，那将是因为政治家们一如既往地超越历史，超越战略想象。美中两国的领导人必须争取找到更好的思路，这就是为什么美中之间的学生和学术交流对两国的未来都至关重要。
CPIFA Exclusive Interview with Harvard Professor Graham Allison
On December 17, Prof. Graham Allison, renowned international relations scholar at Harvard University, was exclusively interviewed by the WeChat public account editorial board of the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs (CPIFA). Prof. Allison shared his latest views on China-US relations, artificial intelligence and etc.
Prof. Allison is Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Founding Dean of Kennedy School. He also has served as Special Advisor to the Secretary of Defense under President Reagan and as Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Clinton.In 2012, Prof. Allison introduced the famous concept of the "Thucydides’s Trap", which suggests that a rising power will inevitably challenge the established power, and the established power will inevitably respond to this threat, making war seem inevitable, thus sparking contemplation on whether the US and China can escape the Thucydides’s Trap.
The details of the interview are as follows:
CPIFA Editor: In recent years, you have been visiting China frequently, meeting with multiple Chinese leaders and officials. In March this year, you participated in the meeting with President Xi Jinping as a representative from the American business, strategic and academic communities. During your stay in China, you have also attended many forums and discussions, and given lectures at several universities. Has this experience led you to form any new thoughts on great power relations and the international landscape? If so, what is the most important insight you've gained?
Allison: I was honored to have the opportunity to meet with President Xi Jinping directly. At that meeting I was invited to offer an initial five-minute comment on the relationship between the US and China. In addition to commending him for what he and President Biden achieved in San Francisco in establishing a solid foundation for a stable, constructive relationship going forward, I raised a question about the metaphor President Xi had used in his discussion with Senator Chuck Schumer last October.There, he said: “The Thucydides’s Trap is not inevitable, and Planet Earth is vast enough to accommodate the respective development and common prosperity of China and the US” He went on to use an interesting metaphor to describe the US-China relationship: “I am in you, and you are in me”.
In fact,on the one hand, across nearly every dimension - technology, trade, industry, military, and global influence - the US and China are destined to be the fiercest Thucydidean competitors history has ever seen. On the other hand, because we are, in effect, inseparable conjoined Siamese twins, each nation’s survival requires cooperation with the other.War between the US and China would mean suicide for both nations. I think this is the essence of the challenge our two great nations face.
Thus, President Ronald Reagan’s incandescent truth remains as true today as it was during the height of the Cold War: “A nuclear war cannot be won and therefore must never be fought”. On a small planet with an enclosed biosphere in which either nation’s greenhouse gas emissions could make it uninhabitable for us all, we must find ways to cooperate to prevent that catastrophe. Entangled in a global financial system in which the Great Recession triggered by Wall Street in 2008 could have become a global depression had China and the US not worked together to respond with a coordinated stimulus,we are like ancient China’s Wu and Yue - in the same boat in which they found it necessary to cooperate in order not to sink.
CPIFA Editor: Dr. Henry Kissinger made historic contributions to the development of China-US relations and played an irreplaceable role in enhancing mutual understanding between the two countries. As his student and close friend, you are deeply influenced by his thoughts. In your opinion, how China and the US can develop a correct strategic perception under the current situation?
Allison: The US and China exist in 21st century conditions in which each nation’s survival depends on cooperation from the other to address shared, existential challenges (nuclear MAD, climate change, global pandemics, etc.). That requires leaders in both countries to identify what Henry Kissinger called a new “strategic concept” that satisfies the contradictory imperatives to simultaneously compete and cooperate.
From last November’s San Francisco summit between President Xi Jinping and President Joe Biden emerged the outline of a viable strategic concept for the US and China that will allow each to achieve their long-term objectives - without war.The three pillars: fierce competition; continuous candid private communication; and intense cooperation (especially where required for each nation’s survival). I think this is the most viable strategic framework I have seen.Those of us who observed the summit from a distance do not know what the two leaders said to each other during four hours of private, candid discussion - without the glare of the press. But since San Francisco, what we can observe is that a number of trend lines in the US-China relationship that were going one way have broken sharply and are now headed in a better direction.
Both presidents recognized that avoiding war requires serious, candid conversations between themselves, their trusted assistants, and their governments to prevent misunderstandings, miscalculations, and the impact of accidents or third-party incidents from dragging them into a war neither nation wants.By establishing a foundation for US-China relations on three pillars (compete, communicate, and cooperate), they embraced the outline of a strategic concept that can allow both nations to pursue a long-term but peaceful rivalry over the decades to come - without falling into the Trap that has so often ensnared Thucydidean rivals in unintended war.
The clues and pointers that President-elect Trump has offered us suggest that he will build on this foundation - but with greater ambition. As he said this week at his first press conference since his landslide victory, “China and the US can together solve all the problems of the world”.
CPIFA Editor: Artificial intelligence is a strategic technology that will lead the future. As leading countries in the global development of artificial intelligence, dialogue and cooperation between China and the United States in the field of AI development and governance are of great significance. What suggestions do you have for promoting dialogue and cooperation between the two countries in the field of artificial intelligence?
Allison:In one line, my suggestion is to consult history.As surely as the US and Soviet Union each did everything in its power to achieve nuclear superiority over the other, the US and China are now competing for supremacy in AI - whatever that means. As Kissinger put it: “Never in history has one great power fearing that a competitor might apply a new technology to threaten its survival and security forgone developing that technology for itself.”
But should the US and China also be exploring possibilities for AI arms control? Many in the US argue that so early in the development of AI when American strategists are struggling to get their own heads around the challenge, attempting to talk to the only other AI superpower - China - in the hope of finding areas of agreement is a fool’s errand.
In contrast, as Kissinger and I wrote in our Foreign Affairs article “The road to AI Arms Control,” which was the last piece Henry published before his death, they should consult history. The US and the Soviet Union were among the deadliest adversaries the world has ever seen. In their Manichean struggle, each saw the other’s ambitions as a mortal threat to its survival. Nonetheless, in their early conversations about an unprecedented technology that was rapidly advancing in ways neither understood, they discovered a number of islands of shared interests. For example, while each would have preferred to be a nuclear monopolist, their next best choice was to be duopolists, and after that, oligopolists. Thus, they found common cause in preventing the spread of the most dangerous technology, acting both unilaterally and cooperatively to create what became the nonproliferation regime.
At this moment, there are just two AI superpowers: the United States and China are the only countries with the talent, research institutes, and mass computing capacity required to train the most sophisticated AI models.This offers them a narrow window of opportunity to create guidelines to prevent the most dangerous advances and applications of AI. President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration should pick up where Biden’s left off in discussions with China about the risks posed by AI, what each country is doing to prevent applications that pose catastrophic risks, and how each country is ensuring that domestic companies are not exporting risks. Work on AI in the US and China should begin with national efforts to prevent the technology’s most dangerous and potentially catastrophic consequences. These initiatives should be complemented by dialogue between scientists engaged in developing large AI models. Formal governmental negotiations should seek to establish an international framework, along with an international agency comparable to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
However frightening the risks posed by AI, and however confused the current conversation is about how to address it, we should reflect on what earlier generations thought and did.The fact that we have been able to live our entire lives without World War III, without uses of nuclear weapons in war, and without a nuclear anarchy in which nuclear wars would be a recurring feature is a largely unrecognized but almost unbelievable accomplishment. So as we face the challenges posed by AI today, the history of the nuclear age and the ideas of the statesmen who thought about constraining and harnessing the power of a transformative new technology can serve as a source not only of insights but of inspiration.
CPIFA Editor: The Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs (CPIFA) was founded at the initiative of Premier Zhou Enlai and has served as the first people-to-people diplomacy organization of New China, with Premier Zhou serving as honorary president for a long time. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the CPIFA. Since its establishment, the CPIFA has been committed to promoting mutual understanding and friendship between the peoples of China and foreign countries. As the founding dean of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, you have been invited to visit China by the CPIFA multiple times, and you have had two lengthy conversations with President Wang Chao this year. How do you view the significance of student and think tank exchanges between China and the United States, and what do you hope for in the future?
Allison: I believe in people-to-people diplomacy. I believe by establishing relationships between leading Chinese and Americans we can minimize the misperceptions, misunderstandings, and misjudgments that have so often in history mislead nations into unnecessary wars. Harvard University and its Kennedy School of Government are proud to play a part in this grand effort, honored to welcome many remarkable students from China each year. The work that CPIFA and its leaders, including President Wang Chao, do in promoting candid conversations between American and Chinese counterparts makes a huge contribution to realizing Zhou Enlai’s aspiration.
The defining challenge for both the US and China is to find a way to escape Thucydides’s Trap.Students and scholars in both countries should study history carefully and recognize that even though there were huge benefits to Germany and Great Britain in the period from the 1880s until the outbreak of war in 1914 as they became each other’s most important trading partner and primary source of foreign investments, they were both heavily invested in each other; they both exchanged a lot of students who were educated in the other country; their leaders were relatives who celebrated holidays together. Nonetheless, when you have a meteoric rising power seriously challenging a ruling power, you find a syndrome seen repeatedly in history, since Athens rose and challenged Sparta. Most Thucydidean rivalries end in war.
I fear this will go the way of history. But if it does not, it will be because statesmen reach beyond history as usual, and beyond strategic imagination as usual.Leaders in the US and China will have to stretch for better ideas. That is why student and scholarly exchanges between the US and China are important to both countries’ future.
原文：中国人民外交学会 2024年12月29日
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